Three Nights in Rome

There is a kind of pain that arrives from nowhere. You walk in the streets of an unfamiliar city, and suddenly the way a tall pine tree holds its rebellious crown against the sky brings you close to tears. You know it must have triggered something, a distant memory, but you have no idea what it is, and you don’t have time to get lost in your thoughts or in the narrow alleyways of this infinite city. So you go back to your map, restudy the stubborn streets, attempting to restore your sense of direction. And then there is another kind of pain, a simpler one, the one you recognise the instant it happens, knowing precisely why it hurts. It was one of those days. First, the line of tall pine trees on my way, as I was trying to navigate the streets of central Rome towards Vatican City. And then, another pain.



Maybe I was overwhelmed by the depth of the colours on the surrounding walls, the images floating around and above me, the events taking place on the ceiling. Whatever it was, I could feel it the moment it happened: the jolt in my neck as I twisted my body into a rather unnatural position, the nerves pulsing down my spine, thrumming with ache. There I was, standing in the middle of the Sistine Chapel, looking up towards the Creation of Adam, when I suddenly strained my back.

I could feel the pain intensifying, but I wanted to keep looking up, just for a few more minutes. I wanted to study the small gap full of tension between the two index fingers – the point where space is forever interlinked with time – the split second before the creation of man.

I rested for a bit but had to bend backwards again. I needed to keep studying the way Adam was at once fully formed and not yet created: in a perpetual stage between actuality and possibility, up there on the most beautiful Volta in the entire city of Rome, or indeed, earth. I think it was in those few moments when it became clear to me like nothing before: if I were to suffer physically for art – for merely looking at it – it would be for this place.



As soon as I knew I was going to Rome, I booked a ticket for the Sistine Chapel. I booked it before looking for a place to stay. I must have been asked to give my date of birth in the process because a couple of months later with my trip to Rome still weeks away, I received a message at 6am on the morning of my birthday: Buon compleanno dal Vaticano, offering me 20 per cent discount to the museum shop. A slightly more sensible person might have felt a bit annoyed by this message, so early in the morning, the way it dared to mix consumption with divinity. I, in fact, felt incredibly pleased with this gesture. For some reason, that’s how I always imagined Rome to be: a complex place.



I must have seen reproductions of the Creation of Adam countless times, but it was only when I was there, tilting my neck backwards, that I realised how full of worry God looked in that scene. In Italian, the verb preoccupare means to worry, and I always find it surprising. Non preoccuparti, my Italian friend, Laura, will text me in response to this or that, meaning: don’t worry. When I looked at the image of God looking at Adam up there on the beating heart of the Volta, he seemed to carry all the complexity and potential meanings of this word: at once full of attention, intention and pain.

Adam, on the other hand, appeared to me rather nonchalant, showing off his naked body in a perfect solitary pose. He seems to have an air of confidence and comfort. And good on him: the sheer beauty and radiance of this man. It looks as if he were enjoying a well-earned quiet moment in the sun after a bracing morning swim. Only, of course, he’s not yet supposed to be created. God, in contrast to Adam’s solitude, is accompanied by an entire supporting crew: a few angels and the image of a sleeping, not-yet-conceived Eve, as if he might find it simply unbearable to be on his own.

Looking at the fresco, I wondered if the image of God is a representation of the complex grammatical construction evoking God in the Hebrew Bible: at once singular and plural. God’s actions in Genesis are described in third-person singular verbs. But his name is constructed in the plural form: Gods. In the Creation of Adam, the only feature that exists outside God’s plurality is that singular action: the arm moving away from God’s busy company towards the empty space just before reaching Adam’s perfectly proportioned form.



The evening of my arrival, I went to look for the Trevi Fountain, a short walk from the convent I stayed in. I had only landed a couple of hours before, and as I walked down Via Sistina in the warm autumnal night, the city seemed to be formed of heavy traffic, smoke, and streetlights so strong they made the sky disappear. It occurred to me once again that there is something about walking alone in crowded cities that makes me feel immediately at home.

I could trace the Trevi piazza before I reached it by the clouds of thick vapour and smoke. I’m not sure why I expected the place to be empty or quiet. As I tried to push and navigate myself towards the fountain between waves of cigarette smoke and selfie sticks, a man selling laser gadgets projected shiny red spots on my coat. Another offered me a rose, and when I refused, he handed it to me, insisting I was too beautiful not to have it for free. Once I held it, he asked for some coins. I threw the rose on the ground and started walking back. I was aware that I was not special: I was a tourist too. Still, on my first night in Rome, I desperately wanted to be the only foreigner in the city.

I only knew the Trevi fountain from Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, a film oscillating between intensely private spaces and chaotic public scenes, a story of image making and obsessive picture taking, in which Rome takes centre stage. I always imagined the fountain rather small, a background setting for the film’s protagonists. You are the first woman on the first day of creation. You are a mother, a sister, a lover, a friend, an angel, a devil, you’re the earth, you’re home, yes, what are you? You’re home, Marcello whispers to Sylvia in an earlier scene a few hours after meeting her for the first time. What I managed to see of the fountain was far more impressive than I expected: an even bigger theatrical monument designed not for two lost characters but an entire city, towering high above the people smoking, the laser lights, the rose petals scattered on the floor.



I came to Rome to read from my new poetry collection, The Banquet, at the Keats Shelley House. The title poem is written after Dante’s Convivio (meaning Banquet), a book I find most beautiful in its exploration of the vernacular. When I looked for a place to stay, the contact person at the Keats Shelley House recommended looking at one of the monasteries in the area. That is, if I was open to staying in a more unusual and modest place. I chose the convent on Via Sistina because of the proximity to the venue, but also, possibly, because of the street name.

There were two things I had to do in my short visit: go to the Sistine Chapel; and spend a good few hours in a bookshop. On the morning of my reading, I navigated my way towards the bookshop Laura had marked on my map a few days earlier. As I walked in the streets of the Centro Storico, hearing the language I know from years of wrestling with it in books – how suddenly it took sonic forms all around me – I thought about Dante. In the Convivio, Dante offers a series of arguments for writing prose and poetry in the vernacular. The one I’ve always found most beautiful is that unlike Latin, the vernacular constantly changes, and as such it has the capacity to evoke change.

Maybe I needed to get lost in the historic centre of an unfamiliar city so I could pause and look around the ruins, the traces of monuments revealing themselves behind apartment blocks, all while words were tossed and shouted around me, words I only partially understood, to remind myself how incredibly fast spoken language is – how full of movement – the way it never stands still.

I wasn’t sure where I was. A church I passed on my way had a big yard in front of it. I sat on a stone bench and tried to make sense of my map. The church was under construction and builders were going in and out of its arched entrance. I studied the builders, the way they were carrying scaffoldings on their shoulders, shouting to one another as they approached the church. It occurred to me that in English, as in Italian, the words conversation and conservation are strikingly similar (in Italian: conversazione and conservazione). Maybe that’s what Dante alluded to when defending the vernacular as the most remarkable and complex linguistic form: the action of speaking a language is an action of conserving it while simultaneously allowing it to change.



Looking at the Volta while having a throbbing pain down your spine makes you feel an immediate connection to any character making enormous physical sacrifice. In the Creation of Adam, this character happens to be God, who is clearly doing all the hard work. Adam, by contrast, barely raises his index finger. Of course, it makes complete sense thematically, but at the same time it gives the impression that God desperately needs Adam, more than Adam might wish for divine intervention, especially since he looks already fully, and rather magnificently, formed.

What struck me, looking at the image, is that it was not entirely clear who is creating whom. The two figures seem to be equal in size and form, both staring at each other intently, as if taking part in a tense contest of who blinks first. God and his crew are nestled in a floating form the shape of a brain. But what kind of a brain? It is a human one. It is as if Adam looks at God, projecting his human brain onto him. Man creates God in his mind, who in turn creates man in his image. It is impossible not to see it while looking up at this fresco: a state of perpetual circular creation.



The convent on Via Sistina felt strangely familiar. Not the feeling of being at home, so much as a strong sense of knowing how places like this tick from the inside. On my first night I couldn’t understand what it was: I was cold and didn’t sleep well. I looked in the wardrobe and found a thin wool blanket that felt somewhat familiar. It was only in the morning, when I entered the communal dining hall for breakfast and saw the crisp white tablecloth neatly tucked under nylon sheets on each table, that I realised that this place takes me straight back to my childhood in the kibbutz.

I recognised it all: the stainless-steel communal coffee percolator beaming like an enormous heart on the service side table, the spotless tile floor, the comfort of basic things and narrow choice: bread, coffee, milk – that was it, the no-nonsense attitude of the nuns, the pragmatic aesthetics of nylon sheets, the austerity of it. And above all, the demand for absolute trust. All guests had to leave their room keys on an open shelf by the main door before going out. Blink and it could look like a commune at the heart of a city. Not far from an urban socialist dream if you ignore the image of Jesus on the cross in each room. Because of course, the one difference is the religious aspect of this place versus the complete lack of it in a kibbutz. Except, perhaps the rejection of religion was as absolute in its own ways, almost sacred in its demand that everyone follow it.



God creates man in his image in Genesis 1. And then God creates man once again, still in his image, in Genesis 2. I will never not find it astonishing that the two opening chapters of Genesis offer two different versions of the creation of the world: similar enough but full of contradictions. It’s as if the first chapter tells the reader: this is a true story. And the second chapter says: this is a story, and so is the first one.

In his image. The word in Hebrew for camera (מַצלֵמָה) comes from that wording in Genesis: in his image (בְּצַלְמֹו). As I looked up at the Creation of Adam, it struck me that God created Adam in his image, sure, but the image chosen is of a younger man. Michelangelo’s interpretation of God in Genesis is of an older man, a father figure, perhaps evoking the Christian idea of God as father and son. It makes the figure of God look rather humble, almost relatable: could it be that God in the fresco truly imagines himself to look as young and gorgeous as Adam? Could it be that he thought he was creating Adam in his actual image? And isn’t it something we all experience: imagining ourselves to look much younger than we are until we happen to catch our reflection in a picture?

The Sistine Chapel was the only place in the Vatican Museum complex where visitors were not allowed to take pictures. It gave the place an air of heightened sanctity. Not in terms of religion, but Art. Suddenly, everyone had to look at the paintings with their naked eyes. There were no mobile phones raised in the air, no selfies being taken. We all had no choice but to look at the frescoes in silence and try to hold the pictures, again and again, in our minds.



In La Dolce Vita, characters arrive and disappear to the flash of lights and the sound of camera clicks. It seems that every incident takes place on a makeshift stage: on the steps leading down from an airplane, on the spiralling staircase ascending St. Peter’s Basilica, on the broken stairs leading to a flooded basement, on the sunbathing roof of a high-rise building. Fellini’s Rome is a city of stairways, long corridors and other people’s bedrooms. The film follows a few days in the life of Marcello, a journalist who seems to cover everything from religion to gossip and entertainment. True to the nature of breaking news, the film offers no clear narrative apart from the unshakeable belief that every incident, however minor, has the potential to become a bigger event: a story.

What I love most about the film is that Fellini treats all his characters – waitresses, celebrities, pilgrims, musicians, prostitutes, journalists – with the same affection and compassion. There seems to be a genuine interest in each character’s inner life, however briefly they appear on screen. Rome in La Dolce Vita is a joyful city and a place that will mess with one’s heart, sometimes literally. In one episode, Marcello’s father, who comes for a day visit to the city, is seen deflated and humiliated after a wild night that doesn’t end well. When he insists on going back alone, taking a taxi to the train station, Marcello tries to hold onto his hand, and then onto the open car window. A grown man trying to catch up with the moving car carrying his father away. It is one of the film’s saddest moments.



On my second night in Rome, I gave a reading from my second collection at the Keats Shelley House, situated on the Spanish Steps. It’s a book I find difficult to read from. The events some of the poems refer to are still too painful, and the poems I feel most close to are the ones I’m not able to read aloud. Even poems I think I can read safely, surprise me. Towards the end of the evening, I read a short poem and suddenly my voice started to shake. The audience was warm and welcoming – I couldn’t have asked for a better reception, but the reading was a reminder for me that ideally, I prefer my poems to stay on the page, away from my voice.

One of the things I love about a poem on the page is that it retains its rhythm and musicality even when read in silence. In a sense, a poem on a page is truly free from the writer’s voice, as the words carry no accent. That is, no accent apart from the reader’s. There is something quite special in that: a work of art that allows each reader to ever-so-slightly change the way it is pronounced. Most of the people in the audience were British or American expats living in Rome. In the Q&A session, I talked about the connection I find between language and longing; how it seems to me that for Dante, writing in the vernacular Florentine while in exile was a way of carrying Florence with him, as if reconstructing the city with words.



The tour guide at the Vatican seemed a bit lost. Something in his attitude gave the impression that he was not himself. He kept pulling his sleeve to look for the time, except he must have forgotten to put on his watch. November should be the quiet season, he apologised, as he led us through waves of fellow visitors. More a traffic guide than a tour guide, he kept signalling to keep walking. I knew he must know the direction, and yet his manner of walking, often pausing abruptly and looking around, seemed lacking in confidence. Maybe he was just tired, or maybe, for whatever reason, he simply needed to be somewhere else. Still, there was something refreshing in having a guide who didn’t confuse knowing the direction with knowing where we were all heading, especially as we were getting closer and closer to the tour’s main destination.



The Sistine Chapel is a place of contradiction: at once intimate and out of reach. When I entered the chapel, my first impression was that it felt like stepping into an old friend’s home. It was cosy and small enough not to feel overwhelmed by it. Maybe it was the immediacy of the colours, as if they were painted this morning, or the strong sense of motion in each scene. In fact, as soon as I looked up at the Volta, it felt like watching an animated film. Everything seemed to contain motion, either happening or on the cusp of it: water and earth were still in the process of being separated; Adam, as usual, was just about to be created; the creation of the sun and the moon involved two images of God flying in opposite directions; the separation of light from darkness turned God into a dancer: his arms twisting in opposite directions to his legs.

In the English language, there is a clear connection between a strong sense of motion in art and the effect it might have on the observer: how often we simply say that we find something moving. The more I engage with different forms of art, the more I realise that the kind I am most affected by is the one that contains a strong, unmissable sense of motion: the sort of movement that takes you with it in complex and unexpected directions, whether in literature, music, theatre or visual art; the sort of movement that demands you to be fully involved while engaging with it, and as a result your thoughts can’t rest or stand still, not even for a split second, because they themselves have to keep moving with the piece.

And yet with all the intimacy and immediacy of the Sistine Chapel, the beauty of it all remains completely out of reach. It is physically inaccessible due to the simple fact that it is so painful to twist your neck and look properly at the art for a long enough time. But it is also out of reach mentally, precisely because everything seems to be constantly moving. Maybe this is what all great art does: touches you most deeply while at the same time leaving you behind, forever trying to catch up with it.



Man creates God in his mind, who in turn creates man in his image. Except, in the Sistine Chapel, it seems that Michelangelo brought another character to the equation: the artist. And the artist seemed to have had quite a lot of fun painting all these (mainly) naked male figures in all their extravagant beauty, glory and flaws. In that sense, the experience of looking up at the Volta is rather wild.

The large frescoes on the surrounding walls, painted by the likes of Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli, depict numerous biblical figures, all fully dressed in what must be an eternally cold season: they are all covered in layers and long sleeves. But once you look up towards the Volta, or towards the altar’s Last Judgment, you get the impression that as soon as Michelangelo arrived at the scene, all characters – sinners, angels, saints – received an order to remove all their clothes.

The most prominent detail staring at you when you look at the fresco entitled ‘The creation of the Sun, the Moon, and the plants’ is, in fact, the bare bottom of none other than God. I had to double check it later, on the Vatican website, just to make sure that I hadn’t missed something. The sun and the moon are drawn as flat circles. The bottom, by contrast, is fully proportioned as a three-dimensional object, as if sculpted. There is something about the angle of it, that makes it the most noticeable element in this fresco, staring at you intently from above. No wonder you strained your back, a friend noted when I shared this with her, back home, in great detail and excitement.

When La Dolce Vita arrived on the cinema screens of Rome in 1960, some of its scenes were considered too shocking, too scandalous for public screening. The film was censored in Italy for a while, and in several other countries. As I looked at the Volta I couldn’t not wonder – really? Too scandalous, here, in this city, where Michelangelo’s art has not only existed for centuries but in the most sacred of places?



La Dolce Vita opens with two helicopters presiding over the vast sky of Rome. The first helicopter carries an enormous statue of Jesus raising his huge arms up in the air as if dominating the entire city. The statue soars above the ancient Roman aqueduct, the newly built apartment blocks, the builders on construction sites waving at it, the children running in the streets trying to catch a glimpse of it all as the helicopter makes its way towards St Peter’s Basilica.

The second helicopter carries the journalists covering the story: Marcello and his fellow photographer, Paparazzo, when they take a quick detour to hover above an open roof where a group of four women happen to be sunbathing. As the women cry in excitement, asking the journalists where the statue is heading to, Marcello tries to get one of the women’s phone number, even though she can hardly hear his voice through the beating propeller noise. One helicopter carries a story; the other carries the most easily distracted storytellers. It is one of the most visually striking and joyful opening scenes I have ever seen in films.



The only Michelangelo work in the Sistine Chapel that doesn’t demand physical effort to look at is the Last Judgment. Which meant that I ended up looking at it for the majority of the time. Or, rather, trying to avoid it. The piece covers the entire altar wall and has full command on the viewer. It is a chilling experience. Maybe that’s why I kept trying to look up, hoping to escape its magnitude. Strikingly, the portrayal of Jesus in the Last Judgment looks incredibly similar to that of Adam on the Volta: a sort of formidable, athletic Greek god.

There were so many of us inside the Sistine Chapel, it felt as if I was on the London Tube in the rush hour on a Monday morning. We were all quiet, standing and breathing much too close to one another, some of us coughing, while others looked around, trying to take it all in. I looked at the altar wall and at the people around me, and I realised why I needed to be in that place as part of this mass wave of fellow flawed human beings. Suddenly, trying to make my way in this city full of visitors and tourists made complete sense.

The Last Judgment portrays all human forms and behaviours: their beauty, their cruelty, their utter pointlessness. Yes, it also portrays angels, but they are featured without wings, so that they look rather down to earth even when floating. The religious symbols are present, but they are muted – you really need to remind yourself that the Olympic hero commanding it all like some formidable athlete/orchestra director/fearsome warrior at the centre of the piece is, in fact, Jesus – which means, no matter your religious background, if any, you are bound to find your reflection somewhere on that wall. It might feel inclusive, but not necessarily in the way you wished it to be. There were no selfies allowed in the space, but there was no need to. We were all standing in front of our own making, our own undoing.



Man creates God in his mind, who in turn creates man in his image. It happens at this very moment on the Sistine Chapel Volta: a perpetual form of creation. It is tempting to compare this circular process to the relationship between art and observer: to say that by engaging with the frescoes, the viewer brings them to life. That the characters on the Volta start moving as soon as you try to catch them with your eyes. That a great poem only takes form once a sensitive reader interacts with it. That all art is, essentially, a pact of communication. I can see why this argument is appealing, because it makes art inclusive: it involves the observer as an equally essential part. Except I don’t find it very convincing. Great art is there, I believe, completely independent of a viewer. Just as God, for a believer, exists independently of worship. The experience of being at the Sistine Chapel felt to me like being in a chapel that worships human creation. A highly and deeply spiritual pilgrimage for believers in Art.



On the way back to the convent I lost my way. I had to walk slowly because of the pain in my back, and it affected my orientation. I felt overwhelmed by a sense of grief: I didn’t want to leave the Sistine Chapel. But I was also confused by the non-religious aspect of it all. Is it really a place worshipping Art rather than God, or is it just me, and my tendency to enter the most sacred of places, and simply not notice the obvious signs from every direction? Even at the convent, I only noticed the wooden cross above my bed after I took a picture of my room, sent it to my childhood friend because I wanted to show her the wool blanket that reminded me so much of the ones we used to have, and she texted back, commenting on the cross with a laugh-cry emoji.

I had no idea where I was, so I stopped at an empty café and ordered the last sandwich left. I sat by the window and studied the city outside. Why am I so indifferent to religious signalling? Is it simply because of the way I was brought up? Is it because the way I was taught the Hebrew Bible in school: as literature rather than a religious text; of the first books of Genesis as stories primarily about language, the acquisition of knowledge through words, the naming and renaming of things? I knew it must be more complicated than that. I looked at the city outside and thought of the biblical stories, the ones pulsing from every corner of the Sistine Chapel, the ones I hated studying at school but now felt so grateful to have easy access to in the original language, to be able to make connections between the words and their reflections on the Volta.



That night, my third and final night in Rome, I woke up at 1am with a horrible reaction to food poisoning. I spent the next five hours in the bathroom looking in the exact opposite direction to that of the Volta. A day that started with the highest level of spirituality ended with a reminder of the human body’s conclusive mortality. My body was shaking for several hours and I repeatedly had to bend down, looking towards the abyss, the pain in my back intensifying.

In the morning, I tried to walk slowly out of my room. I looked for the nuns to ask if they would let me stay for a bit longer past check-out time. But I couldn’t find anyone. I was worried I would miss the flight, but I was too weak to leave. It was the only time during the trip I wished I could speak in English. I had no idea how to say food poisoning in Italian even if I found someone I could speak to. I went back to my room and started studying, slowly learning how to say: Non mi sento bene. Credo di aver avuto un’intossicazione alimentare. As I practiced the sentence several times, repeating it to myself until I felt I could use it, it was a small reminder of what languages do to me: bring relief. I was weak and tired, but it still felt joyful, learning these new words, contemplating on their sounds and meanings.



La Dolce Vita is three hours long. When the film ends, most of the characters are in a much worse place, some in a state of complete despair, others have faced tragedy. As a viewer, you long for a few of them to find a bit of solace, some peace, but the film allows none of that. Many of the characters have left the city earlier on. The leading actress – the first woman on the first day of creation – has completely disappeared. When we last see her, she’s hit by her drunken partner as Marcello attempts to leave the scene. It is one of the few violent episodes that take place on camera rather than offstage and it is shattering. If Marcello seems a bit careless in the earlier scenes, by the end of the film he is completely indifferent. There is something truly heartbreaking about it: a protagonist who no longer cares about anything. Even the streets of Rome seem to have given up on the leading characters as the film leaves Marcello and his company on the shore, as if stranded by the sea.



Two weeks after my trip to Rome, I still couldn’t walk properly. I had never strained my back before – not like this – and I found the pain and impact of it on my movement shocking. Everything was painful, even when I attempted to walk a few steps. Still, there was something about the pain that served as a constant reminder of what caused it.

I used to think that great art should feel effortless in its reception even if it has taken considerable effort to create. But increasingly I realise that if a certain art piece took substantial time and labour to bring into life, it should demand a similar kind of commitment from the viewer. Often all it means is that you have to revisit a piece again and again until you begin to understand some of it. A long, intricate film requires several viewings. A complex book requires reading and rereading, in the original language if possible, even if it takes years. A multi-layered play requires going back to the script, and then rewatching how it takes form on the stage, ideally in different productions. An art piece that required enormous physical sacrifice to make, perhaps asks the viewer, rightly so, to share a small part of that burden while looking at it, to keep sharing and carrying its pleasure and pain, even centuries later.



Some cities, as soon as you see them for the first time, you fall in love with them. They have a visual and sonic impact on you which is hard to explain. It happened to me in London, when I took the tube from Heathrow, went out for a short look at Piccadilly Circus and was completely taken by the sheer magnitude and chaos of it all. It happened to me in Paris, as soon as I walked out of Gare du Nord and heard French language taking shape in every form and direction around me. It didn’t happen to me in Rome. Rome, by contrast, felt overwhelming. In strange ways, it reminded me of my childhood. The biblical stories, the austerity of the convent, the shouts in the streets, the cars ignoring pedestrians, and the sun, which even in November was too strong for me. Even the things that didn’t mean to offend, still upset me. Like the tall pine trees. They were too familiar, stretching their rebellious crowns against the monotonous sky, and I struggled with their familiarity.

Only days later, when I was back in the comforting cold, grey weather of the UK, I felt an aching pain, a kind of unexplained yearning, which grew stronger as the days turned shorter. Suddenly I knew I’d have to go back to this city. For days I carried the streets and alleys of Rome on my strained back. I think it is a different kind of falling in love with a place.

It was such a short visit, there were only two places I could spend significant time in, and they seemed to have an opposite approach to language. The first, a bookshop, carried words in every corner and in several languages. The second place had only pictures in it, and yet I couldn’t stop making connections between the images floating above me and the invisible words igniting each scene. It is as if the city seemed to tell me: you thought you knew everything about language, but you have no idea how complex it is. You thought you knew everything about pain. You need to come back, walk in my streets, listen to my words as they wrestle and take form around you. You’ve only just begun to understand me.