My civilizations class was tramping through ruins for the umpteenth time. Today we were in Tivioli, at the Villa Adriana, the emperor Hadrian's summer Villa turned permanent residence. He had this giant manmade pond built outside of the triclinium (dining room, basically) that had columns and arches and statues surrounding it, a few of which remain. A lot of times I find ruins like this eerie, especially when mostly bereft of tourists. They seem so dead and sterile; hard like the marble and brick they're constructed of. But today, beside that pond, there was a young turtle sunning himself and warily watching a class of 28 parade past his favorite spot. The juxtaposition of color against white marble, life against sterility, the new against the ancient, was striking. It made the enormity of the meaning of 2,000 years really hit me, and I haven't been able to shake a sort of weighty feeling about it ever since. That many years does a lot to make my own silly life seem like less than a speck of dust in the sands of time. Italy is certainly good at giving me a big doses of perspective.
(Again, not my picture.)
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