A Real Stand-Up Guy
Scattered images in the purgatory between dream and consciousness pierced my aching head as I awoke, sore and disoriented. Cow shit like smelling salts bringing me back to the land of the living.
I looked around at the wide open enclosure of what looked to be a barn. Hay piled to the rusted steel roof on all four sides. Old John Deere tractors that looked as though they hadn’t been touched in decades sitting between two old dirty work stations with saws, screwdrivers, and nails sprawled like the after-effect of a mid-west tornado.
“Where the fuck am I?” I thought. “Jesus, what happened?”
The images were still like white noise coming from a TV with barely any reception. The figures were there. So were movements. But the details weren’t clear. Christ, my head was splitting. I got up and walked like a 3 a.m drunk after being thrown out of a bar, all the way to the two large barn doors. I pushed on them. Nothing. There was a small split where sunlight creeped in. I could see what looked to be a chain on the outside. That would explain it.
Panic was sitting in my chest. I slid down the barn door and sat on the ground, trying to slow my racing heart. Trying to remember. Trying to solve the mental puzzle. With my hands in front of my eyes. My eyes closed tight, concentrating deep on my thoughts. The images began to clear like the calming of rippling water.
Me and Jack Langley sitting in his Buick, parked in the tall grass in front of the Geary’s mansion on Roseberry Hill. Both of us with ski masks on. Both of us laughing, smoking cigarettes, thinking that it was too easy. Too goddamn simple to break into this house, steal whatever valuables they had and skip town. Too good to be true. Then I remembered what my father said before the cancer took him. That when things seemed too good to be true, it’s probably because they were.
We walked out into the cool evening air, with a brilliant orange flame setting over the western hilltops of Annandale. With a rag wrapped tightly around my wrist, I broke the glass above the doorknob, reached in and unlocked it from the other side.
Inside, the house was quiet. Dark and still. Then I remembered a gunshot ringing through the graveyard silence, sounding as loud as artillery rounds deep in the jungles of Quang Tri. I turned around and saw blood trickle down Jack’s head like a scarlet constrictor before he fell back down the stairs.
Then there was the fat man. 300 pounds if he was a pound, putting my head in the crook of his arm. A head that he could have popped like a cork had he wanted to, but instead, he put a needle in my arm and dragged me off to a shiny black corvette, where he threw me in the back like a rag doll.
There was another image, like a word on the tip of a tongue. It was there, but not there. Close, yet a thousand miles away. A face. A face at the window of the car, as my consciousness slipped into the ether. My head leaned against the window, and I saw a face. His face. Yes. His face.
It was my mother’s shit head husband. Frankie Laroque. He was screaming something. His hands behind his back, before he was thrown into another car. Christ, I thought. Where was Frankie? What happened to him?
Frankie, the greasy fucking bartender at The Dollar who got my mother to elope and marry him in Vegas while high as a kite on methamphetamines. Good choice, mah. You got yourself a real stand-up guy. A real father figure.
He was screaming, “Hurt him! Hurt him! Or was it, don’t hurt him?” I don’t know.
Then I heard a rattle behind me. Someone was unlocking the chain. The door opened and Frankie was thrown to the ground. Soft ridiculing laughter could be heard before the door closed, and the chain, again, locked. The sun too bright to see any faces. Just sharp dressed shadows.
Frankie’s hands were tied behind his back, and his face was worse for wear. Like a fucking steamroller had run over it. His left eye was swollen shut, a plethora of purples and greens, and blacks swirling like a vortex. Dried blood stained his ears, nose, and lips. He was crying. “I’m sorry, Jamie. I’m so sorry. Jesus, I’m stupid. I’m so goddamned stupid.”
“What, Frank? What the hell is going on here?”
“I-I-I,” He stuttered. “I-I sold you out. Okay? I sold you out, and now we’re fucked!”
“What are you talking about, Frank? What the hell did you do?”
He was crying like a baby. This big grown man. 6 foot 3, 220 lbs, weeping like a teething newborn.
“What did you do, Frank? Tell me what you did?” I grabbed him by the scruff of his wife beater and picked him up to his feet. He wouldn’t look at me. He stared at the straw and the shit on the ground. “Look at me, Frank. LOOK AT ME!”
Finally, he listened. But his eyes took the anger right out of me. Like a punch to the gut, I knew he was telling the truth. I didn’t know what he did, but we weren’t getting out of this barn. I let him go. “I-I-I’m sorry, Jamie. They swore they wouldn’t hurt you. They swore they wouldn’t hurt me if I told em who’d been, ya know, ripping them off.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Kid. Your head’s so far up your ass, you can’t see that you ain’t as smart as you think. Young punks and their God complex”
“What? What are you talking about, Frank? Speak English.”
“You were stealing from the wrong people, son. And having your drug riddled fucking mom as your confidante wasn’t exactly an Einstein move, was it?”
He stopped for a second, then continued.
“Look kid. I was in trouble. Big trouble. Debt that I couldn’t repay in ten lifetimes that was gathering interest by the day. Your mom told me one night that you were stealing money from the same guys, and I saw an opportunity man. I saw an opportunity to give them information. To provide them with something.”
“Oh. Jesus. Oh Christ. We’re dead.”
“They swore they wouldn’t hurt you, Jamie. They’d just ask for the money back, that’s all. They might rough you up a little, but not this. And they told me my slate would be wiped clean. I’d be free. I’d be good.”
I looked at Frankie, and then the chain rattled again. The door swung open. I didn’t even look up. I just stared at the shit and dirt on the ground, knowing full-well that I’d be sleeping underneath it soon.
“Way to go, mah. You picked a real stand-up guy”
Christianity
Honestly, there is one thing (in my opinion) that separate true Christians from false ones.
True Christians (in my opinion) live by the Bible and by the God of the Bible (meaning that they let go of things that don't line up with the Bible (I'm saying Bible a lot, aren't I?).
Those people who cruelly condemn others? Well, they're not true Christians, because they're living in hate, and God calls us to love everyone. As long as someone lets go of any sin they were holding on to, no matter how late it may seem for them, they can be a Christian - it's not an all exclusive kind of thing. It was never meant to seem like an all exclusive kind of thing either, and false Christians are leading others away by making it appear that way. We don't have to be perfect, and the hypocrites that act so aren't. Lastly, (sorry that this is kind of disorganized) true Christians seem to have this loving quality that's easy to see but hard to explain - like this light that's inside of them but kind of shines on the outside, too. There are a lot of other things in the Bible that (through stories, parables, and the like) separate true Christians from false ones, but I'll end this here.
In Search of My Father (Part 2)
Day Four (August 11th): Lost in Translation
The Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” (Book of Genesis)
Thankfully, the museum strike had only lasted for twenty-four hours. The next day, I visited the archaeological museum in Heraklion. Of all the many wonders on display there, none intrigued me more than the Phaistos Disc.
A few years before I had visited the British Museum in London for the first time, and marvelled at the Rosetta Stone, that remarkable find from the Nile delta - and the one lasting achievement to come out of Napoleon Bonaparte’s vainglorious adventures in Egypt. The stone displayed a decree issued in the 2nd century BC, written in two languages and three scripts. The top and middle texts were in Ancient Egyptian using the hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts respectively, whilst the bottom text was in Ancient Greek. Since antiquity, knowledge of Ancient Egyptian had been lost; but thanks to the Rosetta Stone, and the patient perseverance of scholars - not least the French philologist Jean-François Champollion - the secrets of Egyptian hieroglyphs had finally been cracked, and Egyptology as a distinct and enormously fruitful field of historical study had blossomed.
An even greater challenge in translation had been faced by Arthur Evans in his excavation of Knossos; one that he was unable to see resolved before his death in 1941. Then, in the 1950s, the script that he had named Linear B was deciphered, and found to be Mycenaean Greek - the language of Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus, and the other Greek heroes of the Trojan War. But three quarters of a century on from Evans’ spectacular discoveries, the older Linear A still remained a conundrum.
As also did the strange inscriptions upon the circular tablet of fired clay, just 15 cm in diameter, and 1 cm thick, known as the Phaistos Disc. It had been discovered in 1908, not by Evans, but by an Italian archaeologist named Luigi Pernier; and not at Knossos, but at the second largest of the Minoan palaces, Phaistos. Ever since its discovery, the Phaistos Disc had entranced and puzzled professional and amateur archaeologists alike.
Each side of the disc was covered with imprints: 241 marks in total, made up of 45 distinct signs, each impressed in the clay before firing, and arranged in a clockwise sequence spiralling into the centre of the disc. In the years since its discovery, no other artifacts using a comparable series of signs had been found; and all attempts to decipher the script - if indeed it was a script - had failed.
My knowledge of Koine, or New Testament Greek - to my embarrassment - had proved pretty useless thus far on our holiday. Whenever I was faced with the challenge of communicating with the natives, I think it rather amused Mum and Sis to see me struggling. I knew I was in trouble on our very first night when my pronunciation of the straightforward word ευχαριστω (eucharisto) - meaning ‘thank you’ - was met with blank faces. If I’d read my modern Greek phrasebook properly, I would have remembered that in modern Greek ευ is pronounced as ‘ef’ not ‘eu’. It was the kind of simple error that I was to make again and again. I should have known better. The Greek of the Bible, after all, was two thousand years old. It was as if an Anglo-Saxon bard versed in the alliterative intricacies of Beowulf was expecting to be comprehended by a 20th century estate agent from Essex.
How many wars have been caused by our inability to speak the same language as our neighbour? Probably too many to count. Yet even when we are able to understand one another - does that in and of itself guarantee peace? British humorist Douglas Adams had provided his own unique take on this, when Arthur Dent, the everyman protagonist of his book, radio and television series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, was first introduced to the wondrous universal translation skills of the Babel Fish. In Adams’ words (or, rather, those of the eponymous Hitchhiker’s Guide):
The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with the nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
A wondrous step in cosmic evolution, guaranteed to pave the way to universal peace? Alas, not so, says the Guide:
…the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
***
I may have shared many of the same genes as my father (50% or so, I would presume). We may have spoken the same language (though I certainly didn’t sound much like him). But these commonalities didn’t mean I was always good at communicating with him; or him, with me. Our personalities, our beliefs, our interests, our aptitudes, our experiences, were often wildly at variance one with another. I was aware of this, I think, from a very young age; but it became more marked as I entered the troubled years of adolescence. And sometimes - like most teenagers, I guess - I deliberately revelled in being different.
I was certain now, for example, that the right-wing political phase I went through in my mid-teens had as much to do with antagonising my Labour-supporting father as any genuine conviction I might have had about the ideologies of Thatcherism. The irony is that Dad was nowhere near as left-wing as many of his friends, or family members. He’d shared much of the same despondency about the direction of the Labour party at the end of the 1970s as the likes of Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams, who had gone on to form the centrist Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. He’d seriously considered joining the new party himself; yet, in the end, the working-class tribalism that had wedded him to Labour all his life proved too strong.
Along with a few friends, I’d enthusiastically embraced the new party, with its pan-European outlook, and its commitment to electoral reform, the decentralised state and the social market economy. In addition to History and Geography, I had decided to study Economics at ‘A’ level; and the possibility of pursuing a political career was something that, for a short while, I seriously considered. If I’d remained a supporter of the SDP, that wouldn’t have been so hard for my father to understand. But instead, in the aftermath of Margaret Thatcher’s resounding election victory in 1983, riding on the back of her successful Falklands War adventure the previous year, I had entered my second year of A’ levels, transfixed by the Monetarist theories of Milton Friedman, and enthusiastically lurching further to the political right. I became a paid-up member of the Conservative party (at a substantially reduced rate for students, of course). My college friends were dismayed by what they saw as my betrayal; but that was the least of it, really. How could it possibly have looked to my father?
Political convictions weren’t the only cause of difference between us. My adolescent religious fervour, in contrast to his rather indifferent agnosticism, was another. His ability to form friendships, to strike up conversations with strangers, and to socialise easily and readily in even the unlikeliest of situations, was also at odds with the shy, awkward diffidence of his only son. And Dad’s love of the great outdoors - hardly surprising, giving the fact that his working life was spent underground - was completely at variance with my contentment at being inside the house, sprawled across my bed, reading a book.
The differences between us boiled over catastrophically one day, when I was fifteen. I could no longer remember what the argument was about, only the harsh vituperative words with which I had ended the conversation, before flouncing out in a temper:
‘Sometimes, I really don’t think I can be your son.’
The inference - the double insult - of that odious utterance was clear. The moment the words had escaped my lips, I’d regretted them. And I’d apologised, of course. My mother made sure of that. But Dad didn’t speak to me for the best part of a week. Still, once again - all things considered - I’d got off lightly.
Those three words - the ones that I most wanted to hear - that I wished I could say to him myself - rarely passed our lips. They weren’t the kind of words that men in a mining community were accustomed to using to one another. Many struggled to speak them even to their wives. They relied on other ways of displaying those sentiments, and conveying those emotions. Without words. And certainly without tears.
Could I not see - when my father rushed me to the hospital where Mum worked, to break the news to her, received in the morning post, that I had passed my ‘11-plus’ exam, thereby securing that coveted place at grammar school - could I not see that he was speaking those three words to me?
Could I not see - when my father built the shed that summer in the bottom of the garden that would house the snooker table that was my reward for passing the exam - that in so doing, he was speaking those three words to me?
Could I not see - when I opened the rejection letter from Jesus College, Oxford, expressing their regret that they were unable to offer me a place for the academic year ahead - that, really, he was speaking precisely those three words to me as he shrugged his shoulders, and gruffly declared: ‘Never mind that lot, son. You’ll be happier somewhere else...’?
And could I not see - as Dad introduced me to his friends in the summer following my 18th birthday, with the words: ‘He’s going off to university this autumn’ - that, once again, he was speaking those three words to me?
Or were perhaps those three words - somehow - lost in translation?
***
I decided to buy a facsimile of the Phaistos Disc from the museum shop. Not that I had the slightest expectation that I would succeed where others had failed in deciphering whatever message from the distant past lay buried deep within the clay. After all, I had shown myself pretty hopeless at comprehension, when time and again, my father had been trying his best to speak to his son just three simple words: ‘I love you.’
Anyone would think I needed a Rosetta Stone. Or, failing that, a Babel Fish.
Day Five (August 12th): Whoops, Acropolis!
Poseidon is greedy of earthly kingdoms, and once claimed possession of Attica by thrusting his trident into the Acropolis at Athens, where a well of sea-water immediately gushed out and is still to be seen…Later, during the reign of Cecrops, Athene came and took possession in a gentler manner, by planting the first olive-tree beside the well. Poseidon, in a fury, challenged her to single combat, and Athene would have accepted had not Zeus interposed and ordered them to submit the dispute to arbitration…They appeared before a divine court…Zeus himself expressed no opinion, but while all the other gods supported Poseidon, all the goddesses supported Athene. Thus, by a majority of one, the court ruled that Athene had a better right to the land, because she had given it the better gift.
(The Greek Myths - Robert Graves)
Which came first - the city or the goddess? Athens or Athene?
It seemed a good question to ponder as I flew over the Sea of Crete on the short flight from Heraklion to Athens. Much as I was delighting in my Cretan experience, I had decided to take a mini-break, in the midst of our holiday, to fly to the capital on the Greek mainland. For what better opportunity would I have to visit the very cradle of Western civilisation, the ancient birthplace of democracy?
It might be presumed - especially considering the city’s founding myth - that Athens was named after Athene, the divine daughter of Zeus, goddess of wisdom, weaving and warfare. However, most scholars now believe it was the other way round, as the ending -ηνη (-ene) is a common Greek ending in names of locations, but rare in personal names.
But what does the name actually mean? Does it tell us anything about the virgin birth of the goddess, springing forth fully formed from the forehead of her father Zeus? Perhaps. Plato speculated that her name was derived from the phrase αθεονοα (atheonoa) meaning ‘mind of God’. Another suggestion, first made by German classicist Christian Lobeck in the 19th century, was that it was related to ανθος (anthos) meaning ‘flower’. Unlikely. And yet for all that, the ‘flowering city’ did seem an apt name, given both the tale of Athene’s olive-tree gift, and the way in which at its height, Athens was quite literally at the centre of the flowering of the most influential civilisation ever in the history of the Western world.
How appropriate, too, that the city’s divine patronage had been decided between its rival claimants by means of a democratic debate amongst deities. Mind, democracy as practised by the gods was a little different from the method favoured by Athens in its 5th century BC heyday. The goddesses might have had a vote in the deliberations of the court of Olympus. No such liberty was granted to mortal females in the assembly of Athenian citizens. Indeed, once one also factored in the slaves, those under the age of twenty, and the foreign residents, the number of inhabitants of the city who could take part in its governance was in a decided minority. Yet for all that, the Athenian experiment in participatory democracy was a bold undertaking - the likes of which, arguably, had never been seen before, or ever since.
***
The first election campaign I’d ever taken part in had been in May 1984. It was a by-election in the South Wales constituency of Cynon Valley - a few valleys west of the one where I had grown up. The sitting MP had died suddenly, just a year into the current parliament. Here was my first opportunity - as a young member of the Federation of Conservative Students - to do my bit for the party. It was a time when I should have been devoting myself wholeheartedly to my ‘A’ levels, if I was to secure a place at my university of choice (Exeter, now that Oxford had rejected me). Instead I spent evenings and weekends knocking doors and canvassing Tory votes in the socialist heartland of the South Wales Valleys.
As election day approached, the great national miners’ strike entered its third month. Dad and his workmates passed their time manning the picket lines, or rattling collecting buckets on the high street to support their comrades - especially those who didn’t have a working spouse to mitigate the full financial hardship of being on strike. Meanwhile, I roamed the streets a few valleys over, wearing a blue rosette on the lapel of my herringbone jacket, and politely asked people if they would kindly consider voting for James Arbuthnot, barrister, councillor of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, onetime captain of School at Eton College, second son of Sir John Sinclair Wemyss Arbuthnot, 1st Baronet.
He didn’t sound like a Valleys-boy, somehow...
‘Tory?!’ screeched one woman, as she answered the door, and took in my blue rosette. ‘Tory? What’re you doing here, in Abercynon?’ I bid a hasty retreat. Her reaction was quite mild, all things considered. As was my father’s, to the treachery of his son.
The by-election was Arbuthnot’s second attempt at scaling the unlikely heights of Labour’s Cynon Valley stronghold, having stood the previous year against the now deceased MP in the 1983 general election. Arbuthnot’s appeal had not improved in the interim; indeed, when the results were announced, his share of the vote had almost halved, despite my valiant efforts on his behalf.
Arburthnot eventually did enter the House of Commons on his third attempt, in the general election that was held eleven weeks after my father’s death. This time he was standing in the rather more promising northeast London seat of Wanstead and Woodford. Margaret Thatcher won her third successive term of office; but I was no longer celebrating. My maverick interlude serving as an acolyte at the altar of Conservativism was over.
Ah, well. That’s democracy for you.
***
I spent my first evening in Athens dining in a restaurant that offered a magnificent view of the Acropolis. The city might have grown enormously over successive centuries, to the point where a third of the country’s population now dwelt within the modern city’s environs; yet the rocky outcrop that had been at the heart of the city since the late Bronze Age still towered over the surrounding landscape. Even at a distance, I could clearly make out the outline of the magnificent buildings that crowned the mount, commissioned by Pericles, the leader of Athens in its most golden hour: the Propylaea, the Erechtheion, the Temple of Athena Nike, and the greatest wonder of them all, the Parthenon.
Athen’s days of glory had really begun when Darius of Persia had sent ambassadors to all the Greek cities, demanding that they give γη και υδωρ (ge kai hydor) - ‘earth and water’ - as a sign of homage. Most of the cities submitted, but the two greatest did not. At Sparta, the king’s emissaries were thrown into a well; and at Athens, they were tossed into a gorge, with the instruction ‘go, dig it out for yourselves.’ Thus began the titanic struggle between East and West, Persia and Greece, autocracy and freedom.
And now, two-and-a-half millennia later, still it’s East and West, but on a vastly larger scale; played out from one exercise to the next, following the thankfully theoretical calculations of Cold War generals. Played out not with swords, spears and shields, but with stealth bombers, submarines and ICBMs, by the Soviet Union versus the United States of America.‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.’
In 490 BC, the first round of the great Aegean conflict had ended in humiliation for the Persians on the fields of Marathon. Plutarch later claimed that the Athenians had been inspired by the shade of Theseus, their great mythic king, leading the army in full battle gear as the Greek hoplites had charged against the Persians. The Athenian herald Pheidippides had been dispatched to Sparta, asking for aid, as the Persians landed. Having delivered his message, he had hastened back to the battle-site in time to witness the Athenian victory; famously, he had then sped the final 26 miles or so from Marathon to Athens, only to utter the single word νικωμεν (nikomen) - ‘we win’ - before collapsing and expiring.
According to Herodotus, whilst making his preparations for war, King Darius had ordered that each day a servant should whisper into his ear the words: ‘Sire, remember the Athenians.’ How those words must have come to haunt Darius after his defeat at Marathon! Right to his very grave.
The great tragedian Aeschylus had fought at Marathon, and - if the epitaph on his grave is anything to go by - regarded that, rather than his plays, as the highest achievement of his life:
This tomb the dust of Aeschylus doth hide,
Euphorion’s son and fruitful Gela’s pride.
How tried his valour, Marathon may tell,
And long-haired Medes, who knew it all too well.
A decade later, the Persians had returned in even greater force. At first, round two definitely seemed to be going their way. In 480 BC, they had taken Athens, destroyed the old Temple of Athene, and razed the city to the grounds. They had burnt the sacred olive tree that had stood on the Acropolis since the contest between Athene and Poseidon. Had the battle of Marathon been for naught? Had the noble sacrifice of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans, holding the line against 100,000 Persians at the pass of Thermopylae, been for naught? Had mighty Xerxes, King of Kings, finally avenged his father Darius’ defeat, and brought the troublesome Greeks firmly to heel?
Themistocles, the great Athenian leader, thought not. The city might have embraced the patronage of the martial goddess Athene rather than Poseidon, the god of the sea; but Themistocles had divined that Athen’s future would depend even more upon its command of the sea than its power on land. In the ten year interlude between the first and second wars with Persia, under his leadership, Athens had built the most powerful navy in Greece. As the Persian army approached, Themistocles had used his ships to evacuate the Athenian population to the island of Salamis. Then, as the Persian fleet rounded Cape Sounion, and closed towards the island, the King of Kings had set up his throne on Mount Aigeleo. From there, Xerxes had a commanding view of the waters around Salamis; from there, he believed he would witness the final defeat of his enemies. But it was not to be. In Byron’s mocking words:
A king sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o’er sea-born Salamis
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations;—all were his!
He counted them at break of day—
And when the sun set where were they?
(Lord Byron - The Isles of Greece)
A year later, the Athenian-led victory at sea was followed by a Spartan-led triumph on land at the Battle of Plataea. The Persian dream of European conquest was finally ended. And in 330 BC - one hundred and fifty years after the Persians had burnt the Athenian Acropolis - Alexander the Great meted out the final Greek revenge upon the King of Kings, as he destroyed by fire the palaces of Persepolis, the Persian capital. Round three - game, set and match - to the Greeks.
***
Darkness had fallen, but now the Acropolis was lit up, looking even more spectacular against the backdrop of night. Taking in that unforgettable view, I raised my glass, in honour of the many sons of Athene. As long as Herodotus’ Histories was read, Aeschylus’ The Persians performed, Byron’s paeans sung and the pinnacle of the Parthenon remained, the sun would never set upon their innumerable achievements.
Day Six (August 13th): Losing One’s Marbles
These things declare to me from the beginning, ye Muses who dwell in the house of Olympus, and tell me which of them first came to be. (Hesiod - Theogony)
I got up before dawn the next day. I knew that the best time to visit the Acropolis was first thing in the morning, whilst the day was still cool, and before the crowds had gathered.
I felt a tremendous sense of excitement as I climbed the path that would take me to the very pinnacle of the great polis. Here, once, had walked giants. In my ascent to the high city, I knew that I was following in the footsteps of the great statesmen Solon, Themistocles, Pericles and Demosthenes; the philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle; the playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes; the sculptor Phidias, and the historians Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon. As I wandered around the perimeter of the Parthenon, and the other temples on the Acropolis, I wondered what stories these time-worn marbles could tell if they had but lips to speak? What memories could be summoned forth from the colonnades and peristyles of ancient Athens, if we had but ears to listen?
Memories. I wasn’t thinking now about those individual fragments of memory: the personal experiences, uniquely our own, that were extinguished with the fading of our final breath. No, I was thinking of that collective means by which we could rage against the dying of the light. That ability - unique amongst Homo sapiens - to pass on the very best of ourselves, from one generation to the next. An ability that, for the Greeks, was embodied in the goddesses of inspiration, known as the Muses.
The Muses were said to be the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the Titan goddess of memory. There were differing traditions about the names and exact number of the Muses. Some sources said that there were three - others claimed that their number was nine. Regardless of their number, they were considered to be the ultimate repositories of knowledge, embodied in the myths, tales, poems and songs passed down through the centuries; the guiding spirits behind each new insight in science, the arts or literature.
The collective memories of this place would be impressive to behold, if only we had the means to access them. The Persians had destroyed the buildings that had stood upon the mount when they took the city in 480 BC. But just as a new shoot emerged from the stump of the sacred olive-tree which they had burned, so were the temples of the Acropolis rebuilt, more splendid and more glorious than before. The crowning achievement of the great building projects orchestrated by Pericles was the Parthenon - and at the heart of the Parthenon one of the greatest sculptures ever crafted, the statue dedicated to Athena Parthenos - the Virgin Athene. This magnificent figure, made of gold and ivory, stood almost 12 metres tall. It was one of the foremost accomplishment of Phidias, lauded as perhaps the greatest sculptor of the ancient Greek world.
The Parthenon itself took fifteen years to construct, being completed in 432 BC. It is often regarded as the finest building ever built according to the Doric style. Like most Greek temples, the Parthenon also functioned as a city treasury; in the case of the Parthenon, it was the supreme financial repository for the Delian League, the anti-Persian alliance that Athens had formed in the aftermath of the Greek victories at Salamis and Plataea. The original purpose of the League was to guard against any further incursion by the Persians into Greek territory; but under the direction of Pericles it was gradually transformed into an Athenian Empire. The Athenian hegemony, to which the building projects on the Acropolis bore unabashed witness, caused deep resentment amongst many of the League’s other members, and also earned the jealousy of Sparta, Athen’s only rival for the position of dominant Greek city. Just a year after the Parthenon was completed, war broke out between Sparta and Athens: the almost thirty-years-long Peloponnesian War, the almost thirty-years-long Peloponnesian War, that was famously and meticulously recorded by Thucydides. The surrender of Athens in 404 BC effectively marked the end of the golden era of Classical Greece.
But the long history of the Parthenon was just beginning. It survived the rise of Alexander the Great, the Hellenistic Era and the advent of Rome. In Byzantine times, it was converted to a church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary - no doubt chosen because of the Christian teaching on her chastity, not unlike that of Athene. Phidias’ great statue was removed, and transported to Constantinople, only for all knowledge of it to disappear by the end of the first Christian millennium.
After the Ottoman Turk conquest in the 1460s, the Parthenon was transformed into a mosque. In the 17th century, it was used by the Ottomans during their war against the Venetians as an ammunition dump; tragically, in 1687 it was ignited by a Venetian bombardment, resulting in severe damage to the fabric of the building. Then between 1801 and 1812, Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, removed some of the surviving sculptures, allegedly with the permission of the occupying Ottoman authorities.
Elgin’s defenders regarded his actions as a justifiable measure to save the sculptures of the Parthenon from neglect or worse at the hands of the indifferent Turks. But there were many who disapproved of Elgin’s behaviour at the time, and not just Greeks. One of the Earl’s most vociferous critics was another member of the British aristocracy, the young 6th Baron Byron, the poet George Gordon Byron - commonly known in later years simply as Lord Byron. On his first visit to Greece in 1807, aged just 19, Byron wrote an impassioned attack on Elgin in his satirical poem The Curse of Minerva.
Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee,
Nor feels as lovers o’er the dust they loved;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved
To guard those relics ne’er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatched thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorr’d!
Almost two centuries later, the so-called Elgin Marbles continued to reside in the British Museum in London; arguably the most famous case in modern times of what might be called cultural misappropriation - or, less politely, theft.
Brazen and possibly misguided though Elgin’s acts of larceny were, it could be argued that they did indirectly help to serve the Greek cause in their struggles against the Turks. In bringing the Parthenon sculptures to London, then at the beginning of its own glorious century as both cultural capital and economic powerhouse of the world, Elgin did help heighten awareness of classical civilisation in general, and the legacy of Athens in particular. When the Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821, the sympathy and assistance given by the British Empire, and other European powers, had a considerable impact in helping Greece achieve its freedom. How much of that sympathy was as a result of the romantic poetry and glamorous idealism of Lord Byron, who fought and died for the Greek cause, becoming revered by them as a folk hero in the process? And how much of it was in consequence of the endeavours of the much-reviled Earl of Elgin, regardless of whether or not his motivations were as honourable as he claimed?
Irrespective of whatever arguments could have been made about the past, it seemed hard to justify Britain holding on to the Marbles now. I’d seen them in the British Museum myself. Rousing and magnificent they were, to be sure; and yet somehow, stripped of their original context, the impact of viewing them had been lessened. Clearly, they belonged in Athens, not London.
Ah - but where to begin, where to end? What of all the other great treasures housed by the British Museum? If the Parthenon sculptures were to be returned, should the Rosetta Stone be handed over to Egypt, or the bas-reliefs of Assyria make their way back to Iraq? And what about all the other historical and archaeological artifacts, the objet d’art, the paintings, the portraits, and the manuscripts of a thousand museums across the world, stored and displayed hundreds or thousands of miles away from the peoples and places where they had been created?
What, after all, is any museum, but a place for the collective memories not just of a clan, or a tribe, or a nation, but of the whole human race? A place where they might be kept and treasured, preserved and shared? It’s there, after all, in the word itself; for originally, a museum was a temple dedicated to the Muses. A place set aside for study and arts. A home where memory might be cherished.
If only these marbles could talk - those that remain in Athens - and those that stand silent 2,400 kilometres away. What would they say about such things?
The greatest repository of knowledge in the ancient world had not been in Athens, or Rome, but in Alexandria. The Great Library was built by Ptolemy I, one of Alexander’s generals, and first of a dynasty that was to rule over Egypt for three hundred years, uniting the best of Egyptian and Greek learning, art, science and architecture. No one knows how many papyrus scrolls were held within the Library at its height; estimates range from 40,000 to ten times that number. Partly damaged by Caesar in 48 BC, the final destruction of the Library in the 3rd century was one of the great tragedies of the Classical era. How many manuscripts were thereby lost, forever? Of the ninety or so plays of Aeschylus, only seven had survived. Just seven remained, again, of Sophocles’ corpus of 123 plays. Perhaps two-thirds of the original works of Aristotle had been lost. Likewise, most of of the writings of Sappho; and much of the oeuvre of the mathematicians Archimedes and Euclid. And not just Greek writers - the works of so many Latin scholars were gone too. Only 35 of the 142 books of Livy’s monumental history of Rome had survived antiquity. Most of the writings of Cato, and much of the output of Plautus, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder, and the Younger, and so many others besides...
Lost beyond all recall.
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.
(Shakespeare - Troilus & Cressida)
So spoke Ulysses, in the words of the Bard of Avon. But neither of them, at least, were ever likely to pass beyond recollection themselves.
***
As far as I was aware, my father hadn’t stored any alms for oblivion. He had left behind no diary, no journal, no collection of letters, written or received. Dad did read and write, of course. He enjoyed doing the crossword in his daily newspaper. He would constantly be bringing home the stubby little pens and pencils that he would filch from the betting offices which he would visit several times a week. But my father wasn’t particularly comfortable with anything too taxing when it came to the written word. On one occasion in my disrespectful adolescence I had mocked him when I had noticed him misspelling his own name. Foolish boy - did I not know that Shakespeare himself had signed his name differently in each of the six signatures believed by scholars to be authentic?
My maternal grandmother’s father, Charles Harris, had left behind a commonplace book - not a journal, but rather a miscellany of poems, shopping lists (with prices), medicinal remedies, witty aphorisms, brief snippets of news events that had caught his attention - a flotsam and jetsam of the mind, recorded in haphazard fashion over irregular periods of time. I had come across the notebook, one day, whilst going through some old photographs at my Nan’s. I found it utterly fascinating. Here was a snapshot of life as it had been lived in the Edwardian age, and, a little later, against the backdrop of the Great War. Some of the poems, I fancied, were of his own composition; and there were occasional flourishes which suggested something of his character. It was clear, for example, that he sometimes struggled with the demon drink, and there were hints of troubled family relationships; in other places, he exhibited a certain mawkishness, as well as the kind of evangelical religious fervour that was far more commonplace then than now, in the immediate aftermath of the Welsh Revival of 1904-1905.
Be warned by my sudden call
That you for death prepare
For it will come you cannot tell
The manner, how or where
I left my home in perfect health
And little thought of death
One moment busy at my work
The next I lost my breath
(Charles Harris, March 10th 1905)
Here was a man whom I had never known in the flesh, who had died many years before my birth; yet as I read his scribbled words, some of them written in a barely legible hand - the pencil-marks faded, the ink occasionally badly blotted - it nevertheless felt that I was making a connection with my great-grandfather. The quality, or otherwise, of my forebear’s poetry and prose was fairly inconsequential. The important point, surely, was that the Muses had ensured that all memory of him would not be lost, even once his daughter, my grandmother - the last family member left alive who had known him in person - had herself departed from this life.
If only Dad had left some similar record! Yes, there were photographs - and yes, those of us who had known him would not forget him. But should I have children myself one day - unlikely, I think, but one never knows - how shall I speak of my father to them?
***
When I had arrived on the Acropolis, I was one of but a handful of visitors. But now the morning was advancing. The crowds were beginning to build up, and the noise of traffic from the teeming city below was becoming more voluble. Soon the haze of the dirty yellow smog that choked the Attic atmosphere in the high summer would become visible. For a little while, I had imagined myself carried back in time, to rub shoulders with giants, as if by Mnemosyne herself. The marbles had spoken. But now the moment was gone - and my stomach was rumbling. It was time to find a café. I needed some strong black coffee, and a slice of baklava.
Day Seven (August 14th): Birth of a Nation
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
(William Butler Yeats - Leda & the Swan)
On my third and final day in Athens, I visited the National Archaeological Museum, home to the greatest collections of artifacts from the Ancient Greek world. Elgin might have despoiled Hellas of her finest sculptures; but there were still many wonders to behold in Greece’s premier museum.
One of the many treasures housed within was the so-called Artemision Bronze - an impressive sculpture that had been recovered from a sunken ship off Cape Artemision, in northern Euboea. There was some dispute as to which Olympian god was represented by this splendid, larger-than-life figure. From his stance, it was clear he had originally been about to throw an object from his right hand; but which object? If the figure was Poseidon, then presumably he had once had a trident to hand; but if, as most scholars believed, the bronze was actually a representation of Zeus, then originally the god would have held a thunderbolt aloft.
Which deity? Zeus or Poseidon? It pays to get it right (if you want to avoid being at the receiving end of either a thunderbolt or a trident). And especially if one of them happens to be your Daddy...
Divine parentage was a big deal for many of the great figures of Greek myth and legend. Zeus and Poseidon were both notorious for ‘putting it about’, and impregnating mortal damsels. The same was true of some of the other gods. The King of the Olympians, in particular, had something of a penchant for disguising himself in spectacular fashion when committing his acts of seduction; appearing at various times as a bull, a swan, a phoenix, an eagle or even as a shower of gold.
How challenging, and how confusing, for these demigods and heroes to live up to the lore of their origins! Take the example of Perseus: cast into the sea inside a chest with his mother Danaë, when her father King Acrisius, fearing a prophecy that his grandson one day would slay him, learns the truth that her child was the offspring of Zeus. Rescued and raised by the fisherman Dictys, only later discovering his true parentage. Caught up in the intrigues of the gods, and guided through many subsequent adventures; slaying the Gorgon Medusa, and rescuing the Princess Andromeda, before finally encountering his grandfather Acrisius and accidentally killing him with a discus, thereby fulfilling prophecy.
Then think of the dilemma posed by the sea nymph Thetis to her son Achilles, as the Trojan War approached. The choice before him, she had explained, was simple: to stay at home, refuse the call to war, and live a long but uneventful life, to die in obscurity and be forgotten; or, alternatively, to join Agamemnon’s army, gain glory and die young, yet in so doing attain such fame that his memory would become immortal. Achilles chose the latter, thereby becoming the preeminent hero of (arguably) the greatest story of war ever told.
And, just occasionally, confusion over parentage would linger. When the old legends differ, which does one choose to believe? On the same night that Queen Leda of Sparta was seduced by Zeus in the guise of a swan, she lay with her husband King Tyndareus. She subsequently laid two eggs, each producing two children: Helen (of Sparta, later of Troy), Clytemnestra (the wife and one-day murderer of Agamemnon), and the twin boys Castor and Pollux - immortalised in the heavens as the Gemini. That much, at least, all the tales agreed upon. But thereafter, different accounts were given as to which were the progeny of Tyndareus, the mortal king, and which were the children of Zeus.
Genetic testing for parentage lay far in the future. But in any case, would such tests work for the gods?
***
As a teenager, I really didn’t like it when perfect strangers would walk up to me and say: ‘Your Brian’s son, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
But so what if I was? I didn’t want to be identified as Brian’s son, or Jannette’s daughter. I wanted to be known for myself. By my name: not theirs. For who I was. I didn’t want to be characterised primarily by my parents, or my grandparents. I didn’t want to be identified by a previous generation, or by the past. I wanted to look forward. To university - to getting away from the Valleys - to escaping the Land of My Fathers.
Not that it worked - not entirely. I arrived in Exeter in the middle of the great mining strike. 40% of the student intake was from private school - only a few universities, like Oxford and Cambridge, had more. The green wellie brigade, we called them, in Exeter: ‘wellies’ for short. Rather embarrassingly, I had my own pair of green wellington boots. However, it was my accent, mild as it might seem to my family and contemporaries back home, that was sufficiently strong for me to acquire my own, rather predictable, moniker. To most of those around me, it seemed, I was just another ‘taffy’; just another ‘boyo’ from the Valleys. So much for not being characterised by one’s background. Surrounded by the privilege of so many, whilst my family back home were struggling to make ends meet, only served to harden the chip on my shoulder.
My Welsh identity hadn’t felt that important whilst growing up in Wales; yet now, paradoxically, it assumed a new significance. I had my stuffed-toy mascot, Cuthbert the red dragon; and on the wall of my room in my hall of residence - which I shared with (the horror!) an Englishman - I hung the Welsh flag. When the university orchestra organised their own version of the Last Night of the Proms - complete with performances of Jerusalem, Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory, Nimrod and other great paeans of English nationalism - I had the temerity to unfurl my national flag before the front of the stage. The conductor of the orchestra indicated his displeasure, tut-tutting and pointing his baton in my direction, whilst several Union Jack wavers booed at me and tried to wrestle the banner from my grasp; but from various directions other Welshmen, strangers to me, appeared, rallying to the defence of our national colours. The red dragon waved back and forth, standing out, triumphant, in the sea of Union Jacks and flags of St George. I had never felt more proud to be Welsh than on that day.
On March 1st - St David’s Day - in 1986, I had secured tickets for myself and a couple of friends, Dave and Kevin, to watch Wales play France at the National Stadium in Cardiff. Our hopes were high - we were playing at home, on our national day, after all. We sang Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau and Cwm Rhondda lustily from the terraces, and we laughed at the antics of the French supporters who had first smuggled cockerels into the stadium, before proceeding to release them onto the pitch.
Sadly, our enthusiasm was not enough to galvanise our team to victory over their Gallic opponents. 15-23 was the final scoreline as we succumbed to our fourth successive defeat against France in the Five Nations Championship. We ended up mid-table in the 1986 competition: the golden days of the 1970s looked ever more remote. But we were not too disheartened. We knew that there would be other Championships, other opportunities. Dad had gone with his mates to watch Wales play on many occasions, home and away. He had travelled to Lansdowne Road, Murrayfield, Twickenham, and Parc des Princes. Perhaps - one day - he and I would watch the national team together.
But it was not to be. Twelve months later, I paid little attention to the Five Nations. Dad passed away nine days before our final match in that year’s Championship: Wales versus Ireland, once again in Cardiff. Another defeat for the Welsh team after yet another poor season. But even a glorious victory on the rugby pitch would have been poor recompense for what I had already lost that year. Truly, I was a pilgrim through a barren land. What joy was to be held in the Land of My Fathers when my father breathed no more?
***
Welsh nationality wasn’t something that was created overnight. It was crafted over two thousand years. Once there had been rival tribes across the corners of Wales - the Demetae, the Silures, the Ordovices, the Deceangli. From these tribes the petty-kingdoms of Dyfed, Gwent, Gwynedd, and Powys had emerged. Quarrelsome and factious for centuries, only at the very end, in the face of the Anglo-Norman invasion, had the embattled Welsh united against the English, under Llewellyn the Great and his grandson, Llewellyn the Last. It was too little, too late, and in 1283 Welsh independence was snuffed out. The cold-hearted English king Edward I had named his infant son Prince of Wales, and executed Llewellyn’s brother Dafydd in Shrewsbury by using for the first time a new and gruesome form of execution - hanging, drawing and quartering. The same cruel punishment which later was meted out against the Scottish folk hero and freedom fighter, William Wallace. The political dismemberment and evisceration of Wales had followed Dafydd’s death. In the 15th century, Owain Glyndŵr had helped to keep alive the dream of a national Welsh identity, in his valiant, but ultimately unsuccessful uprising. The rise of the Welsh-descended House of Tudor to the English throne proved to be another false dawn. Centuries of marginalisation, and of suppression of the Welsh language and culture, had followed. But at last - by my lifetime - Wales had finally begun to rediscover itself. The dragon had awoken from its long sleep.
Greek nationalism had followed its own convoluted, sometimes tortured path. Perhaps it was in the days of Agamemnon that pan-Hellenic identity had first stirred. Zeus had violated Leda; and from one of the eggs she had hatched had been born Helen of Sparta, later the spouse of Menelaus, the brother of Agamemnon the High King of Mycenae. Another seduction, another betrayal, had later resulted in Helen being spirited away by Paris, son of Priam, King of Troy. A thousand ships were launched, for the sake of passion, and to avenge the cuckolding of the Greek High King’s dishonoured brother. That, at least, is the tale that Homer tells. But was it really just a case of time-honoured Realpolitik, the opportunistic outworking of stratagems and artifices by one devious sovereign, seeking to thereby strengthen his own power and dominion? A thousand ships, yes - but a hundred cities thereby bound together, in common purpose. The birth of a nation in blood and fire before the walls of ancient Ilium.
If so, then be warned. ‘They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind,’ cautioned the prophet Hosea, in similar circumstances. But prophets have a tendency to be ignored. And not just the Hebrew ones, like Hosea. Cassandra, daughter of Priam, had predicted the fall of Troy, the wanderings of Odysseus, and the death of Agamemnon. All her pronouncements came to pass: but every one of them was disbelieved.
The High King might have had his moment of glory - The broken wall, the burning roof and tower - but at what cost? A man who is prepared to sacrifice his virgin daughter, Iphigenia, to win the favour of the gods - a man who will do anything to secure his legacy - is almost inevitably a man who is destined to come to a bloody and brutal end himself. So Clytemnestra, sister of Helen, mother of Iphigenia, avenged her sister and daughter, striking down her husband as he was bathing unawares, despite the dire portents of Cassandra - quite literally, in a bloodbath. And the consequences of Agamemnon’s unchecked ambition had reverberated down through the centuries long after his death, for even the destruction of Troy contained within it a seed of future defeat for Greece. Aeneas, last scion of the House of Priam, escaped the burning city; and just as foreseen by Cassandra, his descendants had founded the city on the Seven Hills whose grandeur would one day eclipse that of the Hellenes. The story never ends.
I looked at the golden funeral mask of Agamemnon: ‘The Mona Lisa of prehistory’ as it has been called, perhaps the greatest treasure held in the National Archaeological Museum. And I thought of all that had followed because one day, a libidinous god happened to swan into the life of a captivating young queen.
Pieces of Love
Love can be big, exaggerated gestures. It can be butterflies in the pit of your stomach and big, gasping lungfuls of air. It can be fireworks and diamond rings and rose petals. It can be so big that it hurts.
But my love is small. It is comfort. It’s the blanket I wrap myself in at the end of the day. It’s my favorite chair, the bed I lie in. It’s my go-to feel-good book. It’s the table I lean on when I start to feel tired. It’s the video I watch when I need to laugh. It’s the pillow I hug when I need to cry. It’s the hand I hold when I feel scared.
Sometimes, love is an explosion – big and loud and passionate and bright, but there is only silence and destruction in the aftermath. I prefer the little pieces of love that fill my life – quiet, soothing, comforting, and never-ending.
Conspiracy Theory
I was sitting here debating what to write when a small idea hit me. Why not offer up conspiracy theories as prompts for a short story or perhaps a chapter series. So, I spent the better part of the day digging and came up with eight ideas for a story or series, or even just a poem.
If you think something on your own, it can be considered an idea or a plan to implement. It doesn’t become a conspiracy until two or more people agree, even if only in theory.
Conspiracy theories are not a new concept, but they’ve taken on a new life thanks to the internet. In 2020, we saw more than our fair share of misinformation online—some rooted in historical details, others in fear. It has gotten so bad; one theory is Prince Charles living as a closeted vampire, which is in this list.
The Moon Landing Was Fake
The flag moving in the wind, no stars in the sky whatsoever, the misaligned shadows—these have all been points made in the conspiracy theory that Neil Armstrong didn’t take the first “leap for mankind” on the moon in 1969. For years, conspiracists have argued that NASA staged the landing and that the secret has been protected by the CIA ever since.
The Government Killed JFK
There are a number of conspiracy theories about President Kennedy’s death, but one of the most popular is that the government was behind the assassination. Many Americans don’t believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and biographer Philip Shenon claims even Bobby Kennedy thought the CIA was responsible for his brother’s death at first.
The Denver International Airport Is Illuminati’s Headquarters
The Illuminati leads to a conspiracy rabbit hole that we’re not going to delve too far into—except when it comes to the Denver International Airport. Many Illuminati believers are convinced it’s the secret group’s headquarters. The airport has embraced the rumors by poking fun at it, but that hasn’t stopped people from believing secret tunnels and lizard lairs lurk beneath the building.
Prince Charles Is A Vampire
Why? Well, the Prince of Wales is related to Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and many royals in Charles’s bloodline were known to have the disease Porphyria, which is an iron deficiency that causes people to be sensitive to sunlight.
The Black Knight Satellite Is An Alien Space Craft
Many conspiracy theorists are wary of a space object that has become
known as the Black Knight satellite. While experts at NASA insist
it’s just space junk, some believe it’s an ancient alien space ship.
Sirens Were Responsible For Shipwrecks
Call them the original conspiracy theorists, but sailors have claimed that mystical women dubbed “sirens” would lure them to the rocks and cause shipwrecks back in the day.
Planet X Is home To A World called Nibiru
When news of an undiscovered planet in the solar system was revealed, many were fascinated and excited. However, some thought that Planet X housed a theoretical world called Nibiru that would lead to an apocalypse on April 23, 2018. When it didn’t happen one conspiracy theorist is quoted as saying, “That was a mis quite. We meant 2028.” I guess we all deserve a second chance.
They Are Alive And Well
The Abominable Snowman has long been a mythological creature that the public has tried to find for thousands of years. Personally, if he is real, I want his secret for staying alive so long. It was last “sighted” in Asia. The Loch Ness Monster lives in Scotland and reports come in almost every day he/it can be seen at the Scottish Loch Ness Lake. And then there is Bigfoot, Sasquatch, call it what you will, but many people are convinced the elusive creature exists.
**********
If any of these trip a trigger for a story or even perhaps a poem,
I would like to read your creation, so don’t forget me when you do.
A True Story
A close friend, Michael is his name, died from ingesting too many pills at one time in 1991.
I was asked by his family, as his closest friend to say a few words. As he was Catholic, the priest wouldn't, as in his eyes and the eyes of the church, taking one's own life was considered a sin. This is roughly what I said.
It's good to see so many of you here. I'm sure Mike would have been not only pleased, but surprised to see so many people here to pay their respects.
We all know Mike was far from the perfect person. He tried, but he did do one thing right, and that was raise three daughters to be independant, and to never back down when right. Stand your ground, he would often say.
I've know Mike the better part of twenty years and never once did I not see him try to help someone if they needed help. The old give the shirt off his back, Mike. He would give money when he could to those in need and never look for that to come back to him.
We also know how much Mike liked his weed. I stopped by a friend's house one day and Mike was sitting in the middle of the living room, toking away and he had that glazed, kicked back happy look in his eyes. He had smoked at least half a dozen joints while I was there and to be honest, I thought I was getting a contact high.
I looked at him and said, You know something, Mike, you could own a marijuana field, acres and acres of the stuff and smoke all of it and then later say, wow! I could have been rich!
You know what he said?
He said, Yeah, but where I end up going one day I can't take it with me, so might as well enjoy it while I can.
And that's about the best takeaway I can give all of you. Enjoy what you have now. Mike did.
I won't swear to this, but if he's looking down at us, or, looking up, he's in a place he feels comfortable, and probably smoking his ass off right now.
But he left a piece of himself with all of us. He touched so many lives, never once asking for anythiung in return. If it came back to him, so be it. If it didn't, then it didn't.
Mike, the father, Mike, the friend, and Mike, if you are listening, damn you for leaving us the way you did, but you did so on your terms and for that I can't fault you.
But buddy, you will be missed.
** Photo is 35 years old
