Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

Forse un giorno ci farà piacere ricordare anche queste cose.

Someday, perhaps, the memory of even these things will be pleasant.

Virgilio

Nobody wants to read about a trip to the Registry of Motor Vehicles. Not even if you call it the Department of Motor Vehicles, not even if a more exotic-sounding version is pegged up on the side of a structure that has been crumbling since its inception in the 1960s: Motorizzazione Civile. All of these place are exactly the same everywhere—and each of them demand a sort of penance once you have to go inside.  Dante Alighieri might have written Divina Commedia in the fourteenth century, but places like these make you understand why the text is undeniably evergreen.

The last time I was at one of these places was in Brockton, Massachusetts. I was back home and collecting a new car after finishing a tour in Senegal. Registering the car revealed additional layers of unexpected bureaucracy since I had gone through a surname change in the preceding years. It was the reason why for months I carried with me this half-inch stack of a stapled court packet that certified that my name change was legit. The need for every piece of proper documentation at any given time. Arm yourself with whatever that is along with a heavy tome like The Divine Comedy, and visiting the RMV isn’t half-bad. 

But on this extremely warm morning in Rome, I didn’t have a book with me. Instead, it was just my brain and a slow inching forward in a line of cars to see if Italy would finally provide my car with an updated registration (grazie al coronavirus, there is a huge backlog). Here I sat in the heat and enjoyed the surroundings. Where there are four garage-like areas with which to conduct inspections, only one is open. I hear mention that the others might have broken equipment.

As I make my way forward from what is absolutely not the correct lane (I have been instructed to swoop in from the left flank, in such a way that cuts the entire queue, Italia-style), I watch the car in front of me do this first. Immediately, I can see the battle of hand gestures come into frame. I don’t know all of them yet, but I can see the guy on right in a silver sedan—the guy who has been patiently creeping in line—give the other guy the “What the F are you doing?” gesture. The exchange continues for a short while, but nothing is happening quickly this morning. It is not long before cut-in-line guy not only wins the battle but is now outside of his car and chatting—laughing actually—with silver sedan guy who has just lost his place.

You’d never see this happen in Brockton, but I’ve been witness to this near-simultaneous conflicting emotional displays all the time here in Rome. 

I’m still sweating in my car but after watching these two guys interact, I’m thinking about the idea and imprint of place. I tend to think about this a lot as I watch humans interact while within the constraints of how our journeys shuffle us along. The thing about being subjected to life is that we’ve got everything from this interminable car administrivia to city streets in the summer that are lined with flowering oleander in three shades of pink. Everything on the scale of daily experience sums into a unique imprint that after time feels a bit like an old friend. Or, if you are not at all feeling the parameters, they are more like a colleague…or god forbid, an adversary. 

I have no desire to form an adversarial relationship with Rome, or any city in which I live. So I choose to abide by the rules as much as possible—even if I don’t always feel comfortable in doing so. This is why I am now sandwiching myself in closely behind the silver sedan, Storrow Drive-style, and trying not to look to closely at the motorist now behind me who has just been cut off. This is Italy, and I’m just doing what I have learned—and what is expected. 

Before I even get into the covered area, one of the inspectors comes to my car and opens the hood. Documents are shoved underneath my windshield wiper and I continue to inch behind the sedan. As I move my car, there’s an alert on my dashboard that warns, “Bonnet open”. Ah yes, the good ole British bonnet. My car was purchased in the UK and has a few features that make me a bit nostalgic for the four years where I lived in London. 

In “The Before Times” (times before COVID-19), what I loved about travel was that it was the closest you could get to returning to a time gone by in your life. Maybe that’s why I think it’s important to make friends with each place you hang your hat—even if there are many crappy aspects. The thing about going back to each place where you’ve invested some quality time is that it’s the closest we can get to be able to pay a visit to the dead. While the emotions, decorative features and people might change, the skin and bones remain the same. Coming upon different parts of the framework might spark something inside of you that you had forgotten about, and to me I find that almost medicinal. 

Maybe it’s the heat stroke getting to me, but think about this as my car is finally deposited over four small well deck things and I get out to watch what feels like two seconds of testing. The blinkers work, the brakes are tested. I dunno. I am still learning about how the passage of time here in Rome doesn’t really make sense. What seems like a really long time is suddenly seeming short. The morning at the Motorizzazione Civile was just one small drop in the bucket of my education of Rome.

I’m ready to call victory when my car is scooted out to the other side and I am told that I am free to go. My registration should arrive in a few days. I set a course to make my way back to the GRA (Rome’s ring road which I now know so well) when I see from the corner of my guy a man flagging me down. I stop as he approaches. 

“They still have your UK registration papers”

Technically, I do need this back absolutely. In my brain I have a pretty fair idea that I can probably get along on these streets fine without it. But Murphy exists in every culture and again, time is quite bendable here. He tells me that he will go and retrieve it and I sit and wait on the other side of the car waiting area. 

As I sit there, I notice that nearly all of the cars are now gone. The massive horse trailer, the silver sedan. It’s a near ghost town and I wonder how I am now one of the last cars to depart. I look at my watch and I can see that it has suddenly been 20 minutes since the man went hunting for my VC5 form. Nothing to be done, so I wait some more. Someday, perhaps even soon, I’ll have forgotten about this afternoon, and I’ll be using my Italian-registered car to embark upon some other ridiculous life task. One that is unique to its particular place, but at the end of the day just more of the same.