Where the Tiber flows into the Mediterranean, I came to walk the beach on the foolish quest of meeting his ghost, or at least some tiny figment of that rancorous, violent cipher self whose painted visions had changed Western art.

A foolish, smelly, messy quest. Whatever Rome’s glory, its river today ends in a muddy marsh that seems to go on forever. To call the place where land meets sea at Ostia a beach is an insult to all proper beaches.

Still, I came. I walked. At the end of a day of unacceptably hot trudging, I returned to town, sweaty, my eyes aching from the sun. My little bright red rented Fiat, looking impudently perky, was still parked near the café where I had lunched.

I could hop in and, even with traffic, be back in Rome in an hour, have a late dinner, stroll the via Veneto, perhaps meet someone of interest.

Instead, I asked the café owner about lodging and was directed to a small hotel half a kilometer inland. There I spent a restless night with an air conditioner as shaky and uncertain as I was. I wish I could tell you I had an artfully ambiguous, shadowy dream, filled with vague hints of congruence—past, present, me him, us, them, something, some clue. I can’t, because I didn’t.

Next morning I had the café prepare a basket, with many bottles of water. I was determined to reach a spot far up the beach that I had heard about from a friend in Rome. A clump of trees, beyond which I was warned not to go: quicksand and impenetrable marsh everyone said.

As he handed me the basket, the café owner’s son and I exchanged glances. I was reminded that we were not all that far from the place where another visionary artist had met a violent end not too many years before. Just up the road, Pasolini had pursued one too many rough assignations, trading whatever pleasure may have come for final darkness.

No matter, I thought, eyeing the young man. Another day, perhaps.

Two hours later, I reached the point where I had turned back the day before. It was two o’clock when I saw the clump trees shimmering like a mirage and another thirty minutes before I reached them.

I was exhausted, frustrated, angry at myself, and a little afraid. Even if I started back immediately, I would walk the last kilometers before Ostia in the dark.

I sat in the welcome shade of the trees, looked again vainly at the sea, and opened the basket. On top of sandwiches, fruit, and water was a carefully arranged bunch of pansies.

I smiled, and looking forward to my late evening return to Ostia, ate and drank. Occasionally I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. Had he been here, Merisi (that was his real name; Caravaggio was only the village where he was born)? Had he walked this far, or run this far, trying to escape his pursuers? Because, just as his paintings had made rich and powerful friends, his violent temper had also made rich and powerful enemies. Very serious, even mysterious enemies, such as, especially, the quixotic Knights of Malta. The tension between these two sides of himself created a torque, a merciless twisting, which finally destroyed him before he was forty.

No. I had no sense that he had been here. Only mud, and a dirty, stinking bit of sea, threatening to boil under a relentless sun.

They say that, in moments of great, sudden fear, the remnants of hair down our back really do stand up, remembering those millions of years before we became human, when we had pelts and lived as animals. I had just finished a bottle of water and was putting the empty in the basket, pondering Merisi’s puzzling life, when I heard a loud rustling in the trees immediately behind me.

And I had the most peculiar sense that the hair on my back was standing up. Were there wild animals here, boars, wild pigs? I had no idea. Complete city person that I am, I also had no idea what to do, except, when I noticed I had stopped breathing, to start again. Shallow fast breaths were better than no breaths at all. Where my skin had been burning hot a moment before, I now felt a clammy coldness and I had to concentrate on not shivering.

No, please, I didn’t think I had encountered my sought-for ghost. Give me that much credit. I really thought I was about to be attacked and devoured by a wild and very hungry animal. Such are the insecurities of city people who go wandering off into the wilderness. The weapons of wit which I daily use to smite my own enemies very effectively would, I knew, be of little use faced with bloody, well-practiced tooth and claw.

Run? No, that would, I thought, only hasten the attack. Sit frozen. That seemed the best, the only choice. I could, I decided, safely move my eyes. My scan of the sorry scene in front of me produced no helpful information. All it did was imprint the situation indelibly: muddy sand, driftwood, bits of plastic, a Pepsi-cola can. Today, I can close my eyes and see the place with a clarity that no other memory comes close to. That moment of my greatest fear was the moment of greatest "currentness." My old yoga teacher in Santa Monica was always after me about living in the moment. Well, I had made it, I thought, and it wasn’t quite what I had expected.

The rustling came again, closer this time. Add now to my breathing problem and my plummeting skin temperature a pulse rate approaching fibrillation.

Still, I didn’t move.

Alligator? Do they have alligators in the Mediterranean? Egypt, the Nile, yes, Egypt has alligators. Jesus, was I about to be eaten by an Egyptian monster that had suffered an attack of wanderlust and swam across the Mediterranean for an Italian snack?

You—and even I—may laugh now, but at the time such a possibility was entirely too real.

Minutes passed. Or maybe it was years? Focused as I was, I could have reported to Maharandi-ji that any time element of any length could be easily superposed on any time element of other length. Minutes, hours, days? They all seemed the same.

Anyway, this timeless moment went on and on. And on.

But no more terrifying sound effects.

I finally realized that at some point I, or at least my body, had written the whole thing off as nonsense. I was breathing normally, I was hot and sweaty again.

In a move that surprised the agnostic in me, I cast my eyes heavenward, and turned around.

Yes. There was a creature there, standing, waiting for me to move. Tonio (I learned shortly), the café owner’s son, who, in the way of country folk, had tracked me for the whole day, no doubt following trails in the marsh known only to locals.

As for what then ensued, I will only say that on the beach at Ostia, to my great surprise, I rendered unto Caravaggio what was Caravaggio’s. What the world didn’t want him to have and may well have killed him because he had so much of it. Ten years in New York and I had given it a name, my secret name for these illegal, immoral, unnatural assignations which have been going on pleasurably since human time began and which will continue until human time ends: speeders’ love.