Building on the Ruins
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist. I wasn’t operating with complete information, obviously. My idea of archaeology had a lot more to do with face-melting biblical relics and dodging traps in ancient temples than it did with sifting dirt in rural Italy in search of potsherds and rusty coins.
As late as my junior year of college I debated spending a summer on a dig outside of Corinth, Greece. Amherst College’s Classics department had an exchange program with field teams looking for eager young suckers willing to dig with a trencher for eight hours a day in 100-degree heat. Under some pressure from Mom and Dad, however, I opted to attend the GSB’s summer program instead. Here I am.
A dig is a layer cake of history. The process of excavation involves digging narrow trenches straight down through stratified layers of detritus. Each town on a site is built on the ruins of another town, on and on through millennia. Archaeologists recreate the evolution of a single place, from the vestiges of the first Stone Age settlers to those who were there only decades before. Archaeologists are the bridge between a mound of dirt and the teeming humanity that once lived, ate, worked, and loved there.
I think it was that link between the dry work of digging and the beating heart of human history that enticed me toward archaeology even after I knew that I wasn’t going to get to punch any Nazis in the face. As I’ve gotten older, I see the dig less as a tangible thing in my life and more as a metaphor for who I am, and the romantic relationships I’ve had. We are all the result of a lifetime of building on top of ruins.
Through these relationships, I have built, decayed, and layered a history of myself. They have affected and shaped me in ways without which I would be unrecognizable.
A woman I was with for years gave me the surety that I can build something lasting and real. A love who never loved me back left me an undying yearning that I am still trying to fulfill. One who just walked away reminded me that no city is eternal. And that first girl on the playground kindled the divine spark that still burns at the heart of all things.
In love, I see the individual embodiment of the course of empire. My first relationships were the mud huts built by primitive man just beginning to understand his potential in this world. As time has passed, the villages have grown stronger, the fulfillment of existence more meaningful and robust. Inevitably, however, no matter how marvelous the city or how high its walls, Attila the Hun marches in and lays waste to it. Amor delendus est. [1]
Yet, after some time, when the kudzu has enveloped the crumbling marble columns and the weeds are poking through the floors of hollowed palaces, the people return. They start slowly, dismantling the remains that their ancestors left behind. They pull blocks of stone from the old empire and use them to start anew. They deconstruct the history of their home, building with the ruined foundations left for them.
I’m not so different from those piles of dirt. Those strata of rubble that lie underneath me are the man I am. The cycle of creation, destruction, and rebirth is the filter and fiber of the blood coursing through me.
This life is not an easy one. It is a dance between our heartbreaks and the spiritual essence we derive from them. Through these declines and falls we create and define meaning in our lives. The seeds of creation are sown in the void of destruction, up and up and up. Until, one day, we find ourselves in a shining city upon a hill, resplendent atop the ruins.
[1] Love must be destroyed. See — Cato the Elder and Carthage.
