ANAGNORISIS

I WAS BORN TO HAVE WINGS

It sounds like the most absurd, absolutely stupid thing to say. But hear me out for a minute. Or two. Or ten.

This is not a confession uttered out of the depths of plebeian fantasy. Or the construct of a madman’s kind of imagination: twisted, insane to everyone else but to himself. I’ve carefully thought about the consequences of my words.

Are you ready? Good. Picture this.

An Island called Crete, with the city of Knossos surrounding a majestic palace where mighty King Minos lives, surrounded by pomp and grandeur and the eternal reverence of those that worship him. Most of these characters are not worth the hassle to be honest. Hoi polloi and people who do not let their imagination get in the way most of the times. It sounds harsh but this is as honest as I can get without exaggerating anything. When they are not being unapologetically sycophantic, or slaughtering bulls and other sacrifices to Mighty Zeus or to the Storm bringer Poseidon or to Hades or to any other god that tickles their intellectual fancy at the time, well, they do other things. Interesting things. Yes. To them, at least.

The Aegean sea has made it possible for them to engage in these other activities. Maritime trade is a major feature. The major goods are Olive oil, Saffron, textiles, wine and pottery. For such activities to parry on well with the help of the winds, Shipbuilding expertise is needed. For those that lack the ability to comprehend wood and how it can be turned into an instrument of travel along the waters of the mighty sea, well, navigation is also an option. For those who cannot be able to do this task as well, there is, well….absolutely nothing.

Nothing is a dangerous thing to have. Nothing to do. Nothing to think about. And nothing is notorious for giving birth to absolutely stupid things. These are my views, of course, subject to no one’s judgement, and not tailored to earn acolytes. But I have seen youth my age do things with their nothing, by the gods. It’s as if Ares himself possesses them. Have you ever heard of bull-leaping? Well then, prepare yourself for ecstasy or horror. It is sacred. It is communal (and highly dangerous, if you ask me). Symbolic of mortality, courage and divine favour. The gods enjoy it as much as I don’t, I’ve heard.

A young man runs towards a charging bull. He grasps it’s horns and back (young women are not allowed to do this. It is blasphemous to think about it but I must admit, it would be a thing of curiosity), leveraging his hands and body to vault over the bull. He touches down on padded and soft ground on the other side and continues his sprint without a spot on his body. I’ve seen quite a few maestros pull it off. Those that don’t….well….let’s just say the bulls do not seem to like this game (I wonder why).

Those that do not like such games have tons of other activities at their disposal. Well, there’s the procession to the central palatial courtyard, daily, all in the name of offering sacrifices to the Olympians and the old gods. Each and every day, would you imagine. Offering everything to gods whom I genuinely believe offer us nothing. There’s sacred music, there’s dancing, there are the ceremonial acrobatics, done by those that have taken time to perfect some inkling of mastery. It’s a beautiful symphony of skill and expectation, the one silver lining of the whole thing. I love watching these acrobatic displays. Being good at something isn’t easy, otherwise everyone would be good at everything.

There are those that shun both these activities and opt instead to accompany their families and servants to the marketplace. Here, they are, “exposed”, to put it mildly and to not degrade the usefulness of such activities. Exposed to craftsmanship, to imported goods from across the Aegean sea, to the sciences behind preparation of festivals. Observation is a necessary skill in this adventure. Observing courtiers, priests, hawkers, dignitaries, social interaction and to understand economic cycles. To fully grasp the workings of the larger society and to prepare themselves to take over it in due time, as is their birthrights.

There are the evening rituals (Can you believe it!?) where offerings are again made to the gods for the role they consciously undertake in shaping our existence. It is not much different from the one that happens in the morning hours. If it were up to me, We would do two in the morning (especially if they were necessary) and be done with it. But father says the gods deserve their respect. They’ve earned it. Zeus won the great war against the titans when he cut his father Kronos into a thousand pieces and tossed his remains into the depths of Tartarus. And they have been merciful. They have allowed human beings the power of freedom, their ability to architect their own reality. I secretly smirk when he is not looking.

There are those other ones, of course, the art and fresco painters, close relatives to those that indulge themselves in symbolic architecture. I blame my father for the rise of this other creed, these that believe they can emulate almighty things. I’ve seen their works. They’re not that absurd. They will need time to perfect their craft, they will need patience, perseverance, and a superhuman belief in their own abilities (eventually). The good thing is that they are on to something. Stopping doesn’t require as much effort as starting does.

There are the Romantics, of course, the bards, those that have read every book on the power of love and its ability to overcome almighty obstacles. Hero and Leander, Orpheus and Eurydice, Paris and Helen of Troy, Hades and Persephone, Cupid and Psyche (This is the only place where Zeus and Poseidon do not receive eternal veneration. They are known for their lasciviousness, even though they aren’t judged). Telling tales is one thing, trying to exist as physical embodiments of the protagonists of such tales is another. The only thing you can feel for these kinds is the purest form of pity. The lengths they go to, to indulge profanity is admirable in the most brutal sense of the word.

It took me a significant amount of time trying to understand whether something was inherently wrong with me, whether I suffered from a particular kind of chronic misanthrope, and this feeling of pathos only subsided when father told me the truth of our origins. See, I am Athenian, not Cretan. It is apparent, as clear as day if you know what to look for;

Them: Lean, elastic, almost acrobatic physique

Me: Still lean, but less ritual-trained, more forge-made.

Them: Long-limbed, narrow waisted.

Me: More utilitarian musculature, workshop life.

Them: Movement-first bodies.

Me: Not bred for spectacle, but for craft-adjacent survival.

Them: Sun darkened skin, a symbol of outward ritual and island life.

Me: Lighter complexion. More interior life.

Them: Long, carefully styled hair often curled or tied. The men have clean-shaven or minimal facial hair.

Me: Hair practical, less ornamented.

Them: Oiled skin, cosmetic awareness, men included. Their beauty is civic, not vain.

Me: Grooming is secondary to my function. I do not decorate myself. I’m being prepared, not displayed.

Them: They move as though the ground has been expecting them.

Me: I move as though I have always been meant to leave it. Need I say more? You tell me. (Them: Crete belongs to US! Me: I DO NOT belong to Crete).

There it is. My moment of madness. My catharsis in truth, the things I only whisper to myself when I’m afforded the privacy of my own chambers. I’ve lived a life of observation, which started from a very young age when I would see my father work to create the things that men felt compelled to worship, the awe that he was able to create out of nothing. From this particular kind of observation is where I create the ability to execute. I execute from study, not from participation. Mingling and Camaraderie is not my nectar. I respect all that I see, all that centralization represents to the Cretans, but I am not subdued by it. I believe nothing is truly worth human adoration if it deprives the race of the capacity to question the means by which it exists.

The gods have been with us for a while now. I could introduce you to all of them, but I will only mention the Olympians. There’s Zeus, the Sky god, king of the gods, and there are his brothers, Poseidon of the Seas and Hades of the underworld (rotten apple, this one). The others are Hermes the Messenger, Pallas Athena of Wisdom and Battle, Ares of War (seems like the same thing to me, but who am I to judge?), Artemis the Huntress, her brother Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python (who is the god of so many things I’ve lost count), Hera, Zeus’ wife and goddess of marriage and chastity (yes, you heard me right), Hephaestus the cripple (I know, a tragi-comedy) god of Fire, Aphrodite, goddess of love, whom everyone knows, Demeter, goddess of….well I’m sure I knew this one and last but not least, Dionysus, god of wine, who was once mortal. Hestia had to secede her place for Dionysus because apparently she wasn’t that special (and he is a son of Zeus, who fathered half the others. I wouldn’t say this out loud if I were you).

I have always had my respect for the gods and everything they’ve managed to achieve across their reign since they took power from the Titans. That, however, does not mean I do not take time to critically examine the role they place on our lives, my life to be specific, since it is as much mine as it is theirs. I cannot hide behind small mercies. Why would they expect me to dedicate most of my time to their own reverence? Is it wise? What do they end up with, other than an inflated sense of self-aggrandizement? Do they need it that much? Is human worship that important to them? How does it serve them, if they get to live forever and we wither away like smoke?

Then again, why do they create us to be this, whatever we are? Curious by nature but limited by design? Men like my father are the obvious exceptions, and the ability to someday eclipse him if I put my mind to it has been passed on to me, but what about the others? Have they created us to fit into categories that cannot allow us to be equal, no matter how much we try to look at things? Worse still, why do they hide themselves from us? Why can we not see them? Visit with them? Learn directly from them as a child does at his father’s feet? Why do they lock themselves from us, not allowing us to peer through the mist?

Are we that fragmented? That ruined? Are we only good enough to be restricted to routines because we cannot handle anything out of the ordinary, anything unpredictable, a new, un-systemized kind of thought? A subjectivity that feeds into collectivity, a realm untapped to before but where they are not needed as much?

Are the gods afraid of us? Of what we can do once we know what we are capable of?

Like I said, it is a new kind of thinking, obtuse, obscure, frightening, shocking, exciting. Things I think about alone, with no one to interrupt my train of thought. My father would disown me for imagining such things. I wouldn’t even dare mention it to him. And because of such sentiments, I feel as if I was born to have wings. Wings to fly towards Olympus, to meet the gods of men, to ask them these things because I am not afraid of asking, not afraid of consequences, completely terrified of being mediocre, of being forgotten, of being erased from eternity with someone else rising hundreds of years after me to take my place in the grand scheme of things. People would die if they thought there was someone bold enough to think these things. People would exile me as they did my father. They would curse me, kill me, see me cross the Styx to Asphodel to live a life of eternal damnation.

They would offer much sacrifices and apologize to the gods profusely that one of their own could say such things. Not out of care for me, no. Out of fear of retaliation, of a certain kind of Zeus-induced plague that would wipe them out for being associated with me. A lot of them, to be fair, one of them being my father.

I’ve done alright so far, haven’t I?

Well, I think it is time you met my father.