Page 37 - Issue 56
P. 37
ELITE VOL.1, Issue 56, june 2023
ELITE
VOL.1, Issue 56, june 2023
Before I left the grounds, I visited the Struck by the heat and lack of air
Villa of the Birds. It was supposed one circulation, I eventually leave the birds
of originally three on the site. behind, bid the cats goodbye, and sit
However, if I had not insisted on on a park bench under the shade of a
scouting each corner of the place, I tree. In my heart, I selfishly hope no
would have likely missed it, mistaken one else “rediscovers” this place or the
it for an administrative location or an garden that surrounds it. I hope it
abandoned museum. Inside it, I saw remains a time-capsule, frozen and
pieces of recovered roman mosaics, untouchable — just as I hope each
one depicting birds after which the year for Alexandria itself to be.
villa was named.
As you have likely inferred by now,
my view of Alexandria is, to
understate it, a privileged one. It is a
protected perspective, a sheltered one,
where a beautiful, idealistic life on the
shore is captured as quickly as
lightening in a bottle. A picture-
perfect life for my frame, and I get to
ignore whatever gets left outside it.
For millions, this has become
Likely, those mosaics were once impossible to do. Even for me, it has
perfectly preserved. In a sense, they gotten harder to dismiss the effects of
still are by being in their abandoned either neglect or misplaced attention
state, protected from our material with the passing of each year. Yet,
harm by each of the two sleeping cats somehow, each time I revisit
at the gates of the villa. I wish then, Alexander’s namesake, I find
even if fruitlessly, that any change to something new to appreciate, like the
them would mean less dirt or more steadily Roman Amphitheater, that
maintenance and nothing else. makes the whole trip worthwhile and
the city still worth fighting for.
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