abducting prosperina

17 May, 2024

warning: contains spoilers for gennarose nethercott's thislefoot & a lot of meandering!

each of my tour guides here have said the same thing. "in rome, a hundred years is nothing."¹ and it rings true. when i ran my hands along the remaining stone walls of constantine's basilica (circa 300s) in the vatican grotto, i felt very strange. i've never dreamed of lasting.

honestly, the only thing i truly wanted to do here in rome was visit the borghese gallery. because a portion of their collection was at the corsini due to renovations. i had to choose between the two. for me, the answer was clear as day. raphael’s lady with unicorn would have to wait. bernini’s sculptures were waiting for me. i consider myself unlucky for the timing, but i could never regret my choice.

at 11-years-old i learned to sculpt before i learned to paint.² at 16-years-old i learned to remake myself, somehow convinced that there was an angel inside me & i only had to carve her out.³ at 21-years-old, i'm still hacking away at myself to find her.

but centuries ago, at 23-years-old, gian lorenzo bernini learned how to transmute marble to flesh. when i say that seeing the abduction of prosperina in person was life-changing, i mean that i wish i had been brave enough to cry. we are both liars in our own right; feigning a softness that was never there. i still have a year to learn to be as convincing as he was.

for my sudden (and likely quickly passing) fixation with bernini and his sculptures, it's a fitting coincidence that i also recently finished gennarose nethercott's thistlefoot.⁴ one of its deuteragonists is bellatine – a woodworker with a burning in her hands that can literally make anything come to life. she spends majority of the story holding this back, afraid of her own magic. her brother, isaac, describes it as following:

"when bellatine wasn't Embering, she hardened, grew jagged at the edges, paled. she was so bent on witholding life from the inanimate shapes around her, she withheld it from herself, too. she turned herself to stone."

in the same way, i've realized how often i've held myself back from just being.

i had walked into college aloof and detached, wishing for a face like marble and a heart like burgeoning springtime. i wanted so badly to be the cool, mysterious classmate: kind, but reserved and always just out of reach. after all, if people knew me, how could they love me?⁵ wasn't it better to be unattainable than unwanted? years later, i'm still performing an idealized version of myself. one that i think could be easy to love.

bellatine experiences a somewhat similar character arc until meeting(?)making(?) a girl named winnie, the sculpture of a dead girl in a cemetary. (who cannot help but live if that makes any sense). she tells her:

"it's like everything in the world is in conversation. every time something touches me, it feels like that part of me wakes up all over again to listen."

for now, i think i'm sitting at a very silly intersection. what's a girl to a genius? what's skin to stone? we all lean into touch. i know how to listen, but i'm still learning to speak for myself. i think bernini is still a liar, but i don't have to be. where his art mimics the exression of life, can't i be life itself?

i forget that i'm not marble at all. i can change once and change again (it's part curse and part blessing). i can start becoming, instead of pretending – i can be loved without losing myself! i think it's taken me time to learn to want to live as someone and not something.

i ended up buying an art book from the gallery, but it lacks the context on his life that i'd like. if i'm not over him by the time i get home, i'll pirate whatever else i find.

also, i'm on a cruise until the end of may! despite the time i've spent st sea, it's been very grounding. i've visited italy, spain, and france so far. i'm looking forward to the rest as much as i'm looking forward to getting back to the philippines.

#being #books #rambling