Early afternoon, in the train
Early afternoon, in the train station at Ostia Antica
I believe - well, I am quite certain by this point - that I have stood one of my roommates up. They are now all women - a tall graduate student in psyscholgy from Florida (whom I took a liking to as soon as I saw her don a long skirt in the morning) a perky girl from San Francisco, and a third one whom I have not yet seen awake. The second of these inquired of the room whether any of us were going to the Colosseum tomorrow, as she wanted to go but didn’t want to go alone. (What, I wonder, is a girl who doesn’t want to travel alone doing on a two-week solo trip?) Anyway, I said that I would be going that way (as I want to visit the Capitoline museum), said that I would be spending the morning at Ostia, and mentioned noon as the likely time for my return. It’s now well past one, if the tourist’s watch that I glimpsed in the Ostia gift shop is correct. I have no watch, you see, and so must guess the time and on this occaison was quite wrong.
I will stop by the hostel when back in Rome, and leave a note for her if she is not there. I rather hope she won’t be - I would really hate to have kept her there waiting this long. Also, now that it’s so late, I would much rather go to the Capitoline. Why do I agree to things that I don’t entirely want to do and am not absolutely assured of my capacity to fulfil? It keeps me fruitlessly worrying about the time until I find a public clock, and then I discover I’m hopelessly late anyway! It is in part, I suppose, my knack for thinking at some length before choosing the wrong thing. Still, without selecting the wrong thing, how will one learn, in an experiential fashion, how to choose the right?
I bet jet lag has discombobulated your circadian rhythm. You should be OK timewise in another couple of days.
June 10th, 2002 at 4:33 pm