Hadrian's Library

 

I am sitting on a bench at the ruins of Hadrian’s library and try to recall Marguerite Yourcenar’s book on the enlightened Emperor while I look at the neatly arranged fragments of marble, carefully placed in stacks by the archeological team, and think of how, or why to film them.

 

Untitled from Tim Blue on Vimeo.

The sight of tourists crawling this labyrinth of narrow and crooked streets, their paths trodden over millennia of people’s lives who have gone before cannot help but evoke meditations on Time. How is it spent, divided and measured? Upon what qualifications is it valued? Remembering one simple afternoon in the company of friends while I am walking alone through the ruined efforts of entire lifetimes, indeed, civilizations.

Where are the Emperor’s books now? Was his impressive structure erected upon the backs of slaves? How impressive will our efforts, our destruction be three thousand years from now? These are also questions asked by the architect of the Third Reich, Albert Speer.   In Monastaraki  square, if you sit long enough, you can see the workings of the network of illegal pedlers. The Roma and their children go from person to person, group to group, playing accordian. The East Indians sell small toys, automatic needle threaders, and pocket sized trinkets. The Africans sell the larger items such as DVDs, counterfeit designer handbags, arrays of t-shirts and shoes.  Between all of them there is communication when the cops are near, and the speed with which they vanish is related to the amount of their inventory, and perhaps the value of what might be confiscated. We sat for awhile on a marble bench that served also as a wall to the excavated church from the 1400s, which was sunken a bit, making the wall a convenient place for thieves to crawl unseen, from where they might grab the camera or back pack of the unsuspecting tourist. It was at this wall that I filmed this footage of the sellers from Bangladesh.     The sight of them shooting these lighted helicopters into the clear night sky got me thinking about the Gnostics, those early christian period heretics who considered all of God's creation, and indeed God himself to be a hostile prison warden, and the world his prison.   While I was in Athens Bin Laden was killed. The jubilant faces of Americans shown on the news made me ashamed to be a human being. The on going wars in the name of religion, in the name of civilization seemed to reinforce the Gnostic theologies. I read a news story of a ship of refugees from Libya whose ship went adrift. They came across an aircraft carrier most likely on a bombing mission to the very place they had fled from. Some held up their starving infants for the hope of help. The ship and jets passed them and denies seeing the troubled boat. On the same day there ran a story about the very first air raid, done in 1911, by an Italian pilot who dropped his bombs from the plane by hand on an encampment made of Arab tents, also in Libya.   These were the thoughts behind making this small film. The week I was in Athens also marked the year anniversary since the death of my friend, Callie Angel. It is to her spirit and memory I make this, dedicate this, whatever you wish to call such an ephemeral thing.