Penelope and Ulysses Read online

  Works in progress:

  Penelope

  In the Shadow of the Barbarian

  The Oresteia: Revisited

  The Nature of Love: A Metaphysical Journey

  Farewell to Philosophy

  Dialogues with Friedrich Nietzsche

  Penelope

  and

  Ulysses

  A Journey into the Deepest and Most Longing Love

  between Man and Woman

  “You should be the guardians of each other’s solitude.”

  ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

  Zenovia

  Art by Zenovia

  Copyright © 2012 Zenovia Martin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  ISBN: 978-1-4525-0647-0 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4525-0648-7 (e)

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  Balboa Press rev. date: 07/28/2012

  Contents

  The Despair and Laughter of My Three Muses

  Introduction

  Characters

  Act I The Arrival

  Act II Joy

  Act III Agamemnon

  Act IV Under House Arrest

  Act V The Suitors

  Act VI Telemachus

  Act VII The Return

  Act VIII Whispers

  ACT IX I Am Ready For My Departure

  Some Small Seeds of Gratitude from the Journey

  Endnotes

  The Despair and Laughter

  of My Three Muses

  To my three muses that have lived with me all my adult life and who continue to challenge and inspire me.

  To my first emotional and spiritual mother, Amalia, who taught me the wilderness of imagination and the endurance of the human spirit in great stress and conflict. As a young child I sat by the open fire on an empty stomach and listened as my illiterate peasant grandmother exposed me to worlds of both the living and the dead: she spoke of these two worlds as if they lived side by side, and at times she would tell me that all these worlds, in the person and outside the person, co-exist in tension and have a deep longing for each other, “because everything is in love in the world.”

  At that time I though she captivated my small senses with stories so that I would not feel the hunger, but now I know and I realise “that man cannot live by bread alone.”1 She was preparing me for my emotional and spiritual journey on this tragic but also beautiful planet.

  Amalia was training and preparing me for life and how to deal with the crises and conflicts that life brings to all; she was training me to make the choices that were of my true nature and to follow my path, no matter how difficult it got at times. She was training me with great affection, with her stories that breathed and spoke of the true facts of life, the ownership of the self.

  It was much later, when I was studying philosophy, that I discovered Plato also said, “The world moves because everything is in love” and that the greatest gift a person can give to themselves and others is to have his true autonomy, purpose, and meaning. Amalia taught me in our solitude and poverty that your character is born and discovered through your actions, through every change, catastrophe and challenge that life and others bring or take from you. She spoke with determination and affection when she advised me “not to fear my life” but rather to take ownership of my nature and destiny. For Amalia not to have lived her life by her true design, by her heart, and her chosen path, was the same as if not being born at all.

  How did my grandmother know this? She did not know of Plato’s existence, she had not read the great thinkers of our civilisation, she certainly had never read a book in her long life, as she had not gone to school.

  I remember the first day at school when I was actually given paper and pencil and was being taught the alphabet. I remember her telling me, “When these people teach you to read and write, don’t you get lost in any nonsense that does not smell of life and people. Use what you learn to give life, not divide life, for they tell me that some educated people are very clever and sophisticated, and I do not want you to be clever or sophisticated. I desire you to be in your life and to follow your true path.”

  As a child I did not understand my need to feel safe and protected, and yet all that she lived and taught me I put inside of me. When she was no longer with me in physical presence I ate from the seeds she planted in my heart, in my soul, in my search among fallen demons and tormented souls.

  I remember one day when I was feeling rather small and insignificant in the scheme of things and wanted to know of my importance in her life and if she loved me more than the others. Amalia explained to me my importance in her life, but not in the usual way of saying, “I love you.” She used the example of her hand and fingers to show me my importance to her and her life.

  “You see my hand and all the fingers attached to it? Because you are so small, you are the smallest finger on my hand. Now, what if I cut my little finger, or my little finger got hurt, would not my whole hand be in pain? So you see, you are as important as the fingers that do most of the work. You are part of my hand, part of my body, part of my life, part of my soul, part of my blood, part of all that moves and breaths in my past, present, and future.”

  In later years, away from her and away from the island, while I was at university studying philosophy, I read that Plato also refers to a harmonious and caring society as a hand; if one of the fingers gets hurt, the whole hand would know of that hurt. I thank her and her electric memory which is alive in me, in all the things that life brings to me, and all the things that give me challenge, joy, and inspiration.

  I still see her sitting in my writing space and smiling and shaking her head as she looks at the symbols that we call writing, as she finds me buried behind books and papers, where I travel into the world of the maker, the inventor, the child, through the exploration of the self, through writing to remain true to my nature, choices, and destiny—“amour fati.”2 Writing is a way back into yourself, and outward to the world—to share your world with others so that “we can speak to each other and under
stand each other.”3

  I still hear her telling me: “People are going to laugh at you for your ideas and incorrect ways but you must continue on your path and with your incorrect ways or you will die if you don’t.” One must remain vigilant, devoted and uncompromising to their inner voice, their original and authentic creative self, and the path that belongs to them and them alone. Kafka has such a story in “The Parable of the Doorkeeper” one must go through and into their life—they cannot wait to be given permission to live their lives—to do otherwise, one lives out their life in great despair.

  Michelangelo writes that “I must find life where others find death.”

  The truth of the matter is: if it wasn’t for Amalia I would not be alive. I found this planet and its ways alien to me—so many tribes and so many divisions, so many wanting to take parts of your being, so many telling you that their truth is the only truth, so much imprisoning of the human spirit, so much pain and so much indifference, and if I by some chance survived, I would not be in my life as I am but as a sleepwalker. Amalia has stories about the sleepwalkers and she believed that they were neither alive nor dead.

  Amalia was what we call my “enlightened witness.”4 She gave me enough emotional and spiritual sustenance that when the world separated us and I was sent to the other side of the world—with a different group of people in a different culture, a different tribe—I had enough of the seeds of love that she had implanted in my heart and soul to feed on, and found and still find myself in the gifts and miracle that was my childhood with my first story teller.

  As a child of six, I would listen to the stories she would tell from her life, from her world—stories she had not read in books, stories that contained both destruction and healing—and I would look forward to our evenings together to listen to the stories of man. She was the equivalent to Homer, passing verbal knowledge and history that had been passed on to her from previous generations caught in the human struggle (both in the bowels of the earth and in the sky), the lessons and the decisions made in the challenges of our human condition.

  Some of her stories did not have happy endings. They were not based on ego gratification and entitlement but rather on man’s struggle to learn and evolve within the design and scheme of life. I realised at an early age that life does not have a plot and we do not control it. The only thing that we do have power over is the way we respond to the changes and conflicts life brings. Sometimes we do not get what we want, and therefore the delusionary happy ending does not come into real life. Instead, we are asked to struggle and endure with a full heart, a heart without resentment and entitlement, the most humane and compassionate lessons that are discovered only in the battle of self-ownership. Therefore, her stories were not based on ego gratification and self-importance in a love affair, rather they were based with being the servant and master of truth and compassion. While other children in different parts of the world would be tucked in bed with a fairy tale that ended with the princess being taken care of by a prince, my bedtime stories ended with lessons of struggle and endurance. Amalia continued to tell me “life will give you impossible tasks, and you will have to make decisions that go against the beliefs of others, you will have to discover life where others find death.”

  Amalia allowed and encouraged me to wander into the remote wilderness of the forests and learn so many things that one does not learn in a confined classroom. She taught me in her stories about the lamb and the wolf, the hunted and the hunter, the slave and the master, to be neither of each one. She taught me a reverence and worship of life and all that lives here. “You must be careful not to break anyone when you are making decisions. Remain true to your nature. Don’t take what is not yours. Do not fear anyone.”

  In those first eight years of my life I did not know what she was offering me, and now I realise that my illiterate grandmother was voicing the pre-Socratic values and way of life and she gave me the gift of undying protection and undying love.

  I thank you, Amalia, for waiting for me.

  I thank her for teaching me.

  My other friend and intellectual mother was Eleni Kazantzakis. She entered my life at the precious time, the right time, in which I was being hunted for being a writer, in which I was mocked for my creativity, at a time that I found myself totally alone. Eleni Kazantzakis corresponded with me for over twenty years, offering me support and telling me that I would find it very difficult because I was a poet. She advised me that I was struggling in the sea of life because I was a poet, and to continue, continue, continue.

  I found her writing to me like a rope that assisted me to get across the difficult bridge that I was building; she would also write and tell me how Nikos Kazantzakis would be concerned about me, as the world hurts the sensitive and our poets. I felt accepted by her, and it was important for me to be accepted and understood by someone academically trained, who had read all the authors that I had found through my love affair with searching and learning from our ancestors. Since I am a “citizen of the world,”5 these teachers and writers lived in all parts of the world, in different generations. You can’t learn about humankind if you only focus on your own kind.

  I dedicate this work to her memory: a memory that is electric and alive in me. Eleni assisted me finding my Greek origins, not because I belong to any nation, but I do belong to a group of people that have assisted me in my journey here, and these are the people that she introduced me to once again—my ancestors—for is not a poet a foreigner in his own land?

  Eleni told me she would meet me in Constantinople so that I could search for my ancestors.

  I never returned to Constantinople because I never left it.

  We are carriers of other people; like the layers of our physical earth we also are layered in knowledge and memory. We carry in us our ancestors, those we have met and those we have not met, our teachers that do not belong to our tribe, but to all humankind, our children, both physical, and those we make from our journey and struggles, and put on paper, in music, on canvas. We carry in us all the people we have met and shared life with; we remember their challenges and lessons. Sometimes we are like large haunted houses with so many voices and images, messages, and lessons. We carry all these people in our life. Plato might be right when he says, “nothing dies,” it simply goes inward, transforms, and adds to our character. Therefore, I have not felt I needed to see a place to be with them, to have them live in me.

  One time I was asked if I have returned to Samos, the island I spent my first eight years of life. I have not returned because the island lives in me; I’ve swallowed the island, the village, the place, time and child. We have not been parted.

  What did your Ulysses write for his epitaph, Eleni?

  I hope for nothing.

  I fear no one.

  I am free.6

  I thank you, Eleni, for waiting for me.

  I thank her for teaching me.

  My other emotional and intellectual teacher has been Friedrich Nietzsche. He was a highly educated man, and yet he still wrote, lived, and spoke in the “blood,”7 the truth of his life, and of course he was influenced by the world that my grandmother spoke about in her illiterate manners and ways. I discovered Nietzsche when I was twenty-four and he has not left my writing space. He guided me to the pre-Socratic philosophers and so many other thinkers. He was more alive in his thinking than the actual university lecturer who tried to understand what he had not lived or experienced with his blood. As Kierkegaard once wrote,

  When I am dead there will be something for the university lecturers to poke into. The abject scoundrels. And yet. What’s the use, what’s the use? Even though this be printed and read again and again, the lecturers will still make a profit out of me, teach about me, maybe adding a comment like this: “The peculiar thing about this is that it cannot be taught.”8

  Nietzsche taught me to remain true to my blood and to follow my
nature and destiny. Even though he has been dead for over a hundred years, his thoughts and journey are alive to me, or as T. S. Eliot wrote, “the dead make more sense than the living.”

  I am so glad I went into that second-hand book shop and I was drawn to his book. These are the bread crumbs of the soul that others leave for us to find. We have not met them, and yet they are and become kindred and family to us. Nietzsche also believed that his family were the thinkers he had studied and wrote about. Therefore, without knowing of my existence, he offered freely to me knowledge and the seeds from another generation, another time, another world—the seeds of this world as it makes itself over and over again.

  It is true what Amalia believed: the living and the dead are in tension and co-exist through deep longing to offer each other love and life.

  I thank you, Nietzsche, for waiting for me.

  I thank him for teaching me.

  All my three great influences and blood loves are dead, and yet there is something so strong in their physical absence, so haunting and lasting: the anchor of their memory, the anchor of their love, the anchor of courage and hope—for hope without courage is only a paper flower (so Amalia thought and wrote in my heart).

  It is this living memory that gives life to those who are no longer with us. But first they would have had to be truly alive, and not just in body (millions are alive in body and when they die they are not remembered). It is something more than just physical, although their work is created from the physical.

  What makes their memory electric and alive is their passions, desires, and authentic ways, the sacrifices they made for us to get their message, even if they sent it in a bottle. This is what makes my three muses alive in my life and world.