March '26
artist archives 003
Inconvenience is the Stuff of Friendship.
I am a firm advocate for keeping a quote book / commonplace journal & March embodied one of the quotes I live by: “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.” (Benjamin Franklin)
March was a well-lived-in story with very little margin to properly record it—hence why this archive is finding its completion come May. Enjoy :)
The beginning of March brought the end of my pilgrimage to Germany—squeezing in as much of Passau, Altötting, and Munich as I possibly could before boarding a plane back to the Eternal City. I arrived at the Villa Magnolia just in time for the long-standing tradition of Sunday night lasagna. Travel-weary and ready for nothing more than a long shower and an early night, I settled down at a table to catch up with some friends who had passed the weekend in Rome.
A commotion was taking place on the Villa balcony, where the boys congregated after every meal to smoke and either play folk music or continue writing their Latinized Class of 2028 Rome Ballad [Ubi Est…?]. For three and a half minutes the boys were outside hooting and hollering and I upheld my early-to-bed-early-to-rise resolution. They shortly came inside and announced the news we’d been waiting all semester to hear: Bar San Calisto, a highly reputed recommendation from last year’s sophomores, which had been closed the past few months for renovations, was having its grand re-opening… right now.
Was it to be a nice hot shower and a full eight hours of sleep, or an arduous trek into Trastevere to watch my musically gifted classmates busk and stay up too late talking? When faced with such a choice, dear reader, I hope you realize there is really only one choice.
There is something wonderful about being in a community where one is frequently inconvenienced. The schedule which I make for myself must stretch its capacity to fit conversations which go on well past midnight or spontaneous excursions, (last fall was a harbinger of cold plunges in the lake nearest campus), or unexpected heart-to-hearts shared in whispers in the cafe. Latin homework must be delayed by a hazy afternoon of wine, poetry, conversation, and nap in Pamphili Park. A respectable bedtime is forgone by a bonfire that seems to be stoked by the stories told around it. Substack articles that were supposed to come out in March come out in May… and so on.
Adventure is... Also the Stuff of Friendship.
Another month in Rome brought another host of memories I will cherish for a lifetime. On the first Friday back from Germany, I went with a group of friends to pray the Stations of the Cross at Chiesa di Santa Croce in Gerusaleme, a church outside the Aurelian Walls holding relics from the Crucifixion. As accounted in my journal that morning, “I feel like this was the college/friend experience I have prayed for my entire life. To have friends who want to go pray Stations + venerate the Cross of the Savior of the World…” (03.06.2026, 11:43AM) It was a gift to be brought along—and afterwards, G & I took a bus to our favorite lunch spot in Trastevere and caught up on the deep waters of our interior lives.
The next day a sizable group of students from my class, along with our program leader and several seminarians from the NAC, embarked on the Seven Church Pilgrimage. We walked all throughout Rome “weaving a web of prayer” (as Deacon Kyle so often & so poetically put it) to the four major basilicas (Santa Maria Maggiore, San Paulo Fuori le Mura, San Giovanni in Laterano, & San Pietro) and three other churches (San Lorenzo, Santa Croce in Gerusaleme, & San Sebastiano Fuori le Mura) in Rome. At each Church we reflected on one of the seven last words of Christ on the Cross. It was somewhere between 17 and 20 miles in the hours between 6AM and 6PM, book-ended by morning Mass and a happily tired evening gelato run on the Via del Fornaci.
Five countries were visited during the month of March, which is a record for me. (Considering the fact that I hadn’t been out of the States until January of this year, five foreign countries in one month is kind of miraculous). I wrapped up my pilgrimage in Germany and continued my studies in Italy (learning valuable lessons on the streets of the Caput Mundi & bonding with classmates in Assisi); I whisked away on a long weekend to see Krakow, Poland (which ended up being a trip that changed the trajectory of my life); A & I took a spontaneous 28-hour jaunt to Paris, where we ate escargot, complained about the French organizational systems (or the lack thereof) and took enough pictures to last us our 20s—and we had a teary-eyed dinner in Spain on a layover to boot.
I could write for days on those trips but it seems somewhat fitting to let them rest.
Wind and Window Flower
My formal studies of Robert Frost continued throughout March and inevitably bled into my personal life, as is wont to happen when a girl carries book of poetry in her purse for every adventure. Up until this spring, had someone asked for my favorite poem I would have to list half a dozen titles (including Homer’s Iliad, W.H. Auden’s Funeral Blues, A.E. Stalling’s Olives, E.E. Cummings [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in], Tennessee William’s We Have Not Long to Love, etc., etc., etc.] and eventually shake my head and say “It really depends...”
Indecision no longer! My trip to Poland marked two rather magnificent moments : I found both my favorite poem & someone incredibly special to share it with.
It was, of course, a Friday night—the second of our nights in Poland and the first which we used to see the nightlife of Krakow. Much of the night had ebbed—our breadcrumbs took us from the cellar rooms of Gospoda Koko, where we had eaten dinner, to an underground jazz bar, to the basement of an Irish pub. The night began with seven of us and now only four remained. One had departed for a smoke, one was off converting Englishmen, and the other sat with me. He and I hadn’t exchanged much more than a few formalities of introduction and a handful of jokes prior to this trip, but now that we had gotten started talking, it seemed like we had just about everything in common.
The conversation’s course was threaded along by the discussion of poetry—it began with Homer and skipped along topics such as Architecture and Law and Order and Beauty—finally landing on Robert Frost.
“Do you know Wind and Window Flower?1” D asked me. I replied that unfortunately, I did not.
“Well, no trouble. I have it here.”
Out of his school bag comes his Rome journal, a leather-bound number with his last name embossed on the front in gold. He thumbed through the pages and read me the poem that I now can recite by heart. There’s something rather lovely about being read to filth by a poem written 93 years before you were born, and something lovelier about it turning into a bit of a love story.
Ciao!—
C
+AMDG+
For all those in need of reading MY FAVORITE POEM ( !!! ) You can find it here → https://poets.org/poem/wind-and-window-flower
Such a beautiful reflection! So glad you are sharing your heart.
Enchanting! So fun to live your adventures vicariously! Beautifully written.