Pompeii – The Light Behind the Story

A modern centaur sculpture evokes the powerful Roman presence layered into Pompeii

I didn’t know what to expect, except for what I had heard. Vast cities unearthed after centuries of stasis preserving the moment where life bowed down to death. A death of searing heat and suffocating ashes poured forth from the might mountain god Vesuvius.

The casts of the dead are preserved behind glass and bars in Pompeii

I had thought I would see more bodies preserved in the moment of futility. A sensationalized warning for all to see in the middle of cobbled and broken streets. It’s funny how the mind works. What I found instead were the many textures of life woven into a timeless tapestry.

Much of the lasting art of the lost cities depict hedonistic scenes

In these ancient cities, which began to form in the years before Christ, the endless tale of time is told. The struggle for the basic elements of life are encased within the mortared rock walls of crowded settlements only footsteps removed from vast halls revealing pillared windows to outer glories of wealth.

The themes of life remain unaltered; the patterns only woven with different threads.

There is a pathos that pervades these spaces, which extends beyond the death of the body. One cannot help but feel the struggle of man with the god-self.

It is nothing short of exhausting to walk the ruined roads of Pompeii. It’s a feat impossible to do in its entirety in one day. After awhile the step feels monotonous and insignificant, despite the many who tread with you. There is a feeling of isolation. Voids that will never be filled. Wonders only partially discovered and mysteries that will never be fully unveiled.

The five of us walked without a map or guide, yet it I was not surprised to find our path leading us to the Villa of Mysteries. Here the the gods overlap through time, and Roman influence is layered with Greek and Egyptian. Although I took just a few photos, many more can be found online. Instead, I found myself wrapped in the arms of the familiar for the short time we explored the villa, which sits quite removed from the central city of Pompeii. It is where I would have lingered, had I been alone. Instead, hunger called to all of us and we sought out a late lunch before we continued on.

The Roman Amphitheater of Pompeii predates the Colosseum in Rome by 100 years

“There are so many hills,” my husband remarked as he drove our jet-legged bodies down the highway from Rome towards Sorrento. There was the face turned outward, as though in warning. Harshly cut with chiseled lines furrowing brows guarding a pyramidal peak. The impulse to leap through the veil tangibly irresistible. We all saw them, even my mother-in-law, which surprised me a bit. Perhaps it should not have. We are not so crazy as we may seem, even to ourselves. We have just forgotten.

A view from the car. This mountain face looks tranquil lifted to the sky.

Everywhere I looked the earth rose in sometimes sharp, and sometimes gentle undulations, leading a pathway to the magnificent turquoise sea.

The roads of man wrap the body of the rocky Amalfi coast, but the breath-taking beauty belongs to the land and the sea.

In my sleep-deprived state, I found myself slipping beyond the familiar and into the hazy space of that magical realm too rarely ventured my our modern day minds. The hills called to me, and I followed their faces as our vehicle wizzed along. History records itself in these beings of slow time. And, more than anything else I read power. I was, after all, in the land of the Romans.

The magnificent remains of the Colosseum standing for nearly 2,000 years.

The mountains, though, hold a power that belongs not to man, but to Earth. We have been here long before you and will be long after…

The volcanic mountain, Vesuvius, watches over the crowded city of Naples which is built over cities buried by its fiery blood.

In the year 79 AD, more than 1,000 people, and countless animals, died from the eruption of Vesuvius, yet it is believe that the serpentine mountain whose mouth spouts forth deadly fire a few times each century, was greatly revered by those that fell to its mighty flames. A god of protection, perhaps, not so much of the people, but of the land. Now, below its summit, which last erupted in 1944, 2 million people live in its shadow as though they have forgotten the thousands of lives that it has taken during its reign of power.

The ghosts of Pompeii haunt the remains of their lost city. “We tried to hide here among the already dead” they whispered to me. The futility of their hold pulled my limbs through their layered graveyards.

I was surprised later in our trip, when we climbed its sides by car, then walked out to take in its vast energy, by how tranquil I felt. Almost as though I was being held in the arms of a lover.

Birds hover in the foreground of Vesuvius. Below, spring’s growth waves with the wind.

Yet eyes watched my trespassing footsteps, and those of the hundreds who joined us that day on the body of the mountain. Eyes belonging to inhuman forms beyond the grasp of our naive minds. Reminding me that I walked the body of a god, or perhaps more aptly put, goddess…