The throbbing in my right big toe is a sharp, jagged reminder that I am currently occupying a physical body in space, specifically on the Via della Lungaretta, and not just floating in the digital ether. I stubbed it against a protruding piece of 2007-year-old basalt while trying to sidestep a tourist who had stopped dead in their tracks to check a notification. It’s a dull, rhythmic ache that punctuates every step, a biological metronome for my growing resentment. Around me, the 7 members of our group are doing the exact thing I promised myself we wouldn’t do. We are standing in the middle of one of the most storied neighborhoods in Rome, surrounded by the scent of roasting garlic and the golden hum of a late Italian afternoon, and every single one of them is staring at a 5.7-inch screen. We’ve been standing here for 17 minutes. The mission? Finding a place to eat. Not just any place, mind you. Not the warm, inviting trattoria three steps to our left where an old man is currently laughing into a glass of red wine. No, we are looking for the ‘best’ place, as defined by a collective of 47 strangers who wrote reviews three years ago while they were probably grumpy from a long flight.
I spend my working life as a court interpreter, a job that requires me to live in the razor-thin gap between what is said and what is meant. I