January 13, 2000

We pretty much just traveled today. We stopped 3 places, and once for lunch. The first was in the town Paul landed at on his first journey. We stopped at an amphitheater and we got to go down inside (underneath) unlike the Colosseum. Next we stopped at Cumae, the "place of legends", with the sibyl's cave and stories of Aneas. A few of us climbed up to the "supposed" temple de Giove. I don't know why it's only "supposed", that's just what Gus said. It had more left to it than the temple to Apollo (which I didn't see much of because we ran out of time). Besides, the temple to Zeus was higher on the hill; we got a better view. Did they know in Augustus' time how much of their stories were true? So much gets lost with the passage of time. Maybe there were stories everyone knew that no one thought needed to be written down. It seems as if there are things that we know of as a culture that everyone had heard of, urban myths, historical half-truths, but it won't be clear later that we didn't actually believe them. I don't know; I'm not a sociologist. Is there such thing as a cultural consciousness?

Anyway, our third stop was at the American Memorial for W.W.II in Enzio. It's not the same thing as a graveyard, at least for me. A cemetery will just make me sad or a little spooked, but soldiers are different. Sadness is the same, these men died. But there is a combination of pride and respect as well. I want to march past with my back straight and at attention. They died fighting for others, and for themselves. I'm awed at their sacrifice, whether willing or not, and disturbed by the need for it. When will we learn peace? When it's too late and the world is destroyed by our petty hatreds? When we can no longer act, for fear of the repercussions? When our hand is stopped by a power beyond our own? When we each learn the hard way that one life is more valuable than 20,000 deaths? When we are free to choose, and choose wrongly? When we are free to choose and choose correctly?