If you’ve ever traveled to Greece with The Examined Life or know someone who has, you will hear about our absolutely phenomenal and talented guide, Mara Kanari. She is the heart and soul of the Study Tour. During the 2024 Study Tour, one of our Greek Study Fellows, Julia Perlowski, was inspired by Mara’s love of her country and wrote the following poem:
“Condition: Ruined”
So wikipedia tells us is the status of the Acropolis and Eleusis…nomenclature for Greek sites upon which structures once were: solidly marbled, whole, upright and un-buttressed, glori- and wondr-ous.
These mastodon’s of integrity plundered, felled by outsiders on purpose, to be reclaimed and hastily re-purposed now sit broken, fallen, dis-membered and -abled.
Another entry tells us of Thessaloniki’s strong third century walls made weak in the first by Romans, through conquest, bringing peace to themselves (I wonder how calm the Macedonians felt).
And later, Turks…removing sections for a city breeze…so that today that wall crawls on its knees sky or seaward signaling its fractured past in Stoney Morse code…through decayed dentition…slow but ever steadfast.
Had Rome not been so perennially vandalous in an attempt to acquire even more of an empire that had already spread itself so thin, there may have been substantially more to their re-membered copies than fancy facades with cheap insides like the Boca botoxed, once young and outwardly beautiful, trying to cheat antiquity through the eye of a needle. Anyone who can see knows, neither those columns nor those faces hold up whatever the pose.
No matter who tried to re-do and erase, Greek integrity persists. Rome’s Midas touch disintegrates…turns great strength to nought. After THEIR meddling nothing stays in tact as it should or ought.
Going forward, let us consider the source of those ancient sites and these…(pedia is learning…wiki is haste. Here the ancient Greek is married to a modern quick-witted Hawaiian pace) so we may reclassify those Greek structures (incomparable however conquerable) as no longer condition: ruined but
“Condition: Remained”
© Julie Perlowski 2024