An Ancient RuIn

The guide with his cheesy hat, and colorful umbrella encourages us to: gather 'round. His anecdotal spiel is by rote. His shtick is fact-slim and slick, but it’s also my current gestalt as I am dragged unwillingly along by his CliffsNotes speech. What catches my wandering eye is that one of those ruined effigies is a fair facsimile of myself. He (a god/king of some minor something), looks mildly disgusted, as if a bothersome fly had landed on his crumbling nose. My world-weary face reflects perfectly his sour mien. At last, I am processed meekly back onto the tour bus, where predictably, my fellow passengers are already peering forward into a new fancifully imagined past from an equally fanciful present.