Reading time: Just over 1 minute
I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of metaphors and similes from Jason Horowitz…
I first visited Rome in 2015 and — like many tourists — fell in love with the city. The sights! The architecture! The food! The people! (And, OMG, the traffic!)
As a result, when I saw a June 1/17 New York Times story headlined, “My Rome: Still a Classic Beauty,” by Jason Horowitz, I stopped what I was doing and took 10 minutes to read it immediately. Horowitz rewarded me not only with memories of my time in that marvellous city but also some spectacular figurative language. Here were my favourite bits:
- The gravity of past destinations pulled me around familiar corners and brought me to my old apartment building next to Santa Cecilia, the centuries-old church and convent.
- And while my beard has tinseled, the intervening years haven’t exactly been kind to Rome either.
- A financial crisis and slow growth has led to thigh-high grass in the parks and meridians, garbage strewed across playgrounds and piazzas, empty Peroni bottles of vagrants (maybe my old roommate!) scattered across the city like amber glass bowling pins.
- A city I knew and loved, it struck me as a masterpiece obscured by smudged glass.
- Walking around the Ghetto, I felt like the witness to a crime when I stumbled upon a seagull as big as a Labrador stabbing its beak into a pile of garbage bags.
- Atop the hill, we found a quiet paradise where fragrant and violet Judas tree petals fluttered down and grouted between the cobbled stones.
The photo at the top of this post was taken by my husband and shows one of the fountains in Piazza Navona.