Musings from a Bus Ride to Bath

Right now I'm on a bus, riding through the English countryside. It's not too different from any other countryside I've traversed, except the bus is on the left side of the road and the bones of my ancestors have lain here longer. The sky is as big here as it is in the desert, and the clouds are just as dynamic. The villages date back farther I suppose, and the rooves are thatched.

I just saw Stonehenge for the first time. As I looked at those stones that stood vertical before any known record bore witness of their existence, I wished I had been here before the roads. Perhaps even before the villages and maybe while the outer circle still guarded the inner one.

I've been in England for almost three weeks now. This is my second international traveling experience, my first being a visit to Caribbean islands that were reconstructed in the image of this place--with tin rooves replacing thatched ones. The West Indies were adopted and abandoned by the British and other European countries, and what is left is a facade intended to fool both its visitors and its inhabitants.

While I was there, I compared the real Caribbean to the pictures, films, and dollar store calendars that depict it. And now I find myself again comparing the original to the copy--the old world to its facade in the new one.

Before today I had already seen Stonehenge represented in a variety of media and circumstances. Though I barely allowed the thought to enter my mind, I felt tainted by my tendency to compare it to its image that comes with Windows to be used as a desktop background. Does there exist a more banal representation of a more revered monument to world history?

Not that I can think of. And as the bus continues on to Bath, I wonder how much it will resemble the pictures online.