In which I get buried alive

I spent the majority of this afternoon climbing down into ancient Etruscan tombs and then out again, an exercise that proved as thought provoking as it was sweat inducing. Imagine descending a narrow shaft of steep steps into shadow, feeling the temperature drop with each foot you put forward. The smell gets old, and musty. The stairs creak. At the bottom you fumble for a button that will illuminate the tomb with a faded yellow light, by which you see stone beds, empty of their bones, and frescoes in red and green. All over the walls and ceiling, the stories they tell contain hunters and pregnant leopardesses, dolphins and sodomizers. The men drink wine out of jugs as large as they, and the women dance naked to the tune of the lyre.  The tombs tell the story of a people obsessed with celebrating death as wildly as they celebrated life. 

Frescoes inside a tomb.

Above ground, the necropolis spreads as far as the eye can see. Standing on the hill, you can look past the sweet yellow flowers, see the city of the living sprawled out before you like a quilt, and then look over your shoulder to see the blue haze of the Mediterranean. The Etruscans afforded their dead quite a view.

I am obsessed with these yellow flowers. They smell like delicious and wonderful had a baby.

Ancient urns are so commonplace in this field that people use them as seats and ashtrays. At the Etruscan Museum, which used to be a cardinal’s home, there are so many sarcophogi they spill onto the stairs and along the hallways, each face different, a likeness of the owner inside.

Urn action.

What if we were not so afraid of death? What if, instead of rushing our dying to hospitals to be dealt with clinically among beeping boxes, instead of viewing death as some sort of unnatural atrocity, we were able to celebrate it together as the next great journey? I believe there is a lesson to be learned from the legacy of these buck-wild Etruscans. As I climbed out of the last tomb and into the blinding sun, I felt myself turn into flakes of ash, sail over the ridge on a gust of air, and join the beauty below.

Just gorgeous.

Tomorrow we leave for the Amalfi Coast, where everyone and their mother who has ever been to Italy has told me to go. We're staying in Sorrento and spending a day in Capri... Can't wait to report all the adventures : )

Live fearlessly, loved ones!