Just Another Tourist

How do whole civilizations cease to be? After centuries of prosperity? Despite numerous sacrifices? These walls, built of stone, flesh, and bones, erected to appease cruel gods, to secure their benevolence, outlived their architects. These empty eyes carved in stone silently scream: "We've seen things. Acts of kindness, acts of violence." Climb up the stairs; don't skip steps. Chop-chop! To the very summit. To the peak of evolution. To the apex of grandeur. Towards the setting sun, towards the rising moon. Towards your doom. There's a beautiful symmetry in pyramids. First go physiological needs, nothing shameful in them. Take the piss out of your neighbor. Next comes safety: don't skimp on better health insurance; don't talk to strangers; don't... Do love your friends, your family, your country. Live for your country; die for your country. Worship the right gods; be tolerant. Each construction is based on a solid foundation, strict rules, laws of nature. The strongest survives. A gun is deadlier than an atlatl. Progress is inevitable. Progress is needed. At what cost? Does it matter if one cruel ethnic group is replaced by another? one cruel god substituted for another? All that matters is that we remember our history; we learn from our mistakes. Or we don't. But maybe somebody does.

But maybe it matters not, too.

The state of the world is mercurial. Only our vices and virtues seem to stay unchanged and stable. Stable is for horses though. These petrified heads are looking at me, their faces express nothing but indifference or even disdain. Smile, I'm taking a picture. Another tourist with an overactive imagination.

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Written for Mackenzie Davis' Ekphrastic Challenge.

All rules were broken as a manifestation of writer's block. But I added a song.