To Julius Caesar on bias, perspective and deification.

Book 2, letter 18

Part 2 of 4

To Julius Caesar on bias, perspective and deification.

I can't tell you what the story of the Raven and the Buddha means, but I also think that not all stories are about answers.

Your story, Caesar, and all the Caesars who came after you....well, I've only just begun to learn.

If you didn't plan your own assassination, then the lessons we learn from your life are very different. Perhaps your murder was just popular custom. The Roman senate had been murdering popular leaders for a hundred or more years by the time they got to you. Your death actually appears to be par for the course. You strove to become a tyrant, and when you reached too far, your enemies slew you. Pretty straight forward.

But then there was all that money, and all that land that you left to the people in your will.

It all seems planned, like your real goal was immortality, and you didn't care if you had to be killed in order to achieve that goal.

Yet, in a blunt and blood spattered sequence, Brutus killed you, then Marc Antony killed Brutus, then Marc Antony killed himself and Octavian took over Rome, becoming the first Emperor. That might be a ridiculously simplified summary of events, skipping over years and years of civil war, but it illustrates something of the nature of the times; violent military force proved itself more powerful than civil process. As Pompey said, “Stop quoting the law to us, we carry swords.”

Pompey

Public opinion on your life is not so much divided, as it is diverse. There are hundreds of books about you, scholars from all over the world debate and discuss the evidence, there are plays, and movies, and novels and even comic books and children's cartoons about you. Which is to say that your story is a difficult one to untangle from the bias of your contemporaries, as well as from the perspectives of modern society.

Bias and Perspective.

Is hubris the over extension of bias? Is bias, self confidence taken beyond a measure of balance? If I am confident in Cicero's, or Plutarch's or anyone's opinion of you, am I not simply adopting another's bias? It actually seems impossible to separate the truth from fantasy in the epic tale of the decline of the Roman Republic. Our lives are made up of facts and feelings and events and stories and we are as often mislead by our own assumptions as we are guided correctly by confident assertions of fact. So what is the difference between bias and perspective, when confidence so often leads to prejudice and blind assumptions?

It would be so much easier if I could just hate you Caesar, but your story is far too complex to allow bias to dictate my feelings.

To Gaius Julius Caesar; on bias, perspective and deification

Book 2, letter 18

Part 1 of 4

To Gaius Julius Caesar, on bias, perspective and deification

*

Written: December, 2018CE

Dear Caesar,

It would be so much easier if I could just hate you. Being friends with Cicero makes me see you in a pretty bad light sometimes, but your story is far too complex to allow bias to dictate my feelings. Cicero seemed to have conflicting feelings about you, at times declaring your audacity tyrannical, at others he declared you to be a 'second self” to him, a true friend. The truth is never clear when studying history. All we have are stories, opinions, artifacts...

I've been listening to an audio recording of your Commentaries on the Gallic War. (Translated by Thomas Rice Holmes in 1908), I've been reading some of Cicero's letters to you, and about you, and I have been listening to my favourite history podcaster, Dan Carlin, he has a lot to say about you too, Caesar.

Anthony Trollope says in his biography of Cicero, that there is no better way to understand someone than through their own words, and certainly that seems to be the best way to learn about how you viewed the events of your own life. However, having read Plutarch's biography of your life, Caesar, having watched movies about you, and having read your story summarised by many historians, I have a set of assumptions which I must be aware of, a bias.

I guess that's a good way to open this letter to you, Julius Caesar.

Beware of bias

I should have those words engraved in bronze and put on my desk. But then I ask myself, what exactly is the difference between bias and perspective? Could we say that bias is an unconscious influence, while perspective is conscious? Or is it better to say that bias is prejudice, while perspective is...what?

The consequence of our whole life story?

My perspective is unique to my time and my culture, and though history shows me that people are pretty much the same all over the world, and throughout all time, I believe that my perspective is unique and I assume that my perspective has a relationship with facts and with truth. I also believe that objectivity, while not truly attainable, is approachable and a goal worthy of striving towards.

But subjectively, in my uneducated opinion, you Caesar, are:

heroic/homicidal

genocidal/thorough

power mad/perfectly confident

You seem to be self aware, you seem to know exactly what you are doing, every step of the way. Almost as if you walked to the senate on that day in March, knowing, having planned, having prepared yourself for death. I suspect you deliberately kindled the very idea of your own murder.

The ultimate in espionage, to arrange your own assassination.

Could you see the future? Did you know that the Republic was rotten to the core, and that nothing short of divine hubris could break it apart and rebuild it?

What sort of God were you, Julius? You led armies that crushed whole nations, were you are a God of war? At whose temple could you worship, once you became divine?

Who do the Gods bow to? If anyone might know, it seems prudent to ask you, Caesar.

I have a story to share with you. It is a little segment from my new novel.  This story is called 'The Raven and the Buddha'. The Buddha, is a human who became a god through the practice of meditation and the breaking of his karmic cycle. I thought you might like to hear a story about someone who, like you Julius, aspired to divinity, though with very different outcomes, and very different intentions.

The story is also about the Raven God, who was a human once, but that is a story for another day...

*

The Raven and the Buddha

Sometime in the past, the Raven had to enter hell. It is not known why, but it is safe to assume that he had no other choice. The gates of hell are guarded, and the keeper asks a price. The First Demon - The Blackness, Despair - demanded the toll.

"What price now?" The Raven asked.

"The price is for later. One day we will ask for our due, and it will be paid. That is the price."

Having no other choice, the Raven paid the price, and shook hands with The Black.

In Hell, The Raven bore witness to the furthest reaches of life without boundaries, without reserve. Everything in Hell is an extreme of itself, there is no middle ground, no passive stance, no ceasefire. There he met with a Demon of Greed who asked him to deliver a message to the Buddha, inviting him to dinner. The Demon sat in a great feasting hall where every extinct species ever known upon the earth had been burned black in ovens too hot for clay, and served, smoking, upon broken plates. The Demon stared down with compound eyes, listened with compound ears, and spoke with a compound voice. His form was greedy for space, greedy for sound, consuming everything. The Raven felt his breath begin to leave his body as the Demon rasped in multiple mantras:

Take this invitation to the Buddha Take this invitation to the Buddha Take this invitation to the Buddha Take this invitation to the Buddha Take this invitation to the Buddha Take this invitation to the Buddha Take this invitation to the Buddha...

The Raven, with eyes averted, took the invitation from the Demon and left. Passing the gates of Hell again, the keeper nodded and reminded him of his debt.

The Raven delivered the invitation to the Buddha, who sat upon a Lotus Throne in the gentle uplands of heaven's great empire. The Buddha laughed, not touching the message.

"I dined with him last night, and he invites me to dine again tonight! Ha! He is greedy even for enlightenment."

"Will you go?"

"Of course I will."

So the Raven returned to Hell, and was told at the Gate that payment was not required a second time. The feasting hall was thick with the smoke of extinction, an obscuring haze preventing the Raven from having to look upon the Demon a second time. "The Buddha will dine with you tonight." Said the Raven.

You may leave, was the reply.

The Raven made to leave the hall, but, obscured by the smoke, he decided to hide himself in the cavernous ceiling, and folding himself between two shadows, he lay in wait. The smoke boiled thick from the endlessly burning meat, so thick, that when the Buddha arrived, the Raven could only see a blurry dark shape, and hear muffled voices as the Demon and the Buddha conversed. Gradually, the smoke began to clear and the feasting hall became visible. The tables and chairs were gone, the wretched, inedible death feast had vanished.

Upon the floor sat a solitary man dressed in heavy robes, staring into a mirror, and speaking to himself.

The Raven left hell.

To Tacitus: on the treatment of the dead

Book 2 Letter 17

Part 3 of 3

To Tacitus: on the treatment of the dead

Tacitus, this letter has been about war, but I also love to write about music, and everywhere I look, I find stories of music in war. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, such tales are always instructive of deeper values, and of the nature we all share as humans.

Again, the article by Friedman provided me with this story that made me laugh.

Miami Herald writer Guy Gulotta recalled his experience with PSYOP in a feature piece entitled “Master of the Game,” written for his newspaper in 1989. Guy was a Navy reserve lieutenant (junior grade) assigned as commander of a small navy Patrol Craft Fast, also known as a PCF or "Swift Boat." He was stationed on a semi-permanent base on pontoons moored in the Cua Lon River in 1970.

“My crew pointed this out to me the first time we were instructed to cruise the canals playing tapes of "The Wandering Soul," a howling banshee sermon promising eternal damnation to any Viet Cong who didn't lay down his weapons and join up with us right away. Nobody on the boat understood the words, but any boat that played it usually got hit with rockets. "The Wandering Soul," as Seaman Sherwood J. Drumheller told me, "is Number 10, and dropping off the chart.”

Unfortunately, I pointed out, we were the only boat on duty that had a functioning PSYOP system - a loudspeaker. "We’re going to have to play something," I said.

"Great," said Drumheller, who was 19 and the only normal person on the boat besides me. He favored Steppenwolf, Credence or the Stones, but would also go with Santana because "some of the words are foreign."

Boatswain's mate Hogan, who was from Lubbock, and had no known first name, hated Steppenwolf, but offered Buck Owens or Dolly Parton in exchange.

"Not heavy enough," I concluded. I chose Ike and Tina Turner (Workin' Together), pointing out that Tina, like Dolly, was a girl, and she sang Honky-tonk Woman (Stones) and Proud Mary (Credence), which, incidentally, was about a river boat. Besides, she had a voice that could melt steel; Charlie would love it.

And it worked. For six hours in the middle of the night Tina Turner ripped through the forest like a chain saw, and we didn't hear a single gunshot or see a single muzzle-flash. "The Wandering Soul" was never heard again on the Cua Lon River.”

*

In 15CE, Germanicus and his centurions buried their comrades on the battlefield, their bones having lain undisturbed for six years where they fell. The centurions worked together in this, they shared in the grim task and all who were present knew the truth of it. This kind of work is written about frequently by many ancient authors, the stripping and burying of one's dead allies was a common part of every soldier's wartime experience. Together they shouldered this burden. In my reading of modern sources I have found a different kind of story though, that of the army mortician, whose work takes place far from the battlefield, and whose struggles are far more lonely than that of their front line comrades.

From an article on the subject of Vietnam wartime morticians, written by Matthew M Burke for Stars and Stripes, I found the following.

The mortuary men got through it by trying to shut down their emotions. However, they still had to have respect for the grim task at hand.

“We treated the remains of the soldiers that were killed with respect,” Fruendt said. “It was sad but you had to do the job right and you had to treat them like a member of the family.”

For Redlinski, it was cathartic to talk to the dead.

“I would say, ‘Sorry I have to do this. I have to get you back to your family.’”

The Army mortuary personnel were outcasts, shunned by their peers because of their job.

“We stayed to ourselves,” Redlinski said. “People thought, ‘Oh there’s death, I don’t want to be near you.’”

Fruendt remembers heading to the chow hall with the members of his unit one day after work. They had all showered and were wearing fresh clothes. They sat down and started eating. Before long, they realized that everyone had cleared away from them.

“The smell was vicious,” he said. “No matter how much you wash your hands or clothes, it permeates you,” Redlinski added. “It permeates your skin.”

Redlinski said that the smell even reached the troops outside the mortuary.

Just before Fruendt left Vietnam in the fall of 1968, a new, bigger, better mortuary had been built at Tan Son Nhut. This one was far away from the other troops.

“We were kept away from the main body of troops because it was demoralizing,” Redlinski said.

“Most guys never knew we were there.”

The Army’s mortuary personnel are still the experts in recovery, identification, preservation and safeguarding remains until a deceased service member can be sent back home to their family. It is one of the most important missions during war, Ellerman said.

“There is no better way to honor the fallen than to return them back to their home,” he said.

That is still the mission, one that is still largely unheralded.

*

So I guess that's what I wanted to write to you about Tacitus. Two paragraphs from your book sent me on an incredible journey of discovery, uncovering stories from a war I thought I was already quite familiar with. Every day it seems I am shown the incredible scope of my own ignorance. It is impossible to draw conclusions, or to make judgements. I am a student, perpetually seated at the feet of teachers far more knowledgeable than myself. I am particularly grateful to SGM Herbert Friedman for his writings which have featured heavily in this letter.

Just as Germanicus helped in the digging of graves and so shared in the grief of all present, I hope that I, in discussing these difficult stories from our collective history, can share in the burden which is all too often, heaped unsquarely upon the shoulders of our soldiers, and who, long after the fighting is done, must bear the weight of the tragedy of war.

We are all the inheritors of traditions which can be traced back to the earliest of our ancestors. Theseus, the ancient Greek hero, is named as the first commander of antiquity to declare that the bodies of the enemy dead should be returned to their families. Now, some two and a half thousand years later, the Australian army is continuing what Theseus started, and through the courage and dignity of peacetime service, are attempting to restore to our past enemies, the spiritual resolution they have craved for decades.

Perhaps some of those wandering souls can find their homes again, and perhaps their whispered prayers of thanks might reach our living dreams, and perhaps together we might find peace.

I think it is worth the effort.

Thank you Tacitus, your book is a magic mirror.

With gratitude and respect.

Morgan.

PS.

For further reading, the articles I have quoted from can be found here:

The Wandering Soul tapes of the Vietnamese War (Article by SGM Herbert Friedman)

http://www.psywarrior.com/wanderingsoul.html

Operation: Wandering Souls (Australian Army operation)

https://vietnam.unsw.adfa.edu.au/the-operation-wandering-souls-project/

The article about morticians experiences during the Vietnam War

https://www.stripes.com/news/special-reports/vietnam-stories/features/for-those-who-prepared-vietnam-s-fallen-a-lasting-dread-1.309701

P.P.S Cabanatuan, the Philipine POW camp during WWII, also has some interesting stories relating to the recovery of the bodies of dead soldiers.

Book 2, letter 17 - To Tacitus: on the treatment of fallen foes

Book 2, Letter 17

part 2 of 3

To Tacitus: on the treatment of fallen foes

*

Tacitus, we go now from the bones of one story to the soul of another.

In my broader reading, I keep finding references to the manner in which the dead of war are treated in different ways. From the earliest Greek references of Theseus returning the bodies of fallen enemies to their kin, to the modern day accounts of atrocities committed during the Vietnam war, the way people feel about dead soldiers makes for an interesting analysis of our sense of humanity and honour.

I hadn't originally planned to write about this, I was hoping to get to the weird black magic curse that killed Germanicus, but in reading further about modern practices regarding the bodies of fallen enemies, I discovered something truly fascinating.

Operation Wandering Souls, is an Australian Army initiative where mementos and artifacts taken by Australian soldiers during the Vietnam War (1965 – 1975CE), are being returned to Vietnam in an effort to locate some of the 300,000 Vietnamese missing war dead. A further part of this project, is a map of overwhelming detail of every single combat encounter involving Australian soldiers during the war. The Australian Army documented every enemy body found, and recorded details of the burials which were done at the combat sites. The map links photos of the location, photos of the soldiers involved, and images of any mementos or artifacts taken from, and now returned to the site.

Link to: Australian Army Battle Map - Operation Wandering Souls

I have a fascination with certain aspects of war. War seems to encapsulate all the worst things about the human species, but what interests me is the way that in the middle of all that horror, some people are capable of both nobility of purpose and compassion for their enemies.

Some of these stories cast long shadows across time, and whether we know about it or not, we stand in those shadows every day.

The lost souls of war are buried in shallow graves, and Vietnam has ghost stories enough to send chills down my spine. You see, the Australian Operation: Wandering Souls, is not the first of that name. During the Vietnam war, the American and Australian armies also had an operation under the same name, but their goal was not to return lost artifacts, or to help locate the missing bodies of fallen foes. Quite the opposite.

There is a popular belief in Vietnam, with its roots in Buddhism, that if a person dies while away from their home, and if their body is not buried with the proper ceremony, the soul will wander lost forever, tortured by demons, suffering the eternal hunger of the dead. The American PSYOPS division (with the involvement of other allied forces) intentionally played upon this cultural/religious belief. Through the use of loudspeakers attached to helicopters, boats, aeroplanes, or carried on the backs of soldiers, they played at incredible volumes, special recordings made to simulate the sounds of screaming hungry ghosts, with recordings of crying children begging their fathers to come home, accompanied by the religious funeral dirges familiar to all Vietnamese people. These recordings were only ever played at night, and some of the aeroplanes used in this operation were able to fly in such a way (at a certain altitude and engine RPM) as to make their engines inaudible from the ground below, while the howling sounds of wandering ghosts could be heard by the soldiers huddling even in their underground tunnels and bunkers.

In the article written by SGM Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.), entitled The “Wandering Soul” tape of Vietnam, I found many worthy stories, poems, anecdotes, photographs and newspaper articles which I would love to share a select few with you.

I will begin with the Vietnamese poet, Nguyen Du, from his poem “A call to wandering souls”

“Year after year exposed to wind and rain,
on the cold ground they lie, sighing.
At dawn, when the cock crows, they flee,
only to grope their way again when night comes”

“Strangers have buried you in careless haste,

no loved ones near,

no proper rites...

...and under the wan moon,

no kindly smoke of incense wreathes for you.”

Dan Carlin (a history podcaster) said that history doesn't repeat, but sometimes it rhymes, (and I'm sure he was quoting someone else...), but the following story of the Jungle of Screaming Souls seems a haunted parallel to the Teutoburg forest.

Bao Ninh, a former North Vietnamese soldier and author of 'The Sorrow of War' (1991), tells of an area called the jungle of screaming souls where the North Vietnamese 27th Battalion was wiped out except for ten survivors by American and South Vietnamese troops. He says:

“From then on it was called the jungle of screaming souls. Just hearing the name whispered was enough to send chills down the spine. Perhaps the screaming souls gathered together on special festival days as members of the Lost Battalion, lining up in the little diamond-shaped clearing, checking their ranks and numbers. The sobbing whispers were heard deep in the jungle at night, the howls carried on the wind. Perhaps they really were the voices of the wandering souls of dead soldiers.

But Tacitus, I would not do this tale justice if I only shared with you the written legends and poetry of war. I'm not shy of the dirty truth, so here is a recording of one of the Wandering Souls tapes. SGM Herbert Friedman summarises one of the tape scripts in this way:

Link to: Wandering Souls Ghost Tape #10

“In general, the messages were as follows:

Girl's voice:

Daddy, daddy, come home with me, come home. Daddy! Daddy!

Man's voice:

Ha! (his daughter's name). Who is that? Who is calling me? Oh, my daughter? My wife? Daddy is back home with you, my daughter! I am back home with you, my wife. But my body is gone. I am dead, my family.

I…..Tragic, how tragic.

My friends, I come back to let you know that I am dead! I am dead! It's Hell, Hell! It is a senseless death! How senseless! Senseless! But when I realized the truth, it was too late. Too late. Friends, while you are still alive, there is still a chance you will be reunited with your love ones. Do you hear what I say? Go home! Go home, my friends! Hurry! Hurry! If not, you will end up like me. Go home my friends before it is too late. Go home! Go home my friends!”

U.S PSYOP soldier stands watch as an ARVN soldier broadcasts a surrender appeal. -

I think that people do things for a reason, or rather, nothing is done at random. The experiences of humans at war are not irrelevant to civilians, rather, sometimes I feel that military customs shed light on civilian customs as well. Though we don't talk about these things, we all have beliefs about the dead, some instinctive, others deeply ingrained social ideals. The way we treat our enemies, and how we think of them alive or dead, is, I think, hugely representative of our social beliefs at large. It raises questions of self respect, compassion, nobility and justice. It is a massively convoluted subject that cannot be summed up in any sort of glib and shallow manner, but sometimes an army motto is just the thing to set the wheels of the mind turning.

The American 5th Special Operations Squadron, a group who used the Wandering Soul tapes had the official motto “The truth shall make them free,” but their unofficial motto was “Better to bend the mind than destroy the body.”

                Helicopter Tape Deck Playing a Propaganda message

There's more to come, Tacitus, but that will have to wait....

Book 2, letter 16

Part 1 of 3

To Tacitus: A ghost Story: from Teutoburg to Vietnam

                                           11th C transcript of Tacitus' Annals

*

Dear Tacitus,

When I started reading your book, The Annals, I didn't know much about you, or the era you write about. I've spent some months reading about the Roman Republic, learning the stories of senators and consuls and studying the downfall of the quasi-democratic system that saw Julius Caesar and Cicero assassinated. 

But you, Tacitus, aren't from that era, you lived about a hundred years after Julius Caesar, and you wrote about the early Emperors, Octavius (who changed his name to Augustus) and Tiberius and a lot more, but I've only read books one and two of your Annals so I don't know the rest of the story yet, but I thought I would write to you about my impressions so far.

But first, you knew Emperor Nero didn't you? His name has echoed through the centuries to be a synonym for madness and cruelty. “Nero fiddles while Rome burns” is a common phrase meant to represent the worst kinds of managerial incompetence. Even those from our era who have never heard of you, have heard of Nero. But twenty years or so after Nero came Domitian, and though his name is less recognised, you remember his tyranny thus:

“Even Nero turned his eyes away, and did not gaze upon the atrocities which he ordered; with Domitian it was the chief part of our miseries to see and to be seen, to know that our sighs were being recorded.”

When Domitian was assassinated in 96CE, you expressed the relief felt by everyone, but add that many who still lived were no more than “survivors of themselves”. You say further that:

“We witnessed the extreme of servitude when the informer robbed us of the interchange of speech and hearing. We should have lost memory as well as voice, had it been as easy to forget as to keep silence.”

I've spent a bit of time criticising Cicero for loving the Republic, ruled though it was by tyrants and butchers, but you lived through the nightmare that Cicero worked so hard, and failed to avert, and in reading your accounts of the despotism of later Emperors, the love that Cicero held for the old forms of oligarchy suddenly seem so much more defensible.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, I wanted to write to you today about the years 9CE to 19CE

It's a ghost story, and its petty famous in certain circles.

Imagine tens of thousands of Roman centurions, wandering in the haunted forests of Germany, fighting through the trees and rivers and ravines and all the sorts of places that are very good for guerilla soldiers, and not so good for Centurions. They were fighting an enemy who had defeated the Romans many times before, and the dark forest soil became littered with Roman dead.

But I don't want to start there, lets back up to the story of Arminius.

                                               Arminius

From what I understand of his story, it goes like this. Arminius was a German, of the Cherusci tribe. When he was a boy, the Romans came to his village and demanded hostages as way to bind a treaty, and to keep the tribes in servitude to Rome. This taking of hostages was a common diplomatic practice, and has been for centuries with people all over the globe. So, Arminius was taken from his family and sent to Rome to be raised, where he was educated, trained and eventually, through his displays of both martial prowess and commanding wisdom, was put into a position of some authority in the Roman army. As a fully grown man, he was then sent back to Germany to help subdue the tribes there who were always rebelling and causing trouble. Arminius made it back to his home village, he even met his father who had given him up to the Romans, and for a time, it seemed that Arminius would be the perfect deal maker between the Roman invaders, and the German tribes.

Arminius though, betrayed the Romans in spectacular fashion, and in 9CE he covertly organised a massive German rebellion, eventually destroying utterly, three Roman legions (about 15,000 men) commanded by a man named Varus. 

Luring them into the dark and swampy Teutoburg forest, Arminius managed to sever the Roman supply lines, ambush the Centurions with savage efficiency, and eventually forced a battle ending in horrific slaughter and fire. Very few Romans escaped.  The commander, Varus, committed suicide.

Their bones were left to soak in the mud.

             Otto Albert Koch - The Battle of Teutoburg Forest (1909)

You wrote about those bones, Tacitus, and it's those bones that I wanted to talk about, but first I have talk about the Roman Commander who was sent to avenge the dead.

Germanicus Julius Caesar was the commander sent by Emperor Tiberius to avenge the death of Varus. He was eventually successful (after a fashion) in his wars to subdue the Germans, and though he died quite young, as a result of a mysterious black magic curse, (or so the rumors go), his achievements are still recorded with great pride by you, Tacitus. During his campaign against Arminius, Germanicus found in the dark Teutoburg Forest, the remains of those Roman legions of Varus, and the two thousand years from then till now do not reduce the grim sense of haunted terror I find in your descriptions of that day.

                                 Germanicus Julius Caesar

From the Church & Brodribb translation of The Annals, published in 1952.

Book One, section 61 & 62

“In the centre of the field were the whitening bones of men, as they had fled, or stood their ground, strewn everywhere or piled in heaps. Near, lay fragments of weapons and limbs of horses, and also human heads, prominently nailed to trees. In the adjacent groves were the barbarous altars on which they had immolated tribunes and first rank centurions. Some survivors of the disaster who had escaped from the battle or from captivity, described how this was the spot where the officers fell, how yonder the eagles were captured, where Varus was pierced by his first wound, where too by the stroke of his own ill-starred hand he found for himself death. They pointed out too the raised ground from which Arminius had harangued his army, the number of gibbets for the captives, the pits for the living, and how in his exaltation he insulted the standards and eagles.

And so the Roman army now on the spot, six years after the disaster, in grief and anger, began to bury the bones of the three legions, not a soldier knowing whether he was interring the relics of a relative or a stranger, but looking on all as kinsfolk and of their own blood, while their wrath rose higher than ever against the foe. In raising the barrow, Caesar (Germanicus) laid the first sod, rendering thus a most welcome honour to the dead, and sharing also in the sorrow of those present.”

                        The Suicide of Varus - Martin Disteli

*

So I've gotten to the bones of the story, Tacitus, but from here I'm going to take you among the wandering ghosts of the Vietnam War. 

We humans are a peculiar species...

Book 2, letter 15

Part 2 of 2

To Marcus Aurelius on meditation, compassion and laying down in the long grass...

*

Dear Marcus,

I apologise for interrupting my letter to you, the funeral of my friend seemed too important to pass over. I have had some time to think, and to read more of your book.

Sometimes, just sometimes, my questions disappear, and in their place is a certain empty feeling, where my mind ceases spinning and...well... I will quote from you again, Marcus, from Book Two of your Meditations, this time from the 1862 George Long translation.

“Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in flux, and the perception is dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgement. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and that which belongs to the soul is a dream and vapour, and life is warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion. What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and one only, philosophy.

But this consists in keeping the daemon (spirit, essence, power) within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens, and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every being is compounded.

But is there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing into each other, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all elements? For it is according to nature, and nothing is evil, which is according to nature.”

So Marcus, or perhaps, more respectfully, Emperor Aurelius, your book is the sort of text that one might carry upon one's person throughout all the stages of life, and refer to it in times of trouble or of happiness. Your book seems very popular in my time, even venerated. A lot of people write about it, and how important it has been in their lives, personally. I read one person comically suggest that they wanted to have your entire book tattooed on their body, another wished that you were their real father, rather than the absent, unknown man who contributed to their actual birth.

I will leave you, Marcus, with this, from the Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam, the Avery/Heath-Stubbs translation, section 50. Written sometime between 1048 and 1131 CE, in north-eastern Persia.

Oh what a long time we shall not be and the world will endure,

Neither name nor sign of us will exist;

Before this we were not and there was no deficiency,

After this, when we are not it will be the same as before.

Does that sound familiar, Marcus?

With gratitude and respect,

Morgan.

*

Post Script.

Book VII.

2002, Hays Translation

14 - Let it happen, if it wants, to whatever it can happen to. And what's affected can complain about it if it wants. It doesn't hurt me unless I interpret its happening as harmful. I can choose not to.

15 – No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, “No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my colour undiminished.”

*

I thought my letter to you was done, but this afternoon, drinking coffee on my front porch and reading your book, I discovered the above passages.

My life has been quite stressful recently, breathing becomes difficult, my stomach gurgles painfully. It is difficult to remember that my purpose is to be good, to be undiminished by the challenges of my life. It is difficult to choose not to suffer. These are not new ideas to me, I am familiar with many similar principles in Buddhism. Perhaps I should find some sayings of Ryokan the Zen monk, and compare then with your writing. I am not Buddhist (or Roman for that matter). I currently do not practice a religion of any kind, but I am a storyteller and I don't mind where my stories come from. I try to keep an open mind, even though stress makes my muscles clench and my teeth ache and all I want to do is sleep, I say to myself, open, open, and for a time, I breathe a little easier and your words, Marcus, make sense to me.

It is very easy to take suffering personally. Compassion seems to demand it, and quite often I find myself suffering on behalf of others, I feel the anger and helplessness over major cultural events absolutely overwhelm me. This is usually a problem I create for myself in order to worry about something other than my personal problems, which nevertheless, feel insurmountable. One stress compounds upon the other and I find myself sitting on my front porch with your book in my hand, searching for a glimmer of light with which to navigate the murky illness of my soul.

Sometimes I lay down in the tall grass and look up at the sky, the composition of my whole body subject to putrefaction.

I listen to the wind and the distant sound of hunting birds.

Thank you again, Marcus,

Book 2, Letter 16 To Rafael Antonio Roccisano

*

Dear Rafael,

I have some things I need to say to you. Things that I couldn't say while you were alive. Some of it is not very kind, and some of it, well...

My last conversation with you was about a new beer you were brewing, with peaches. I didn't want to talk about booze with you, it seemed wrong to encourage you, but self destruction was all you knew of yourself in the end. Some months before, I badgered you to give me some of your writing, some little story from your South American adventure, but you brushed me off, saying something about the death cult over there who you fucked with, a gang who carried AK47's and were involved in prostitution. You were scared they were watching for you online, keeping an eye on you to make sure you didn't talk. Also you were suffering from the effects of the brain damage you received from a beating, or a drunken fight, or many drunken fights....you explained that you couldn't really write much, your head wasn't right, it was hard for you to think, and to remember.

Why did we all love you so much Rafael? Why does it feel like such an insult that you wanted nothing more for yourself than to die? You were a beautiful, expressive, poetic man with a sensitive heart and an creative mind – but all you did was drink away that beautiful life you were gifted with, spitting on happiness and rejecting all offers of kindness, of help.

You were so often ready to help others, but no one could help you. No one could reach you in the hell of your soul...hell....what do I know? Compared to others I hardly knew you at all, yet you were my brother.

It was twenty years ago I guess, we were both high on mushrooms and wandering along the moonlit beach before dawn, each of us in our own thoughts and simultaneously linked with that beautiful sense of psychic/empathic communion that psilocybin provides. We stopped for a moment and you dug your feet into the sand and stared out to sea, out to the full moon as I recall, and I was overcome by that hand of magic and power that commands me sometimes. I walked three times in a circle around you, chanting in my mind.

You are my brother. You are my brother. You are my brother.

No matter what you do, no matter what happens in our lives, I will always love you and always support you and always speak to you with kindness and treat you with camaraderie and forgiveness.

We went back to the house where the party had collapsed into sleep, and we fell down too, upon that hard floor and slept. I remember dreaming...something.

Now, I am dreaming of you, dear brother.

You never made it easy, but then, you never made anything easy for yourself either.

I asked you once why you hated the world so much, why you thought people were so horrible and why you had no faith in change or growth or goodness. You told me an oblique tale of a satanic cult of some sort here in Australia that you became entangled with, not as a member, no, you rescued people from the clutches of evil. There were children involved I think. The things you saw and the things you had to do marked you permanently. The story was garbled, your memory was already a hazy mess, or perhaps you just didn't want to remember anything of the details. I don't know if what you said was true, I should take you at face value and simply believe that you believed it. You had been through something, whatever the truth, and the outcome was every bit as messy and ruinous as the fact of your own uncontrollable alcoholism.

I keep thinking that for all the years I knew you, you had been trying to destroy yourself. Charles Bukowski said that drinking and smoking are the only forms of honourable suicide left to modern men. I can't see your death as anything other than suicide by poisoning. You struggled with demons I can never know of. You lived a life gasping for air in a stormy sea.

And we could never reach you.

I hope that your writing has survived. I hope that the glimmers of your brilliance were marked down and kept safe. I hope that those you hurt can forgive you. I hope that your selfishness and cynicism will fade in our memories and that instead we will remember the good things you gave to us. You wanted to love the world, but there was always something in the way.

I love you Raff. My brother. You finally destroyed yourself and I hope that means that you got what you wanted. We wanted so much more from you...I don't want to be angry, I don't want to be hurt, but God damn it Raff, you threw it all away. You threw away all the love and kindness we tried to show you and now I'm sitting in bed crying over the useless death of another brilliant, beautiful man.

I don't want to be angry with you. I want to forgive you and forget the bad days. I want to believe in that brilliant brother who I made a moonlit pact with to always love, always support, always speak to with kindness...

I am going to feel a lot of things in the coming weeks, months and years. Your death will not be easy on anyone who knew you. There was something about you that burned like a magnesium flare, a glaring brilliance than could never be extinguished no matter how much you drank.

Except, now you are gone, and that beautiful spark of light is submerged in the ocean of sorrow, and you have slipped beneath the waves forever.

Goodbye Raph. I will see you on the other side.

*

The Bluebird

Charles Bukowski – from The Last Night of the Earth Poems

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say, stay in there, I'm not going

to let anybody see

you.

There's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I pour whiskey on him and inhale

cigarette smoke

and the whores and the bartenders

and the grocery clerks

never know that

he's

in there.

There's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say,

stay down, do you want to mess

me up?

You want to screw up the

works?

You want to blow my book sales in

Europe?

There's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too cleaver, I only let him out

at night sometimes

when everybody's asleep.

I say, I know that you're there,

so don't be

sad.

Then I put him back,

but he's singing a little

in there, I haven't quite let him

die

and we sleep together like

that

with our

secret pact

and it's nice enough to

make a man

weep, but I don't

weep, do

you?

*