Pompeii is a beautiful city.  You can see why people would want to live there-- surrounded by mountains, rolling hills, lush and green.  Little did they know they were living below a deadly and monstrous mountain, one Mt. Vesuvius that would fill the sky with fire and ash and completely bury the city, not to be discovered for another 1700 years.

Pompeii was a thriving, fully functional, civilized town founded 500 years BC.  There were substantial homes with intricate mosaic tile floors, and brightly painted frescoed walls.  There were theatres, and outdoor stadiums, gymnasiums and bathhouses.  They had a developed judicial system, with government buildings and structure, commerce buildings, marketplaces.  There were places to drink and socialize.  There were temples of worship, honoring pre-Christianity dieties like the o-mighty-Isis, and Jupiter, and Apollo.  There was even a brothel.  This was easy to find, as it was marked by the large sculpted phallus at the entrance.  The walls featured paintings of people in various sexual positions and exploits, possibly as a suggestion of what to try, or perhaps advertisement of services provided.  The cost of an evening at the brothel was 2 asses, the equivalent of a bottle of wine.  And this was the cheapest in the entire Roman Empire.

These people knew about trauma and drama.  They had frequent earthquakes, and Vesuvius had erupted before.  These disasters were followed by periods of lawlessness and chaos, starvation and disease.  But they still would re-build, and start again.  And stay.  Despite knowing the dangers.

In 79AD the mountain exploded and buried the enitre city.  What's left is this city of ruins, broken columns, roofless buildings, partially preserved paintings, and lava encrusted corpses caught in horrified poses of panic and terror.  And dogs.  There are hundreds of stray, dusty, raggedy dogs wandering around these ruins, mostly lazily sleeping in the heat, not bothering anyone.  Just there.  Where did they come from?  Direct descendants of the original dogs of Pompeii?   An entire city obliterated.  And tromped on by millions of tourists like me yearly, wondering about their existence. 

If these people knew this, would they have moved?  While I walked the miles of streets in Pompeii, I kept thinking about California.  They know about Earthquakes and Faults, Fires.   The whole state could fall off into the ocean.  Does this keep people from living there?  and from building and building large?  No.  What is it-- the sense that we are invincible?  That it won't happen to us?  I am pretty sure I am not going to fall into the ocean with my house.  And I think I won't get struck by lightning.  I am pretty certain I won't be swept away in a tsunami, or buried under molten lava. 

I started feeling a little fatalistic walking through partial archways and seeing Mt. Vesuvius looming in the distance.  Started thinking about the bad things that could happen to me or my family.  Bad shit happens to people all of the time.  People deal with tragedy and crisis on a daily basis.  Noone is exempt.  I was reminded of life's fragility and uncertainty.  It'd be easy to shrink up and live really small and scared.  Or the flip side to this is to and to remember to not get caught up in trying to control the uncontrollables in life and a reminder to be appreciative of the exceptional life I have.  And to not build a house in the shadow of a volcano.