Phaedrus
- A drunk.
- Easy to trick into sex.
- The father of at least one daimon.
- The subject of a lot of gossip.
But, Lysias
Σωκράτης: καλῶς γάρ, ὦ ἑταῖρε, λέγει. ἀτὰρ Λυσίας ἦν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἐν ἄστει.
Socrates: Beautifully said, fellow. But Lysias was, as it seems, in town.
//
(“What even is Athens?” asked the blind, somewhat frustrated, woman.)
When I was twelve, I got thrown off a pony. Bocara, reddish-velvety-brown, with black mane and tail and an opinion of her own. Or something less accessible than opinion. So we were out for a ride one day, and she spooked when she noticed something “off” in the other field, man or machine, she didn’t like it. The instructor said, go. The third time around was the third time she bucked, and I was thrown, landing dirt-hard on back, face-full of sky, chest spasm for air. (Damn.)
That day. Writing this other post, which was about (what we do with) time, made me late for what was next (on our schedule). Now as I was on the way in Sweet Orange, who also is an incubator, a protectrix of time, at present of Duckworth time, (listening to DAMN., by Kendrick Lamar, to summon this artist from the other side, of the earth,) we stopped to pick up bricks, (exchanged looks with Sundanese brick-makers, but the bricks were “belum matang”), then re-entered the churning sprawl of I-cannot-tell-you-how-many pale riders on motorbikes. (Sweet Orange drives slow behind a couple, two probably fine fellows, and total nerds, out on holiday, who, having not made it, push theirs up the steep slope of a ravine. Frustration metamorphs into sympathy, inside Sweet Orange, for how many of us, one, has been caught under such circumstances, but without the solid-pack of traffic to witness. To whiteness. Laughing sympathy, but sympathy, nonetheless.)
There is a body, and there is a virus. No, back up. There is an island, and there is a world. There is an interaction between these two things, the city and the jungle, (a person and a blog), and I interpret it as, There is a body, and there is a virus, and there is a coordinated response, of the body, to the entry of the virus, and I call it, an immune response. The virus multiplies. The immune system, to defend the body’s living soul, which is mine, which is sacred, targets viral particles for elimination and expulsion. The immune response is the xenophobia.
(I am a stranger. Xenophobia is relevant to me.)
An immune response, whatever that is, and all of its analogues, would be one way to know or understand a moving thing, something coming and going, or something that’s born, and dies, as well as something that has a wall, with people going in and out, no matter how porous, and oh, yes, laws, written, unwritten, and weird, an immune response. Athens also might have an immune response, with, well, a soldier’s DNA., who would target the foreign element, (disguised-stranger emoji), they would be a sort of philosophical guard dog, barking at everything they don’t already know. (The hounds of hate? Or of jealousy?) But in addition, Socrates, who might as well be on a leash today, has been led outside the wall. (Is it you, ghost-of-Snowden-flake?) Whereas the virus is at another professor’s total party house, seducing of-age students with unlicensed garfield merchandise, and the lines of the battle, here, are somewhat unclear.
Who is the aggressor? What needs a defense? (I thought we’d grown tired of the city?) (Everyone agrees, by the way, that this is the most boring part of the dialogue. Like a plane, delayed on the runway, it must be endured, and quickly, to make the connection in Singapore.) But whichever direction is inward, and which outward, we are being steered into Lysias, like a T-cell with confirmed coordinates. Except for one thing, which is, the coordinates are… algebraic. (It’s a Boeing-built plane.) The virus isn’t here. Or, what was the virus, again? Man, or machine. A gadfly, round the bud that forks the corner of a dark-lashed eye.
I woud never blame her, beautiful, spirited Bocara. She is a genius and a horse is never wrong. The instructor was a jerk, “instructors” nearly always are, but let’s be honest, the instructor wasn’t wrong. (And I held the crop.) I was a fool, and a child, and I won’t blame myself. But sometimes, on a horse, you must be direct, and you must welcome judgment day with open arms. I did not. Like I said, I am messy. Wrong was done and a lesson had to be learned. It was one of those moments around which everything changes, or breaks, and I carried Bocara with me, after that.
Fun fact. “No feelings involved” is impossible with horses. You can’t remove yourself, it’s impossible. She follows you, she sticks with you, you carry her, you might hide her, or become her without knowing it, or you love her, and her things that she sees, her ghosts and her witness, her trumpets and her fire, and she appears before you, at night, in your secret life (crying, confused). Something was beautiful, then everything went wrong. She/he/they haunt you. Hidden in your heart, in your tunic, or in the iPhone that you carry in your pocket, until it’s m.A.A.d. as Compton to tell what is the virus, and where is home. Silly Phaedrus, with his concealed scroll, and his leopard-skin pill-box hat, thinks it’s not-a-thing to step outside a wall. But, look,
there’s a war going on. Of all against one, or one against all, or all against all, (based on gender pronouns and deity preference), or it’s one against one, and it follows you, the war, tapping its pocket. Like blood, or a bloodhound, it will track you down, and you will be there, again. Landing dirt-hard on back, sky-full of face, chest spasm for air, (like I can’t breathe. Look,) a caught body, again. Until you win the war. Which you cannot win, because you are a single soul, brave, clever, damned Duckworth, fleeing from, pursuing, (whereto and wherefrom), human nature itself. You are so many terrible, body-caught things. You are Socrates, in America, you are Phaedrus, out of (what even is) Athens(?). On an island all-but-destroyed by pale riders, (no feelings involved), you are red horse, and pale rider. You are, the war, so it rules you, the war. Unless
(I) just love (you) and (learn
how to put down the weapon.)
//
(About.)
μουσικὴν ποίει καὶ ἐργάζου. // Mousiken poiei kai ergazou. // Make music and work at it.
(This message comes to Socrates repeatedly in his dreams, as Plato describes in the Phaedo, (at 60e6), which takes place on the day of Socrates' death by hemlock. Socrates also describes himself as experimenting with his interpretation of the message.
This is an example of a daimonic message, in Diotima’s✨ sense of daimon, which is something that goes in between the human and the divine. One might keep it as a mantra, or reminder, subject to interpretation…)
The Poem
ὦ φίλε Φαῖδρε, ποῖ δὴ καὶ πόθεν;
Beloved Phaedrus, where to and where from?
//
Holding (with love, and so
gently) dear Phaedrus
(my day, light-ephemera)
my first and undying
metaphor, for
holding (with love, and so
longing) as asking
(as humbled-home-making)
the perfected question
to keep you. Pan,
beloved, as the drawing-
together (from the inside)
of meaning, and lover
as embrace (from the
outside) of horizon, sun-
set to sunrise, as all-time,
is the heavy becoming light-
as-boundary at the edge
of a world. We are there,
together:
the hand
and the what-would-be-
held.
( As nature
I am birthing and dying
unquestionable irresponsive
a fleeing, hiding and
by-many-wanted thing. )
( As human
I am messy, interminable
a political and personal
history of hysteria, making
and remembering, desiring
and deceiving, a restlessly
in-between
word.
A fool and a monster,
my pillaged possessions
are images and accounts
of war, and music
is how I play failure
as comedy, as a
question for a problem
with a deadly and un-
summarizable sound. )
( As god,
I am end (of motion),
I am source (of motion),
I am being (of motion),
I am (hungry
for motion),
I am
may-we-be
love. )
Morningtime, in a garden. And what is
this, that was laid in my lap? That is si-
lent but asking, that seems sent, but scatters
leafing-out patterns of my un-formed self,
harmonic. I need to know. Is it male
or female, flesh-fire of creature, salad
scrumptious and/or ambrosial bane? Shall I
eat it, be eaten by it, become it
or come into dust, be taken, wind-swept
and tearful, or reborn as clean, unseen
green, after all? I must know. I cannot
not know its reflecting, it blooms when I
touch it, it shivers, it is water-light,
earth-dispersing, kaleidoscope versing,
tongue-teasing shadow of radiant tree.
//
(About.)
Pan //
(Is it)
the shiver
that
passes through your body
(to endings from beginning)
when
you make the connection
(from ending to beginnings)
and then realize
it isn’t you
who made it
(?)
Walking Through Walls (3/3) // Phaedrus 227α-β
Poros (and Poiesis) and Socrates (and Student)
Socrates is famous (then and now) for being without, (or against?), these two “things".
Socrates is (was) (generally agreed to be) a-poetic. That is, he doesn’t (didn’t) write.
Also, a-poretic (to be a-poros, to have no way out or through, at an impasse). He never leaves Athens. (Whadabout when he fought the war for Athens, Alcibiades slurs, symposium-crashing.) (And Meno claimed, that everybody agreed, that) Socrates inflicts a-poria on others. Anti-poros, as a weapon. They feel angry, embarassed, humiliated by him, so they put him on trial (and, by jury, convicted). Socrates sits (like Buddha) in a cell. Declines all plans, (from students et al.), to help him escape. Builds extra arguments to wall himself in. Invokes the law. (To be only himself, within only those walls.) (Admitted no poros. Other than,) he dies (died) in that cell.
(Deep in the city, a dead body where her heart should have been.) (Aporia Herself.) (Is it tragedy?) (Almost like that,)
wrote the student. (Never as herself, always of the other.) And she left the city. (Oh, she was angry? She didn’t like hemlock?) (She was sick of assholes with speeches?) (Some gross politicians?) (Her “pussy hat”?) (Well, things got weird.) (She abandoned her teacher. Her friends, her school, her family, civic responsibilities.) (She seduced a king? She was sold as a slave?) (She was run off and/or exiled by tyrants.) (Gave birth to a monster. A creature of gossip.) (Well, where was her heart?) Subjunctive, contrary to fact: Without her getting out, and writing a lot, (of SEO content), the words would have passed, with the man.
(The poros at the dark heart of Aporia. Is… what leads beyond city walls.)
Each soul is an argument. Across from, opposed to, in need of, the other, a romantic entanglement, a war between worlds, (the after, the before). Their interplanetary logics of love and their lawless reunion by meta/physical coup. (In a Platonic jungle. As dark hearts go, it’s lovely, and well lit.) (By following the law, he broke the law. Like, it’s broken now, like a chipped tooth on a fractured jaw. And they can’t fix it. So.) The lover lays a trap, (for the soul of the youth), while the poet lays a trap, (for whom?), (are they dead?), (are they mortal?), (do they even know Greek?), set ‘twixt crossed stars, in time out of hand. Spanning written word, and word, alive. Each being nothing if not caught in the snare of the other. (Marriage, divorce, remarriage, and?) And Phaedrus in the middle.
//
Walking Through Walls (2/3) // Phaedrus 227α-β
It isn’t trivial, from a human perspective, to translate words that are two-thousand years old. To carry meaning from past to present, (where to, where from?), of words, then, and now. Poros in practice. Requires naïveté, ambition, and the shameless exploitation of available tools.
Ποίησις (Poiesis)
ποιέω (Again, in middle/passive voice.) (Phaedrus is a middle/passive kind of fellow.) - to make, to do; to make, produce, create, bring into existence, to compose, to write (e.g. poetry), to invent. From which ποίησις - poetry, poem; creation, fabrication, production. From which English language words like poetry, poet, poem, etc.
Everybody knows what poetry is,
And anyone can do it.
To give shape, form, body. A finite instantiation of some (finite or infinite? Known or unknown?) purpose. Appearance (as alienated from being), surface (as alienated from depth), artwork (as alienated from the life of an artist). Inherently irresponsible, a letting go of responsibility, a thing for which responsibility has been denied. An ontological orphan. A “bastard”. (The inverted windegg? A fetus aborting its mother.) An amputation of self into indeterminate pieces (which the city, which the poem, which the self?). Nature gone weird. Frankenstein. Horcrux. Monster-being. Can hypothetically be tamed, but always at risk of making its own laws. A law unto itself. Sinister stuff, and not to be trusted. The action of I. The Mage, the apparent (non)being, (existence, ex + sistere), of the deck of cards.
(An attempt at coherence when history fails. A desperate measure. A talisman of) deathlessness. (A love letter. A good alternative to insanity or self-harm. A test at the limits of nature, a gamble for truth, a shot in the dark.) A prayer. (Example, it is poiesis for me to write and press “publish”.)
If you exit the city, you (have to, you can, you get to, it’s refreshing, to) make your own way, (the leisure of monsters), through un- (or other-) civilized spaces, “wilderness”, the (exterior? hostile? unknowable?) unknown. How reckless you are, how precariously tethered to pyramids in ice, ends and beginnings severed from sight.
Phaedrus passes through the wall to make, create, compose his walk, as a poet, writing a poem.
//
Walking Through Walls (1/3)
Φαῖδρος: παρὰ Λυσίου, ὦ Σώκρατες, τοῦ Κεφάλου, πορεύομαι δὲ πρὸς περίπατον ἔξω τείχους: συχνὸν γὰρ ἐκεῖ διέτριψα χρόνον καθήμενος ἐξ ἑωθινοῦ. τῷ δὲ σῷ καὶ ἐμῷ ἑταίρῳ πειθόμενος Ἀκουμενῷ κατὰ τὰς ὁδοὺς ποιοῦμαι τοὺς περιπάτους: φησὶ γὰρ ἀκοπωτέρους εἶναι τῶν ἐν τοῖς δρόμοις.
Phaedrus: From Lysias, Socrates, son of Cephalus, and I am going (πορεύομαι) for a walk outside the wall. For I spent a long time there, sitting since early morning. Persuaded by your fellow and mine, Acumenus, I take (ποιοῦμαι) my walk down the paths, for he says they remedy weariness better than the racetracks.
//
Two verbs get Phaedrus outside the wall, with Socrates following behind: πορεύομαι, from πόρος; and ποιοῦμαι, related to ποίησις.
Πόρος/Poros
πορεύω (Phaedrus uses the verb in middle/passive voice.) - to be driven or carried, to go, to walk, to go over, cross, pass over, traverse. From the noun πόρος - a means of passing a river, a ford, a ferry (e.g. Πλούτωνος πόρος, the Stygian ferry); the paths of the sea, a pathway, way, a passage through the skin (i.e., pores); a way or means of achieving, accomplishing; contrivance, device, resource. From πείρω - to pierce, to run through.
Phaedrus passes through the wall by poros. As through a pore in the skin, as a spear through your shoulder, as ferried across the river to Hades, as a way through an impossible problem.
Poros, who is a person, is mentioned at a symposium.
(A summary of Symposium, 203b-204a:)
Plato writes about Apollodorus,
(who is obsessed with Socrates),
who tells the story of Aristodemus,
(who is in love with Socrates),
who tells the story of Socrates,
(who is an expert at love),
who tells the story of Diotima✨,
(who has taught Socrates about love),
who tells the story of Poros (Πόρος),
who gets drunk at Aphrodite’s birthday,
and how Penia, (Πενία, Poverty),
who is a-poros and stuck at the doorstep,
schemes to lie beside Poros and conceive a child,
who becomes daimonic Eros, (Ἔρως, Love).
(A daimon, says Diotima✨, is what passes between human and divine, between not-having and having, and she spins the tale of a drunken hookup to show it.)
So. According to her story, (within a story), (x3 or 4), Poros is:
Other examples of poros include: Leaving a country, entering a country, im/migration in general and laws concerning these, imports and exports. The penetrability of political states, invasion, colonization, occupation, tourism, expatriation, migrant workers, the welcoming in of guests or strangers. Breaking or “bending” the law. Tax havens, other leakage. Doorways and windows into a house, out of a house. Small boats taken to big boats, ferries across rivers or between islands, cruise ships, other maritime vessels, airplanes, rocket ships, trains, other vehicles of ground transportation. Pores in the skin. Through which pimples, cysts, rashes, perspiration, body odor, hairs growing, wings growing from shoulders, a sprout breaking through the wall of a seed, a bud breaking through the wall of a stem. Other holes in the body, mucus membranes, organs of sensation, consumption, excretion, the mouth, the ears, the nose, the eyes, urethra, anus, vaginal canal. Sexual intercourse, sexual reproduction, birth canal, giving birth, producing a child or menses or a windegg. Eating, drinking, vomiting, passing gas, sneezing, burping, hiccuping, pissing, shitting, ejaculation, etc. Piercings and tattoos. Catching a virus or bacterial infection. Breathing in, breathing out, respiration, inhaling smoke or pollution or perfume. Taking medicine or a drug orally or intravenously or topically or as an inhalant. Seeing, listening, tasting, smelling, digestion, persuasion, education, miseducation. Conversation, dialogue, correspondence, gossip, rumor, media, news media, social media, “the internet”, blogging. Translation, metaphore, semaphore, analogy. Odysseus. Achilles is aporos, until he isn’t. The permeability of boundaries, membranes, definitions. Beliefs or opinions shattered, catharsis, to be wonder-struck, laughter, crying, compassion. Psychedelics. Scents, including the aromas of certain plants or plant parts (animal parts also?). Passageways between stages of life, changes in form, metamorphoses. Fantasies, dreams. The penetration or removal of any obstacle. Hermes, Hekate, Thoth, Ganesha, Hanuman, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, prophets and messengers and psychopomps, the Muse, Eros and other daimons (including Socrates' daemon), (who, almost always, says only “no”), angels, etc. The crack in every thing, the finitude of finitude, double negation, dialectic. To find a way through. That a person can change. Coming to be, passing away. A passage or transformation between life and death, death and life. Divine becoming human becoming divine, etc.
Human ingenuity, perseverance, desire, are drivers of poros. As are foolishness, recklessness, hamartia (missing-the-mark). Inherently ambiguous (vis-à-vis justice or injustice, good or bad, healthy or sick), always a risk, a vulnerability, in relation to the unknown. Poros is the empty eye of 0. The Fool, and the passage of each trump into the next. (Example, it is poros for me to write and press “publish”.)
//
(More here.)
Made an about page for Phaedrus replies. No wonder I was tired.
How Not to Break
Σωκράτης: καλῶς γάρ, ὦ ἑταῖρε, λέγει.
Socrates: Beautifully said, fellow.
//
People forget the absolute confusion it would throw us into. Our poor hearts. To be flirted with by Socrates!
Everyone reacted in his own way. There were puppies, pitbulls and poodles among us, Siamese cats, golden retrievers, kosher beef hotdogs, poisonous spiders and slithering snakes, all electrified, burning cheeks, clammy hands, contemptuous coughs, eyes rolling exaggeratedly behind backs, tea-drinking, name-calling, note-taking, knowing looks, mistaken engagements, pregnant pauses, drunken outbursts, drunken confessions, drunken makeouts, sneaking sweets into pursed lips, so many petty jealousies you wouldn’t believe.
Backstabbing, frontstabbing, it got ugly, abusive. Nobody wanted to see himself like that. Some went abstract, algebraic, symbolic, tried to ignore it, tied their hands as they slept. It exhausted us all. Some dismissed her for it, pretended cute compliments were sarcastic slights, secret glances a lie, the multi-entendres a meaningless flourish, intellectual metaphor, performative bullshit, while sneaking behind bushes. Some named it irony, her beloveds and her beautifully saids, a great number of grown men turned theatrically, cartoonishly evil, sending pornography to professional inboxes, these are historical facts, they just broke.
From her simple, sweet flirtation: they broke.
The question was always, how not to break.
(Hold it together?) What does he want. (Does he want it from me?) What do I want. (Why do I want it?) Do I want to give. (Do I have what he wants?) Do I believe him. (Is it about sex?) The stimulation of bodies to pleasure, more pleasure, until lost in the pleasure. (Reforged in pleasure?) Is it empty or is it full. (It or me?) Am I safe or am I in danger. (Which is the one that holds me together?)
The heart becomes a gaping question.
After all, this is a rite of passage. Few of us pass. (Pass into what?) The beautiful is what we call it when someone just does.
//
Aventurra
Φαῖδρος: παρὰ Λυσίου, ὦ Σώκρατες, τοῦ Κεφάλου, πορεύομαι δὲ πρὸς περίπατον ἔξω τείχους: συχνὸν γὰρ ἐκεῖ διέτριψα χρόνον καθήμενος ἐξ ἑωθινοῦ. τῷ δὲ σῷ καὶ ἐμῷ ἑταίρῳ πειθόμενος Ἀκουμενῷ κατὰ τὰς ὁδοὺς ποιοῦμαι τοὺς περιπάτους: φησὶ γὰρ ἀκοπωτέρους εἶναι τῶν ἐν τοῖς δρόμοις.
Phaedrus: From Lysias, Socrates, son of Cephalus, and I am going for a walk outside the wall. For I spent a long time there, sitting since early morning. Persuaded by your fellow and mine, Acumenus, I take my walk down the paths, for he says they remedy weariness better than the racetracks.
//
I travelled to Italy when I was twenty. On a summer break from college, and all the dead men vying for my attention, I hopped on a plane, flew across the ocean and landed in a place where everything was alive, possibly dangerous, and definitely meaningful.
I went with a friend named Mary, but as it turned out we had different travelling styles. She had a schedule to see as many museums as possible. I hit a few of the famous ones but mostly I wanted to sit around. I was lazy? Unserious? Yes, and, I just wanted to sit and watch, to inhale the perfumes and eavesdrop on conversations, to take it in through my skin. To walk for a while until there appeared another cafe and sit some more. Sip espresso or wine or a spritz and feel my way into the feelings of the cities and towns with their people and fashion and vespas and cathedrals and high heels on cobblestones and cigarettes and the tiny jazz club in a basement in Rome. I think I journaled, but I don’t remember. I was busy taking it slow.
So I went around Italy mostly by myself, no cellphones in those days. Among the things that I remember best are the Sistine Chapel, where I craned my neck to gaze at the Delphic Sibyl; and crying as I stood before “The School of Athens”. Rafael made everyone look almost alive, in the world of the dead, which was already my world. I spent several days basking in the quiet magic of the Boboli Gardens, in Florence, remembering Eden. The covered porticos of Bologna made it irresistably cozy for a walker like me. My pilgrimage up the Portico di San Luca to the sanctuary was a revelation. Flushed from exertion, I ate bread and charcuteries overlooking the sunkissed countryside of Emilia-Romagna.
I walked so much in Italy that I wore out my sandals. I hiked between the seaside villages of Cinque Terre. I watched Aida at the Arena di Verona and Turandot with the loggionisti at La Scala in Milan. I ordered food off menus with no idea what it was. I ate a lot of gelato. My favorite flavor combinations were pistacchio and banana, or pistachio and yogurt, or straciatella and bacio (chocolate hazelnut). I met a painter in Florence who smelled like D&G Masculine (nice) and he let me crash in his uncle’s empty studio. In Rome I made friends with two girls from Naples, and we sat in cafes, smoked cigarettes, drank wine, and talked about Dante’s Divine Comedy.
The last city on my itinerary was Venice, but Venice overwhelmed me completely. On purpose I missed my return flight. I called a parent on a public phone with a shitty connection and informed them that I wasn’t ready to come home. I remember stunned silence at the realization they were no longer in control. I was holding their daughter hostage. Luckily, they didn’t refuse to pay for a later return ticket.
Mary was long gone at that point, it was just me. Hostels were full because Venice was hosting Biennale. I made friends with some artists who introduced me to a waiter called Faustus who had an extra bed in his apartment. He let me sleep there for a few weeks, I was never sure why. Possibly he was lonely.
I spent the rest of the summer in Venice walking around and trying to get lost. I got lost until I couldn’t get lost anymore, until I recognized every bridge and every turn, every shop window display of handmade sandals or stitched journals, every arched doorway with steps where I could sit with a book or a sketchpad and pen. I sat and watched the water move, imagined I could feel Venice sinking. I wrote down lots of feelings. It was inexpressibly poignant, beautiful and sad, the Medici architecture and shuffling crowds of tourists, the gondoliers pretending that nothing had changed, the water reflecting cathedrals and rowhouses in ripples of antiquity and impermanence. I never wanted to leave. I wanted to haunt Venice like a ghost.
One time, while loitering around the Piazza San Marco, I met a young man who said he was in the navy. He didn’t speak English, but kept referring to la nave, and eventually communicated that his ship was in the canale. And did I want to come see it?
It was already dark when I stepped off the pier near the Giardini Reali and onto the little transport boat. I wobbled to an empty seat. There were a few others on the boat, also midshipmen, who nodded at me politely. The ship was anchored in the Laguna Veneta. I could see it as we approached, a gray-painted steel structure towering over black water, pale under the beams of its own lights. I climed the ladder up to the deck, wondering if this was a dream or if I was getting in over my head or what. The on-duty officer took my hand and welcomed me aboard.
In a world apart, I remember the feel of the fresh paint under my hands, sticky and slick, as the young sailor (called Ismail) gave me a tour, showed me around. I remember the breeze whipping my hair around my face, the lights of Venice reflected like golden spires on the water. I remember I was left alone for a moment, all quiet on the deserted bow, and I rested my hands on the cannons mounted to the ship’s deck. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply and whispered, these guns are not Athenian guns.
After dodging an awkward makeout session (I already had a boyfriend and this one was rather toothy), we got on the transport boat and went back to the Piazza. I kissed the sailor on the cheek and said thank you very much, it was nice to meet you. It was well past midnight. I snuck back into the apartment where I was a guest and slipped into bed. My heart was pounding in my chest as I replayed the night, in awe of my freedom, my recklessness, and the power of my beauty.
Youth is full of aventurra. May it always be so, wholly stupid and somehow divine. Every beautiful thing deserves to get lost for a time in the land of the living. I was radiant and glorious, I did not look down, and I was not burnt by the sun.
A few weeks later I returned to college, where we started early modernity and, soon afterward, 9/11 happened.
//
The Opening Question
Σωκράτης: ὦ φίλε Φαῖδρε, ποῖ δὴ καὶ πόθεν;
Socrates: Beloved Phaedrus, where to and where from?
//
Sometimes I long to go back. To when I first read these words, when I heard them from your lips and they were sweet words, these sweet and bitter words. I was young then, and beautiful I guess, and I was the one who you caught on the way. I was the one who you loved.
Now you are gone. These words are here, shapes on a page, but things have changed. I have changed. Meanings have changed. Has your love changed?
Did you ever love me at all?
Sometimes I wonder. Even in my salad days, we were never alone. It was never just you and me. It was always you, and me, and somebody else. You, and me, and the whole god-dammed city. I am not jealous. I am not angry. That is what made you who you were.
Who you are.
If there is one thing in this world I will never forget, it is this. Socrates came from Athens. Socrates died in Athens. Socrates, my Socrates, wouldn’t leave Athens any other way.
I too am gone from Athens, now.
//
ΦΑΙΔΡΟΣ / Phaedrus.
And I thought, if I imagine myself as an angel in heaven, what would I be doing? And I knew, I would be translating Plato’s Phaedrus.
Must be a snake nest in the garden because the cats have caught three babies so far. Small, brown, narrow heads, E says not dangerous but how they rear their heads and face you off… Then I had a dream some deity, reflected shimmering gold and black, commanded I build it a temple. It was terrifying.