Book 3, Letter 11, to Xenophon, on Mountains.

Dear Xenophon,

I'd like to open with a quote from a living author, strange from me I know, but here it is.

“That night they rode through a region electric and wild where strange shapes of soft blue fire ran over the metal of the horses' trappings and the wagonwheels rolled in hoops of fire and little shapes of pale blue light came to perch in the ears of the horses and in the beards of the men. All night sheetlightning quaked sourceless to the west beyond the midnight thunderheads, making a bluish day of the distant desert, the mountains on the sudden skyline stark and black and livid like a land of some other order out there whose true geology was not stone but fear. The thunder moved moved up from the southwest and lightning lit the desert all about them, blue and barren, great clanging reaches ordered out of the absolute night like some demon kingdom summoned up or changeling land that come the day would leave them neither trace nor smoke nor ruin more than any troubling dream.”

From “Blood Meridian: or the Evening Redness in the west” by Cormac McCarthy

I guess I've been thinking about mountains lately. A white haired lady, a teacher who, now in her silver years has gone deaf, told me a story today. Many years ago, she traveled with her husband through Tasmania, where they came to a hollow mountain, wherin dark red stone caves were carved out by the forces of nature, and there the two of them sat in private pleasure drinking wine and eating a picnic.

Many years ago I climbed Mount Ossa, the tallest mountain in Tasmania, with three friends.  It was our third day on the trail and our water supplies were running low. We hoped to refresh our stocks from a creek on the far side of the mountain, but, as fortune would have it, halfway up the mountain, a tree had fallen beside the trail, tearing with it a large boulder and breaking open the earth where a natural spring now trickled gaily over the rock. We filled our bottles there and I remember the water had the most amazing flavour, trickling clean and clear and full of mountain power. Those mountain rocks were covered in a lush green moss and the view from the peak granted us a vista of our trodden path through the forests and valleys from Cradle Mountain, and ahead to the plateau called The Labyrinth, where only two weeks prior, a traveler had disappeared, and was never seen again, presumed dead.

Those mountains in Tasmania were not carved from fear, nor ordered out of the absolute night like some demon kingdom. They were shaded and shadowed beneath ancient forests, deep valleys full of the green secrets of a goddess who needn't be named, but whose sanctity was revealed to me in a waterfall glade at twilight where I gave my thanks and made a secret promise.

My hair grew longer after that night. Uncut for seven years, my curly locks became dreads and I wove stories and shells and glass beads and stories into them. Those mountains were perfect and beautiful and the gifts they gave me have lingered in my heart, lightening my spirit for the decades since that youthful adventure ended.

Your adventure, Xenophon, was something else entirely.

“They came to the mountain on the fifth day, the name of the mountain being Thekes. When the men in front reached the summit and caught sight of the sea there was a great shouting. Xenophon and the rearguard heard it and thought that there were natives of the country they had ravaged following them up behind, and the rearguard had killed some of them and made prisoners of others in an ambush, and captured about twenty raw ow-hide shields, with the hair on. However, when the shouting go louder and drew nearer, and those who were constantly going forward started running towards the men in front who kept on shouting, and the more there were of them the more shouting there was something of considerable importance. So Xenophon mounted his horse and, taking Lycus and the cavalry with him, rode forward to give support, and quite soon, they heard the soldiers shouting out, 'The Sea! The Sea!' and passing the word down the column.

Then certainly they all began to run, the rearguard and all, and drove on the baggage animals and the horses at full speed; and when they had all got to the top, the soldiers, with tears in the eyes, embraced each other and their generals and captains. In a moment, at somebody or other's suggestion, they collected stones and made a great pile of them. On top they put a lot of raw ox-hides and staves and shields which they had captured. The guide himself cut the shields into pieces and urged the others to do so too.”

This is just a scene, a moment, a fragment of time from over two thousand years ago, when men who had marched nearly a thousand of miles through territory filled with the mixed company of barbarians both wild and free, savage and noble, until, with a great triumphant shout, with songs and cheering, they erected a monument atop a mountain overlooking the sea.

Xenophon, thank you again, thank you always. Thank you from the generations already passed, and from the the generations yet to come. Thank you for surviving through the epic hardships of war and retreat, to write this inspiring account of heroism and adventure, the Anabasis.

With gratitude and respect,

Morgan

https://www.themaparchive.com/march-of-the-ten-thousand-401399-bce.html

PS. I can't find Mount Thekes on my modern maps, but these mountains south-east of Trapezus look magnificent.

Book 3, letter 10, To Cicero, on the defence of poetry.

Dear Cicero,

I've just read your speech, ProArchias

How can I praise a work of such exquisite eloquence, without doing it the grave injustice of describing it in language less praiseworthy than your own? If I am unequal to the task of description, what could I possibly write to you about this magnificent speech, that would not fall short of mere mimicry?

Yet, mimicry, it is said, is the sincerest form of flattery.

To study the lives of the great heroic men and women of history, and being inspired by their legendary virtues and actions, is, by your standard, a righteous way to live. These great people of our collective ancestry continue to weave their influence into every succeeding era, through the subtle charms of poetry, and through the sledge-hammer gravity and sweeping tidal force of historiography.

You Cicero, live on through your works. The world is made from the particles of, not only your flesh and bones, turned to clay in the earth, but of the substance and imagination of your written work. Through the ever fruitful minds of translators every bit as poetic as yourself, people of many nations, and in many centuries have become inspired to speak as you speak, to write as you write, to think and feel and to believe as you believe.

“Who then can reproach me, or who has any right to be angry with me, if I allow myself as much time for the cultivation of these studies as some take for the performance of their own business, or for celebrating days of festival and games, or for other pleasures, or even for the rest and refreshment of mind and body, or as others devote to early banquets, to playing at dice, or at ball?”

Who indeed, could reproach you Cicero, for your adherence to such study. “Because he supplies us with food whereby our mind is refreshed after this noise in the forum, and with rest for our ears after they have been wearied with bad language.”

Archias, whom you spoke the preceding lines in support of, must have been quite a man for you to praise him so highly, and to defend his right to Roman citizenship in the courts.

“Let then, judges, this name of poet, this name which no barbarians even have ever disregarded, be holy in your eyes, men of cultivated minds as you all are. Rocks and deserts reply to the poet's voice; savage beasts are often moved and arrested by song; and shall we, who have been trained in the pursuit of the most virtuous acts, retire to be swayed by the voice of poets?”

Oh let me be swayed, let me be lifted up by such sentiment. Yet, Cicero, in the study of your great style, in the careful reading of many great poets and authors, in my attempts to better my own skill in these arts, I must tread with humility and caution, lest my own natural confidence be turned through arrogance and into hubris.

Why, look you now how unworthy a thing

you make of me! You would play upon me; you

would seem to know my stops; you would pluck

out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me

from my lowest note to the top of my compass;

and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little

organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do

you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?

Call me what instrument you will, though you can

fret me, you cannot play upon me

Shakespeare: Hamlet. Act 3, scene 2, line 370 - 380

Humility then, is the act of maintaining a space, nay, a broad field, a verdant meadow, a sweeping vista within my mind, reserved as vacant space wherein MYSTERY may dwell. As Socrates is so oft quoted, to admit that the only wisdom is in knowing that I know nothing, is to admit that as my skill in writing and oratory develops, so too does the horizon of my ignorance. The more I learn, the more I am able to see the borders of my development, and to see beyond them into the unknown space of knowledge as yet unlearned, into the field of potential, lit by the pink glow of an ever rising dawn. Arcane flowers and trees and herbs grow there in that space in my mind, where I may walk at my leisure, leafing through the pages of history and listening to the echoing voices of the long dead.

Long may you be in the grave, but the night has yet to take from us all the light of your past glory, and it is by that glow, Cicero, that I am able to see.

With Love, Sincerity, Gratitude and Respect, I bow my head to you, Cicero.

Morgan

Book 3, Letter 9 To Ovid, on love, writing, and love.

Dear Ovid,

I've just read your book The Amores, for the second time in my life. I first read it in my early twenties and I never forgot it. Unfortunately, in my late twenties I went through a phase of getting rid of most of my possessions, and your book was one of the things that went out the door. However, I have purchased a new copy, and having read it, I felt inspired to write to you.

I will paraphrase from a favourite poem:

Bk 1, Poem 9 of The Amores

(Translated by Peter Green, 1982)

“Every lover's on active service, my friend, active service,

believe me,

and Cupid has his headquarters in the field.

Fighting and love-making belong to the same age-group -

In bed as in war, old men are out of place.

A commander in the field looks to his troops for gallant conduct,

A mistress expects no less.

Soldier and lover both keep night long vigil,

Lying rough outside their captain's (or lady's) door,

The Military life brings long route-marches – but just let his

mistress

Be somewhere ahead, and the lover too

Will trudge on for ever, scale mountain, for swollen rivers,

Thrust his way through deep snow.”

“Then take

My own case. I was idle, born to leisure en deshabille,

Mind softened by lazy scribbling in the shade.

But love for a pretty girl soon drove the sluggard

To action, made him join up.

And just look at me now – fighting fit, dead keen on night

exercises:

If you want a cure for slackness, fall in love.”

In writing to a friend about you, I said that the more I think about Love, the more it seems the only worthy topic for my pen. It is true that love is the inspiration for a great deal of my writing, even when it is not the romantic love that is the topic of much of your poetry. I am as often as not, driven to create by the agony of distance, and though I tend to speak of eclipses and of the Sun gone cold, I think that everyone knows what I am talking about. Whether it is a quarrel with my beloved, or a quarrel with myself, it is the force of love, and the power of its absence, that drives me to create like I do. Whether it is drawing, painting, writing or music, my urge to express the feelings of love within me drive me to keep late hours, and to avoid the company of kith and kin, so urgent are my needs to express such passions.

It is a tight-rope balancing act, to be inspired by my love for people, but to require long periods of solitary contemplation to properly describe and express that love. This must be a common experience of many artists, and I do not bemoan my experience, rather I speak of it in praise of the process we poets use to attain mastery of our expressions. We must spend long hours staring inwards, in order to reflect the light that shines upon our hearts. The bubbling joy I feel when my beloved smiles at me is enough to light candles without matches, to bake bread without an oven, to make my coffee sweet without sugar. It is enough to inspire love poetry.

The following words of love are my own:

Love in the morning

The rains fall overnight

and in the bright

morning

I breathe in your

love

and I breathe out

your love

and the world hums

a song in tune

with the falling leaves

Tangled as we are like seaweed upon the shore of our bed, our legs and arms and fingers woven together, we make a basket of our bodies, and nestled safely within, we whisper love to each other, over and over. We bask in the pleasure of the press of our hips and thighs and that special way that your shoulder fits beneath my arm. The spray of your long black hair caught in the bristle of my own, caught in the thistle of my beard. My lips upon your neck, we coil and uncoil over the dawn's slow hours, waking as the world is waking. Taking our time as kings and queens might in a realm of peace and contentment.

We rise, but remain in bed reclined against gigantic pillows, tasting the salt of lips in kissing, the salt of butter on toast, the sweetness of sugar in our coffee. The cats roam the halls searching for mysteries to solve while sunlight pours in through the thick jungle of potted plants outside our window. You read to me about a recent discovery of monumental significance regarding the converging of lines from the Nazca carvings, to the temples of Angkor Wat, while I, right with the world, write of the world, and of my place in your heart, in our bed, in the morning, in an age of Love and War and Significance.

My fingers

tangled in your long black hair

The sunlight

painting your beautiful pale face

the falling leaves

reflected in my eyes.

*

So, Professor of Amorous Affections, Doctor of Heartsick Poets, I will inscribe upon the tablet of history, the words, Ovid was my guide, and my beloved will be grateful to you as well for inspiring me to write such beautiful and affectionate words in praise of her virtue and loveliness.

Thank you Ovid.

With Gratitude and Respect

Morgan.

PS. I cannot end this letter without making reference to one more poem of yours, which has been stuck in my memory ever since I read it in my twenties, for the scenario you describe happens even now, and has happened to friends of mine. The complications of love and pregnancy are unchanged, though two centuries separate us.

Book 2, poem 13

“Corinna got pregnant – and rashly tried an abortion.

Now she's lying in danger of her life.

She said not a word. That risk, and she never told me!

I ought to be furious, but I'm only scared.

It was by me whom she conceived – or at least I assume so:

I often jump to conclusions.”

Book 3, letter 8 (Part 3 of 3) To Cicero, on his brother Quintus

Moving on from the war, there is something I discovered in your letters of the year 54bce. It seems that the political situation in Rome was worsening, the threat of a dictatorship loomed large in everyone's fearful minds and a particularly corrupt legal case was bothering you. You were still in the city when you wrote to your friend Atticus about the situation, and your feelings regarding it.

CLIII (a iv 18)

TO ATTICUS (In Asia)

October, 54BCE

“...We have lost, my dear Pomponius, not only all the healthy sap and blood of our old constitution, but even its colour and outward show. There is no Republic to give a moment's pleasure or a feeling of security. "And is that, then," you will say, "a satisfaction to you?" Precisely that. For I recall what a fair course the state had for a short time, while I was at the helm, and what a return has been made me! It does not give me a pang that one man absorbs all power. The men to burst with envy are those who were indignant at my having had some power. There are many things which console me, without my departing an inch from my regular position; and I am returning to the life best suited to my natural disposition—to letters and the studies that I love. My labour in pleading I console by my delight in oratory. I find delight in my town house and my country residences. I do not recall the height from which I have fallen, but the humble position from which I have risen. As long as I have my brother and you with me, let those fellows be hanged, drawn, and quartered for all I care: I can play the philosopher with you. That part of my soul, in which in old times irritability had its home, has grown completely callous. I find no pleasure in anything that is not private and domestic. You will find me in a state of magnificent repose, to which nothing contributes more than the prospect of your return. For there is no one in the wide world whose feelings are so much in sympathy with my own.”

Everyone who writes of you, even your brilliant biographer Anthony Trollope, speaks continuously of your deep and mutual friendship with Atticus. Everywhere the phrase 'my second self' is used to describe your feelings towards him, but in your very next letter, this time addressed to your brother Quintus, I discovered something that seems to counter this idea. Everyone thinks that Atticus was your closest, most trusted friend, but I think that there were things that you could not share, even with him.

CLIV (q fr iii, 5-6)

TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (IN GAUL)

Tusculum (October)

bc 54, aet 52

“...I withdraw myself, it is true, from all political anxiety and devote myself to literature; still, I will hint to you what, by heaven, I specially wished to have concealed from you. It cuts me to the heart, my dearest brother, to the heart, to think that there is no Republic, no law courts, and that my present time of life, which ought to have been in the full bloom of senatorial dignity, is distracted with the labours of the forum or eked out by private studies, and that the object on which from boyhood I had set my heart, "Far to excel, and tower above the crowd," is entirely gone: that my opponents have in some cases been left unattacked by me, in others even defended: that not only my sympathies, but my very dislikes, are not free: and that Cæsar is the one man in the world who has been found to love me to my heart's content, or even, as others think, the only one who was inclined to do so. However, there is none of all these vexations of such a kind as to be beyond the reach of many daily consolations; but the greatest of consolations will be our being together. As it is, to those other sources of vexation there is added my very deep regret for your absence.”

So you wrote to your best friend Atticus telling him that all Rome was going to hell in a hand basket, but that you didn't care. You were happy to spend time at home busying yourself with domestic pleasures and playing the philosopher. Yet in the same month, you wrote to your brother Quintus, who was still stationed thousands of miles away in Gaul, telling him that your are sorely hurt by the turning of events in Rome and that your heart is heavy with a sense of unfulfilled ambition, and the weight of censorship and oppression existing in Rome.

There are things, Cicero, which we cannot share with our closest friends. Your brother though, was someone whom you could confess your secret pains to, when you could not admit your true feelings to Atticus. Quintus was your blood. You grew up together, you raised your sons in each other's company, you cared for each other's sons when the other was away. There was a bond between you that seems far more magnificent than the polite, intellectual society that you shared with Atticus. I don't claim to know everything about you and your relationships...all I have are these letters, but when I read the above letter you wrote to Quintus, I caught a glimpse of something.

Just a glimmer at the bottom of the well.

Love, Cicero. Two thousand years after you and your brother were both murdered, your love still shines bright enough for me to see.

So that's all I wanted to write today. The morning sky is clouded and the air is cool. Tiny birds flock and chirrup in the Eucalyptus trees outside my bedroom window, as I write letters to you, my dear friend, Cicero.

With gratitude and respect.

Morgan.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Post Script: To my readers.

Dear readers from many nations.  I have recently released my first, full length, solo album.  Zebulon: Music of an Invisible Enclave.

You can listen, download, and purchase my music here:

www.zebulonstoryteller.bandcamp.com

Also, if you enjoy this blog, please spread the word among your friends.  

Thank you.  

With Gratitude and Respect.

Morgan.