and the question about the 'old castle'
we see it in an image.
it's on a knoll at a national park
no one lives there anymore.
we make up stories in our head.
we read Dante and hear about a beautiful princess who was held as a prisoner at a tower by her horrid husband.
and you can make up a poem or a story.
but then you look a little bit more and start to ask: why does someone abandon such a place?
there are many different reasons and mostly: it's unsafe to live there anymore.
earthquake, fire, decay.
People would retreat to the mountains and highlands in the heat of the Summer. Many of those places were not full time residences.
if the armies from across the sea showed up to do their slave collecting, people might retreat from a place and escape.
or they say 'oh, go see Rome. It's all gone'
and the ruin is there as if that's really what is going on.
the facts on the ground were a bit different.
the real places where the real people lived . . . were not abandoned ruins.
but the ruins were there.
the invadors show up
"we're here to pillage" they indicate.
but it's already all ruins and no one is there.
they've escaped through tunnels off to other places not that far away.