Beltane Garlic Moon
Ovid on the third phase: At times it is folly to hasten at other times, to delay. The wise do everything in its proper time.
Searching for Ovid. Gone now. 2000 years ago. An unhappy man, yet he went on, did not stop, wrote, lived.
Of course, his statue is here. He looks suitably serious, dignified, the man some Romanians take as their first national poet. But what of the man, not bronze?
If I limit myself to the Roman mosaic, the material objects in the museum, the remains of the wall across from Hotel Class, the ruins of the homes and the butcher shop, the promontory views from the high coastline overlooking the Pontus Euxinus, the Marea Negra; if I image Ovid carrying a small oil lamp to light his way and his night, drinking from the glass vessels in the museum, turning a cynical educated Roman eye towards depictions of gods and goddesses; getting water from the clay and lead pipes also on display, walking over those intricate mosaics while looking out at the sea, a slave stigiling off his sweat and dirt with the small curved tool I saw here, then I have begun to see him.
To populate this place in the very early 1st century a.c.e., to get the small things right and the people and the matters under consideration, I wonder how much that would take, how much research? A lot, I imagine. Still, it would be worth it, if the time was available. Why? Oh, for the same reason, evoking 2012 Bucresti is worth it. Because we’re strange creatures, but often the same and we can reach across time and space to be with each other. That’s a gift and it makes us more.
