Rome in the summer is heat and tourists. The crowds are always too much for me and I don’t shop. My favorite thing to do is simply sit in churches, breathing, meditating. Most people enter the churches with their cameras, meaning their phones, they shuffle around, snap a couple of photos of the stained glass and leave. Others approach the image of Jesus and make the sign of the cross, perhaps kneel. Occasionally, a person places two hands together and prays for several minutes. For the first few moments I notice these things, then they disappear as my eyes close. I focus on my breath, but often my mind wanders and i become someone else, perhaps a parishioner from the 18th century, or perhaps it is easter mass 1946, just after the war, i imagine myself in time, of time, back in time, the musty air speaks to me. This traveling can last 50 minutes, maybe longer, i’m there, but i’m not there, like the shoes moving around me, they exist, but only when i open my eyes. This has become my Roman ritual, the highlight of my summer vacation day. After almost an hour, i open my eyes, bow my head, silently pray, walk back out into the ancient Italian piazza sun.