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Intermission: It’s been a while

For anybody who’s been waiting two months for me to get around to posting the next round of photos from our most recent European vacation, I apologize. Business school and a Powerbook crash (watch this space for details on both) have kept me from posting recently.

In lieu of something more personal, I post these thoughts from William Carlos Williams:

Danse Russe

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,–

if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,

I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,–

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

c. 1917

Pompeii Pt 2

The other really impressive thing about Pompeii was the sheer scale of some of the remaining buildings. One of the facilities was a big arena that included a swimming pool (now completely grassed over but still visible as a sloped depression in the earth).

The other amazing building was the amphitheatre, which is thought to be the oldest amphitheatre in the Roman Empire, predating the Colosseum. The entire structure, unlike the Colosseum, is intact (though many parts are grassed over), allowing you to see the symmetric shape of the facility.

We only spent an afternoon in Pompeii, far too short a time to see everything we wanted to see. But we had to drive on to Positano.