Odi et Amo

Odi et amo. quare id faciam fortasse requiris?
nescio sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate & love. And if you should ask how I can do both,
I couldn't say; but I feel it, and it shivers me.

by Catullus

Measuring life.. in death

You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus,
him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most masterful;
not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot-
see him now and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him!
Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal happy till
he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.
~Oedipus by Sophocles

by Sappho

Like the sweet-apple that's gleaming red on the topmost bough,
right at the very end, that the apple-pickers forgot,
or rather didn't forget, but were just unable to reach.

Like the hyacinth* on the hills that the passing shepherds
trample under their feet, and the purple bloom on the ground...

contrasting unreachable desire... with the taken for granted mundanes...which trample under our feet. somehow, the unreachable always seems better...more beautiful...than that which is in our reach.

*flower

twistin wg ords

...to have them get all messed up in my brain.

Sometimes it helps to hear things from other people, gets them thoughts untwisted and makes them a bit more c l e a r .

'There is nothing alive more agonized than man
of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.'
~The Iliad

a March

'And once my vows
and prayers had invoked the nations of the dead,
I took the victims, over the trench I cut their throats
and the dark blood flowed in - and up out of Erebus they came,
flocking toward me now, the ghosts of the dead and gone...
Brides and unwed youths and old men who had suffered much
and girls with their tender hearts freshly scarred by sorrow
and great armies of battle dead, stabbed by bronze spears,
men of war still wrapped in bloody armor - thousands
swarming around the trench from every side-
unearthly cries - blanching terror gripped me!'

seeing the rain.

and amidst all the hatred and slaying in war, the core was recognized:

'...No finer, greater gift in the world than that...
when man and woman possess their home, two minds,
two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies,
a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.'

of G-d

I've finally been blessed with some sort of clarity pertaining to the characterizing of the ancient Greek and Roman gods in my brain, vs. the ordinary definition of a G-d I might have been brought up believing in.

One is awesome, infinite, flawless, omniscient, all powerful and perfect. A creator. The Creator.

The others are but ordinary flawed beings, albeit immortal.

hazy shade of Winter

'this is the springtime of my life'
and im 'feelin groovy' (tx .ll.e.k)

The Odyssey is looked at as the grandaddy of sci fi adventure, while really, it is the story of a mortal, journeying to reconnect with the mundane. We mortals like to miss the point, most times. Us, I mean, not Odysseus.

And as my Prof. said, 'some people put their foot in their mouth, some like to bring up their other foot too, and walk around. you, you've been running a marathon.'



this song's about as blah as the weather in south africa. (who me? no, i know nothing of the weather in south africa.)

an Odyssey

So now Helen, once
she had drugged the wine and ordered winecups filled,
resuming the conversation, entertained the group:
"My royal king Menelaus- welcome guests here,
sons of the great as well! Zeus can present us
times of joy and times of grief in turn:
all lies within his power.
So come, let's sit back in the palace now,
dine and warm our hearts with the old stories.
I will tell something perfect for the occasion.
Surely I can't describe or even list them all,
the exploits crowding fearless Odysseus' record,
but what a feat that hero dared and carried off
in the land of Troy where you Achaeans suffered!
Scarring his own body with mortifying strokes,
throwing filthy rags on his back like any slave,
he slipped into the enemy's city, roamed its streets-
all disguised, a totally different man, a beggar,
hardly the figure he cut among Achaea's ships.
That's how Odysseus infiltrated Troy,
and no one knew him at all...
I alone, I spotted him for the man he was,
kept questioning him- the crafty one kept dodging.
But after I'd bathed him, rubbed him down with oil,
given him clothes to wear and sworn a binding oath
not to reveal him as Odysseus to the Trojans, not
till he was back at his swift ships and shelters,
then at last he revealed to me, step by step,
the whole Achaean strategy. And once he'd cut
a troop of Trojans down with his long bronze sword,
back he went to his comrades, filled with information.
The rest of the Trojan women shrilled their grief. Not I:
my heart leapt up-
my heart had changed by now-
I yearned
to sail back home again! I grieved too late for the madness
Aphrodite sent me, luring me there, far from my dear land,
forsaking my own child, my bridal bed, my husband too,
a man who lacked for neither brains nor beauty."

~The Odyssey, by Homer, Book IV