The night at the airport hotel was quiet and comfortable. An airport at night is eerie because you expect it busy and loud but find it empty, vast and motionless. It must be quite the experience to wander the halls or better yet, the runways. a portal to another world. In any case I got up at 5am, had a couple of eggs that I had brought with me for breakfast and get past security by about 6. Catch my flight, learn some Chinese to pass time, then arrive in the city of Rome once again. Tourists here are divided into two groups: the ordinary ones and the very classy. The classy ones are almost always either American or east Asian, those I notice anyway and while the Americans stick out with a certain demeanor: open, communicative, proud, the Asians are generally quiet like movie stars wearing sunglasses to move unnoticed. In places like the termini train station, both are rare and kind of a provocative counterpoint to the international poor and distressed, but you have the feeling the Americans could talk their way through any crowd, even the disfavored, whereas the Asians seem like a glitch in the matrix and you would expect the air around them to glitch as they disappear and get replaced by a person who fits better into the general griminess of the space. I met a friend like this in Paris once. White Chanel blazer, neat skirt, white half open loafers held together by a colorful ribbon. Ribbons! While you cannot help but to appreciate the effort of evoking for us Marie Antoinette or Les Liaisons Dangereuses, so much finesse is too much for the average European worldview as the whole continent seems like the playground for international punk and dump schemes. Anyway, back to my correspondent in Rome: I myself am dressed cheaply but elegantly and it's as if we happy few exchange ultrasound signals to localize each other and ourselves in this mass of absent care for fellow humans. Today I'm only passing through as I'll catch a train to Foggia later, meeting a good friend of mine there for the first time, so I decided to sweep the area around the train station. Because this is Rome, a 15 minute walk gives you access to a 2000 year old monumental bathhouse, several works by Michelangelo, a sunclock built to prove the accuracy of the Gregorian calendar in a 17th century masterpiece by Borromini and a Bernini. Bernini in particular is the Santa Teresa chapel in Santa Maria Vittoria, a small church, almost a shrine, built for a tiny painting they brought back to Rome after the Catholics had won against the protestants at the battle of the white mountain in Bohemia. I came here because I'm going to meet Czech friends next week and enjoy the fact that elements of one trip lead me to the next. Bernini. I remember that this statue had come across my radar when I was studying art history. Pious eroticism, theatrical dramatic style, the best rendering of bliss and ecstasy. I'm surprised to find the drapings on Teresa's clothes to be hard and geometrical, almost rocklike and the face, at least at first very calm. Maybe my mind is used to a much more direct display of rapture so I wander around more, notice the theme of the clouds both in stucco as well as the stupendous patterns on the rad and black marble tiles, that are used like canvases of their own and put together meticulously to create symmetrical, flaming patterns throughout the hall. There are reliefs, an interesting rendition of the last supper, where you see what's left on their table as chiseled chunks that convince me of the intended perspective and I sit down to look more at the saint. Over time, the sculpture grows on me. The angel with his arrow is maybe an allusion to Cupido and Teresa now seems ecstatic or convulsive even. Maybe that's why her robe is all angular like this! There is a constant ebb and flow of people,, some who come here to take a picture of Teresa that is exactly like the one in the book that made them come here, others, younger people, give the whole space more respect, stay a while and contemplate. Very elegant ladies, an old guy with a red baseball hat that he carries in his hand, a group of sisters, the younger of which walks around the nave at least three times, an Italian woman who knelt on the bench to pray, Chinese who read up on the church on 百度百科, because the local descriptions don't cover more than 4 languages. It's like a salon, this little church, it could be a bakery or a fancy library. The colors appetizing, erotic rapture is akin to the enjoyment of food after all. People coming and going, incorporating it into their days whether their thoughts tie them to an office two blocks from here or Pudong Airport, to university aulas or an open space desk with three screens showing AutoCAD or Unreal Engine, their first love or their first scary medical exam. My stay ends with a stroll through the university zone east of the train station which looks kind of sketchy. A girl who is walking in front of me, turns around nervously and lets me pass. Every time I stop to look at my phone to figure out the way, she takes the lead and then, nervously again, lets me pass as soon as I catch up. I end up in a spacious espresso bar, constant ebb and flow of people here too, some come to talk, some to play at the slot machines next to the bathroom: *guasto* , but men can use it anyway. Then it's back to the microcosm of roma termini before I start the next leg of my journey.