Due to poor wireless service on vacation the following was written at sea but published on land.
Before I met Husband, my world concept of mankind was divided into roughly two sections: ancient and modern. All the citizens of cultures past fit neatly under the umbrella of ‘ancient peoples’. I recall my junior high school project on Sumer and Mesopotamia, my mega-presentation with the giant three-dimensional map with little clay figures huddled along the river, and the memory is one of ancient civilizations filled with ancient peoples.
Then I married Husband and suddenly they all had distinct identities. Thanks to his passion for ruins and history, I came face to face with the preserved evidence of lost cultures. On our honeymoon, I stood awestruck in the middle of the Coliseum and later explored the streets of lava-coated Pompeii. Vacations to the Southwest had me inspecting petroglyphs on the walls of caves inhabited in another century by the Anasazi Indians.
In an attempt to appear worldly, I turned to Husband at one of our early ruin visits in Arizona and asked, “Who lived here before the Anasazi, the Incas?” He gave me a look of surprise and said, “The Incas were in Peru.” Oops. I recovered quickly. “Right, Peru. I meant the Mayans.” Now he looked at me like I was just having fun with him. “The Mayans were in Mexico,” he said, smiling to indicate he got my little joke. Oh, I’m a kidder all right.
Now we’re on a cruise to Mexico and Belize and the ancient peoples are back. We toured the remains of the walled city of Tulum in Playa Del Carmen, a ceremonial center of the ancient Mayan culture (note to self: M&M; Mayans=Mexico) and the same realization struck me on the rocky slopes of Tulum as it had in Mesa Verdi, Monument Valley, and the ruins of Ephesus in Turkey: ancient people may be dead but modern people are idiots. No matter where I look I see tourists in flip-flops.
Ancient people called this type of footwear ‘thongs’ but modern people reassigned that word to indicate friction to a different body part. Nevertheless, there is barely a ruin anywhere that is not on unforgiving terrain – rocky and hilly with shards of stone and gnarled whatever sticking up out of the ground – and everyone is prancing around in flip-flops. Asian couples are leaning against each other on steep slopes because they’re in flip-flops. Shirtless dudes from Laguna Beach are walking around going, “Wow, man, this place is frigging rocky” and picking stones from between their toes because they’re in flip-flops.
So I’m thinking, do people not realize they’re going to visit one of the wonders of the world? Do they look in a guidebook where it says Monument Valley and think maybe it’s a water park? Does a dad wake up one morning and say to his family, “Hey, let’s take a trip to the Grand Canyon! Does everyone have their flip-flops? Judy, help Kip find his flip-flops.” It’s like people are under the impression someone swept up after the Roman Empire. So they lurch around on rocks in beach shoes wondering how this ancient civilization met its demise. If they don’t knock all their brains out maybe they’ll ponder how we’ll meet ours.
Daughter’s Fotos spotlight Body Parts In Color from Hunter College Open Studios and HOWL! Art Festival in Tompkins Square Park
