Day IV- the Grand Theatre

What was, without any doubt at all, the most moving time of our day at Ephesus, was the time we spent toward the end. Some tourists/groups enter from the side we exited, and so come upon the great construction pretty much as the first thing in Ephesus. Maybe that leaves them sufficiently awestruck for the rest of the tour, or maybe it renders everything that follows less impressive, or both. We entered from the north end, and so, through statues and pillars and temples and inscriptions and stunning restorations, came to the very end.
The Grand Theatre took us like a sandstorm would a desert nomad. It entered our view, then our thought and made its way inevitably but movingly, to our emotions. It might just be rock and rock, but in it lies the ambitious grandeur of people who did not know the M of machines, but for whom the S of spectacular was all too frequent. In it lies the capacity to hold 25,000 people who could behold a spectacle and hear people talk far below with no electronics. In it lies the wonder of today, at the amazement of the past. In it lies the ability, at the very least, to make two people want to sit there for the longest time and just look at it.

(there's D!)

And then , weeks later still say very little but smile inwardly when they see photographs of themselves at it.