Damn!!! he thought, or maybe yelled, he couldn’t be sure.
He was, as always, or at least for a very long time, feeling lonely, very lonely.
Since a nanosecond was as an eternity to him and eons as nanoseconds, feelings could be very confusing.
He relived the good old days in his mind which was the size and shape of the multiverse, at least he thought so, … his mother had told him it was so.
He’d just been one among many back then, each in his or her own domain with his or her own flock. A happy thunder god with a couple of wives and from time to time, intimacy with other divinities, usually female, and with humans as well.
Inanna and Ur, the good old days.
Before that damned Abraham had convinced him that he was alone in his divinity. And then asked him for the world. As if letting him screw his sister hadn’t been enough of a boon. Fuck Abraham and the horse he rode in on, although come to think of it, horses didn’t have humps on their backs.
Back then one could be a god of specific things, like creation, or destruction, or thieves.
Now he was utterly alone except for the echoes, and the damned prayers of all those babbling humans; they gave him migraines. And they wondered why he avoided them like the plague. They were a plague, look at what they were doing to the planet he’d made for them, well, not for the goyem, except perhaps for a few shiksahs. Funny that he didn’t really remember having made it, but all those books said he had, and if it was printed, it had to be true, revealed word of, … well, … him.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic consultant employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Prometheus looks warily at a large storage jar, a “pithos” (not a box), one once opened and seemingly somehow thereafter closed. It is making raucous noises but not being a “box” is neither a radio nor a television set nor a computer nor a cell phone. It seems incredibly ancient but somehow seductive. It has a tag. “Property of Anesidora, if found, please do not, under any circumstances open, … again”. A chorus shouts, “let us out! We’ll be good! We promise!” Prometheus assumes that he is just dreaming again and wakes with a start, cold sweat covering his body, a vulture at his side, smirking. Prometheus’ hands, as seemingly always, are shackled and he is hanging from a cliff bearing the well-worn hollows of his body. “Neither rain nor sleet nor storm” he thinks. From somewhere or perhaps everywhere, thunderous laughter shrieks. “Damned Zeus” whispers Prometheus. Nope, not a dream, he realizes.
From within the “pithos” a skinny, ill-kempt white young male with a bad complexion and uncut grizzly hair is pontificating. His wealthy parents look on, both proud and horrified. Consistency is not their strong point, they are orthodox oxymorons. The Pithos is like a woman’s purse. In a sense, it was the first purse. And it contains much more than the laws of physics permit.
“Veracity is dead”, the youth is shouting, “long live dysfunctional creativity, incoherent discontinuity; chaos, but drained of color and context; shades of gray lost in shadows batting away at echoes. Echoes imply a static source calling from the past but the past is for us to decide”. Apparently the youth believes himself a poet, a dark poet. He’s heard somewhere that dark poets are very successful with impressionable young ladies.
Strange that a cacophony of something akin to cheers from disparate multitudes can originate in such a relatively small container, even if it is a sort of purse, but it does, perhaps it has something to do with quantum physics and Schrodinger’s cat, as well. A monologue ensues:
The cheers are thunderous!!!! So thunderous that the Pithos cracks and everyone escapes. Millions of “everyones”, each being independent as anarchy requires. And that’s a lot or anarchists shouting in unison, many holding identical pre-printed signs and all wearing black, uniformish attire. Interesting.
Only the present counts, today is too long, too many variables but concurrently, not enough; make it minutes, or better yet seconds, or even better, nano seconds. Yesterdays are mutable and day before yesterday, more mutable yet. History always was a tapestry of lies so why not just keep it rotating, flexing, withdrawing and then, perhaps, every once in a while, or maybe, just once, returning. Hell, why crystalize into only one version, we know that can’t be right. If we recall every possible version of history, one has to be right, or at least probably right. What about an individual history for everyone, but not a static history, one that changes for each of us at least several times a day.
If the past is flexible we need never have regrets, need never be wrong, need never have made mistakes. All we need to create this panacea is the certain knowledge that everyone else is wrong, perhaps even insane, or even better, malevolent. They know we’re right and just refuse to admit it.
What a wonderful world and we owe it to our friends on CNN, and MSNBC, and the Huffington Post, and Fox News, and the New York Times and the Washington Post. Three cheers for our friends from corporate-media-land who are busy twenty-four hours a day seven days a week recreating our flawed reality and keeping things interesting.
The youth concludes his diatribe with a call to arms, … sort of:
Dystopia rhymes with utopia so it can’t be all bad!!!! And utopias sound boring. Dystopias are definitely not that. Rules are bad, liberty is great, boundaries are off-putting. Freedom now!!! Back to the State of Nature which we ought never to have left, assuming we ever did. Join the Dystopian Party now!!
Prometheus, however, is too busy to care, after all, once again, he is losing his liver in a very unpleasant manner. And worse, he has to listen to Zeus gloat: “so cousin, still think it was worth stealing the fire and giving it to your pets?”
Once more Zeus’ laughter thunders, as does his latest taunt: “Biden versus Trump, and we thought Clinton versus Trump was a show stopper. Can things get any better??” _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic consultant employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
“It’s in the nature of immortality” he explained, “or more accurately, potential immortality”.
“One can still be killed by intervening incidents such as runaway trucks, bullets projected from firearms owned by jealous spouses, etc., but one doesn’t die from old age, or from most diseases, nor does one age beyond a point of full maturity, somewhat older than one might like but better than an awful lot of alternatives. But given the flows involved, it’s rather more like livestream than photographs. One tends to be unsatisfied with periodic meals, and periodic drinks, and periodic intimacy. One is sated only when they’re continuous, although sequentially. Not that being sated is essential, or even the norm, it’s just that satisfaction requires a bit more continuity, given the continuous nature of our existence.”
“Repetition is what really sucks”, he mumbled, a phrase seemingly coming from nowhere, although it’s one he interjected more and more as time streamed on.
Her look was odd, the expression hard to define; kind of like jaded incredulity faded by too many inexplicable realities. Nothing about him seemed to make sense, least of all his explanations (all too often couched in the plural or the indefinite person), but then again, they tended to be impossible to disprove. Only death would do that and it seemed he’d been around for a ludicrously long time. And he didn´t seem to age although he’d been verging on old for as long as she’d known him.
She seemed to be catching up to him and she’d been relatively young when they’d first met.
He was certainly far from infallible though, certainly as far as she was concerned. And omniscient? Forget about it. And certainly as far from omnipotent as everyone else.
“So” …, he sort of pleaded, “… can I have dessert now?”
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic consultant employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic consultant employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic consultant employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Guillermo Calvo Mahé 