my colosseum.
Aug. 17th, 2011 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
duccioLook what I found. I was unpacking a box downstairs and found my Colosseum. I bought it in the Foro Romano a long time ago when I was there - some tourist wagon, cost a few thousand Lira. When I got home, I glued some felt on the bottom, and it floated around from table to table unsure of it's place.
Somebody used it as an ashtray once; I noticed the butts in there after they had left. I was a little miffed about another smoking doofus trashing my environment in such a thoughtless way, but later I sort of liked the idea of all that disrespect going on in my Colosseum - because really, that was the reason d'etre for the building from it's beginning. I began giving it to my smoker friends to stub out their fag ends. I'd sit and watch like a ticket holder. They would use the tall part (the low cost bleacher seats) to grind out the burning end, and then leave the spent broken stub in the cavea for me to deal with.
The Colosseum, after it's 400 year "useful life" was eventually abandoned and became an overgrown wilderness, and much later was used as a stone quarry and source of lime for plaster, and the metal that held the blocks together was chopped out of the facade. From enthusiastic destroyer of lives, it was now become progressively destroyed itself, cannibalized by Rome, death by a thousand cuts, until some Pope or other in the Renaissance dictated that the destruction stop by declaring the site a place of Christian martyrdom. (There is some doubt about that - maybe an example of early Holocaust denier types even though there are many written eyewitness accounts of the shows there that have come down to us.) Musollini excavated it during the fascist period realizing it's infamous reputation would serve to glorify his ambitions.
I like this burned-out little nick-nack. I put the little shell there on the cutting block, and you know, if you put it to your ear, you can hear the tiny roar of the mini-human crowd urging the lions and killers on as they tear apart hapless Others.
Somebody used it as an ashtray once; I noticed the butts in there after they had left. I was a little miffed about another smoking doofus trashing my environment in such a thoughtless way, but later I sort of liked the idea of all that disrespect going on in my Colosseum - because really, that was the reason d'etre for the building from it's beginning. I began giving it to my smoker friends to stub out their fag ends. I'd sit and watch like a ticket holder. They would use the tall part (the low cost bleacher seats) to grind out the burning end, and then leave the spent broken stub in the cavea for me to deal with.
The Colosseum, after it's 400 year "useful life" was eventually abandoned and became an overgrown wilderness, and much later was used as a stone quarry and source of lime for plaster, and the metal that held the blocks together was chopped out of the facade. From enthusiastic destroyer of lives, it was now become progressively destroyed itself, cannibalized by Rome, death by a thousand cuts, until some Pope or other in the Renaissance dictated that the destruction stop by declaring the site a place of Christian martyrdom. (There is some doubt about that - maybe an example of early Holocaust denier types even though there are many written eyewitness accounts of the shows there that have come down to us.) Musollini excavated it during the fascist period realizing it's infamous reputation would serve to glorify his ambitions.
I like this burned-out little nick-nack. I put the little shell there on the cutting block, and you know, if you put it to your ear, you can hear the tiny roar of the mini-human crowd urging the lions and killers on as they tear apart hapless Others.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-17 11:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-17 11:50 pm (UTC)Maybe we could pit your "friends" against mine - sell tickets: get rich quick scheme.
You know, I was sure You would understand.
Thanks for the comment.