Sage Standing in the Fire

A soothing morning.  Soft overcast, short sleeve temperature, the air is clean and moist and cool, tiny ferns greening on my wall, and the earth is for a moment appeased by the downpour two nights ago after four months of relentless, scorching sun.

I was reading about life in Byzantium in 1000 a.d.  A perfect time, if you had money, for arts and culture and good living.  Safe from external threat, it was the greatest city in the world.  A dazzling place of shining stone, eastern inspired architecture, glittering mosaics.  No wonder Yeats held this as an ideal.  (Well, too many priests, maybe,)

I dreamt last night that I tried to warn a Byzantine family that it would all come crashing down in a or two hundred or so years, but I was unable to suggest a remedy or course of action.