Garden of fugitives
Ani Tascian is a VONA/Voices alum and recent Vermont Studio Resident, she has her MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary's College of California (2015). You can find her work at Raising Mothers, Foliate Literary Review, Citron Review, Bird’s Thumb and others.
Published 08/02/17
Published 08/02/17
1: running away or intending flight
a fugitive slave
The day before our trip to Pompeii in Italy, a van pummeled purposefully into pedestrians in Barcelona on tourist-filled Las Ramblas. Three years earlier, we walked along the same cobblestones in Spain; our son the same age then as one of the children killed. And still, that very evening in Italy, walking distance from our hotel in Sorrento, the Piazza Central brims with locals, tourists and strollers as if nothing happened.
2: moving from place to place:
the fugitive clouds of the sky
—K. K. Darrow
The lure of the old, preserved appealed to me. Excavating and finding treasures and clues to a life well-lived. History as alchemy for the present. Visiting Pompeii was a fantasy of golden urns, hand-chiseled tools, jeweled earrings missing their mates and ornate broken plates. My own parents were immigrants to the U.S., their treasures, my inheritance, left in other lands.
*
Pompeiians ate takeout almost exclusively, another symbol of their wealth. Pompeiian houses didn't have kitchens, fast food was invented here, not in the United States with McDonald’s, our Italian guide said, his attempt at humor geared toward tips he explained. As the group walked in the heat and humidity, our feet dusty like the slaves that wove through the streets on errands to the bakery, it was not hard to imagine a life here-- a place like an ancient America.
3a: being of short duration
the journalist … is concerned only with the fugitive moment
—A. L. Guerard
They laid behind a plexiglas case near where they died. Frozen. Their bodies left a vacuum behind, shaped in final moments that were filled with plaster. Some laid as if asleep. Others grimaced horribly. A dog with a thick studded collar, writhed on his back, a thick impression of a collar still around its neck. The famous plaster castes of Pompeii are placed around the ancient, frozen city almost haphazardly. Some near the homes they were found in. The ones behind the glass displayed poetically in an area called the Garden of Fugitives. A desperate impression of escape.
B: difficult to grasp or retain:
thought is clear or muddy, graspable or fugitive
—J. M. Barzun
I studied the faces of The Fugitives, we all did.
"He looks like he's crying for help," the women behind me said. I kept coming back to this figure, leaning on is right arm, mouth gaping, his last gasp destroying the narrative that everyone was asleep when gases and volcanic ash laid neatly on top of the city. I was implausibly afraid for him, for all of them, thousands of years after the fact, walking back and forth, looking at each face, trying to fathom what thoughts impending disaster could bring.
I didn't dream of Pompeii in its actuality, as a real place. Pompeii was a place that didn't need me to exist. But I needed Pompeii to exist. But the past was important to me. Without it, the present made no sense. And Vesuvius was presently active. One good eruption and Pompeii could disappear again.
: likely to evaporate, deteriorate, change, fade, or disappear
dyed with fugitive colors
And yet, the guide said, it was the lead in the water pipes that finally brought the Roman Civilization down, making people sick, dying before reaching their forties. Not Vesuvius at all. This place was doomed with or without the volcano, the past secured in white plaster. Here, white was color of fugitives.
4: being of transient (see 1 1) interest
fugitive essays
We are heading into dark, dark times, our guide continued, the lilt of his Italian accent defying the seriousness of his words, referencing the attack in Barcelona. The group looked at him stone-faced, Mount Vesuvius a shadow. Even with the black clouds of the eruption, thousands of Pompeiians stayed behind to protect their houses and their gold.
After tipping the tour guide, we were free to roam. Running my hands against the rough stone walls, I felt what could be preserved a thousand years later. My sandals were dirty and my feet brown with dust by the time I arrived at the garden wall where fugitives and their children, ran for their lives. Before they died, they were alive in a fruit orchard.
a fugitive slave
The day before our trip to Pompeii in Italy, a van pummeled purposefully into pedestrians in Barcelona on tourist-filled Las Ramblas. Three years earlier, we walked along the same cobblestones in Spain; our son the same age then as one of the children killed. And still, that very evening in Italy, walking distance from our hotel in Sorrento, the Piazza Central brims with locals, tourists and strollers as if nothing happened.
2: moving from place to place:
the fugitive clouds of the sky
—K. K. Darrow
The lure of the old, preserved appealed to me. Excavating and finding treasures and clues to a life well-lived. History as alchemy for the present. Visiting Pompeii was a fantasy of golden urns, hand-chiseled tools, jeweled earrings missing their mates and ornate broken plates. My own parents were immigrants to the U.S., their treasures, my inheritance, left in other lands.
*
Pompeiians ate takeout almost exclusively, another symbol of their wealth. Pompeiian houses didn't have kitchens, fast food was invented here, not in the United States with McDonald’s, our Italian guide said, his attempt at humor geared toward tips he explained. As the group walked in the heat and humidity, our feet dusty like the slaves that wove through the streets on errands to the bakery, it was not hard to imagine a life here-- a place like an ancient America.
3a: being of short duration
the journalist … is concerned only with the fugitive moment
—A. L. Guerard
They laid behind a plexiglas case near where they died. Frozen. Their bodies left a vacuum behind, shaped in final moments that were filled with plaster. Some laid as if asleep. Others grimaced horribly. A dog with a thick studded collar, writhed on his back, a thick impression of a collar still around its neck. The famous plaster castes of Pompeii are placed around the ancient, frozen city almost haphazardly. Some near the homes they were found in. The ones behind the glass displayed poetically in an area called the Garden of Fugitives. A desperate impression of escape.
B: difficult to grasp or retain:
thought is clear or muddy, graspable or fugitive
—J. M. Barzun
I studied the faces of The Fugitives, we all did.
"He looks like he's crying for help," the women behind me said. I kept coming back to this figure, leaning on is right arm, mouth gaping, his last gasp destroying the narrative that everyone was asleep when gases and volcanic ash laid neatly on top of the city. I was implausibly afraid for him, for all of them, thousands of years after the fact, walking back and forth, looking at each face, trying to fathom what thoughts impending disaster could bring.
I didn't dream of Pompeii in its actuality, as a real place. Pompeii was a place that didn't need me to exist. But I needed Pompeii to exist. But the past was important to me. Without it, the present made no sense. And Vesuvius was presently active. One good eruption and Pompeii could disappear again.
: likely to evaporate, deteriorate, change, fade, or disappear
dyed with fugitive colors
And yet, the guide said, it was the lead in the water pipes that finally brought the Roman Civilization down, making people sick, dying before reaching their forties. Not Vesuvius at all. This place was doomed with or without the volcano, the past secured in white plaster. Here, white was color of fugitives.
4: being of transient (see 1 1) interest
fugitive essays
We are heading into dark, dark times, our guide continued, the lilt of his Italian accent defying the seriousness of his words, referencing the attack in Barcelona. The group looked at him stone-faced, Mount Vesuvius a shadow. Even with the black clouds of the eruption, thousands of Pompeiians stayed behind to protect their houses and their gold.
After tipping the tour guide, we were free to roam. Running my hands against the rough stone walls, I felt what could be preserved a thousand years later. My sandals were dirty and my feet brown with dust by the time I arrived at the garden wall where fugitives and their children, ran for their lives. Before they died, they were alive in a fruit orchard.