Anna's Advice

It's late, and I just posted a free-association riff on a friend's Facebook thread and now realize it's really best that I hit the hay. I was reminded of the one time I saw Fellini's Roma, which has a wonderful scene in which the narrator, in European journalist mode, hurries through the dark streets to catch Anna Magnani just as she's about to close her door and disappear. He's burning to ask her a question, and if memory serves, which it often doesn't, the question is whether she does not, in herself, embody Rome, whether she's not the melding of vestal virgin and whore that is the eternal city. The mike is extended for her reply.

And she gives the narrator a affectionate, tolerant look. "It's late, Federi," she says. "Go home. Go to bed." And so, like Samuel Pepys, shall I. Good night, my dears.