I was back down around Rome in recent days. The city where I grew up. The city where my first travels took place, across history and location. A city where the ebbs and flows that make up the emotional cartography of psycho-geography are more apparent than elsewhere. Perhaps because some paths have been there for millennia, worn down in some cases to invisible meaning.

There are many songlines that could be sang about Rome and its environs. Today I sing in a croaky voice about the Super Strada 601 - the coastal highway that runs from Ostia to Anzio. A road I've loved since driving along it back in the mid-nineties in winter at night, and it was empty aside from the odd stray dog, and the solitary light in silent buildings, and the wind blowing sand across the tarmac in the shape of a question mark.

This is a journey that starts close to where Pasolini was murdered by rough trade.

This is an illustrated book that turns the pages on the architectural pastiche of the beach resorts that line Ostia's seafront.

This is a parable that gives you a glimpse of the president's beach, where politicians are kept in sun-drenched segregation.

This is a tattoo that twists and turns across the body of Capocotta, a free beach that has been Rome's longest running temporary autonomous zone: from Allen Ginsberg readings to all-day parties among the dunes.

This is a documentary that crosses in a straight line the illegally built buildings that make up Torvaianica, inhabited by holidaymakers and illegal immigrants and alleged mafia members.

This is a dream that ends at the hopes of surfers dreaming of ocean waves in front of the ruins of Nero's villa in Anzio.

This is a story that starts again in baseball-mania Nettuno, imported by the Americans during a landing in '44.

(The Tirreno: a run-down hotel along the 601. Image by the blogger)