Entablature

By John Gardiner

Entablatures eponymous novelist undertakes an exploration of the conceptual implications held by the word palimpsest, using the gift of self-consciousness to place his origin within a presence he identifies as the inner thinker, the latter derivative from Rne Descartess famous dictum: Cogito ergo sum [I think, therefore I am]. Palimpsest postulates a practice whereby ancient manuscripts were reused by superimposing later writing over earlier work, which was not completely erased. Therefore, traces of the earlier writing become visible, intermixing with later text, an image the eponymous novelist utilises to startling effect in Entablature.

Crises unsettle the novelist. The year is 2017, the centenary of the infamous 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, a traumatic memory colouring his meditations and social interactions, coupled with uncertainty surrounding the future of his romantic relationship with a corporate lawyer. Law is a pivotal point of contention, and the conflicting controversies between human, spiritual, and the laws of physics are interblended, creating subtext on the palimpsest of existence for the dramatis personae. Determinism and free will are cross-hatched in the weave of existence when the novelist has a chance encounter with his deceased sisters exbest friend, a social diarist.

The novelist undertakes the creation of a new book, an epistolary novella, Hygeia, the text of which is included in full within Entablature. But is it the visible trace of an earlier embodiment visible through the text of his current existence? Enhancing the originality of this existential format are quoted samples from one of the novelists earlier books, Russian BrideRose Slavy, the latter name created by the iconic artist Marcel Duchamp.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jun 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543409475

John Gardiner

John Gardiner has enjoyed a lifetime of travel and adventure. He has worked as a journalist and media adviser for more than 40 years, now dabbling as an author and screen writer. His book A Hitchhiker’s Triptych sets out the genesis of his wandering life. It explores in detail six months of hitchhiking through England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland during the early years of the 1970s. That journey set the scene for more than five decades of adventure across the globe. John’s life has been shaped by the journey he so brilliantly, and simply, outlines in his first major work, A Hitchhiker’s Triptych. It is a book that will appeal to all ages. To everyone with a yearning for adventure, an open mind, and a desire to learn. John, as well as being a writer, has been a committed surfer all his life. He currently lives in the pretty seaside village of Pottsville, in northern New South Wales, in Australia. He tells us he will never lose his love of the ocean. “Life is special. I am surrounded by love. Yet that insistent urge to explore is strong within. All travellers will know what I’m talking about. Even now, the call of the road remains ever so strong.”

Book preview

Chapter 1

Beginning of an Autobiographical Journey

A rchitecturally, the façade of the Law Court conjured in the Novelist’s imagination a sacred island rising from within the surging sea of the city, swirling riptides of human activities and offences flowing around the edifice, impotent arrayed against the impervious structure, being as it should be symbolic of Divine Justice. Except no Gods or Goddesses reigned within this Temple of Justice, just black-gowned and wigged temporal human incarnations whose patent-leather shoes daily climbed the steps to preside over the liminal presentation of argument and counter-argument disputing the division between what constituted Good, and what constituted Evil. The Novelist paused on the upward-leading steps to consider flanking columnar supports, upon whose capitals the lintel of an immense, horizontal architrave reclined, above which curved an exterior arch. It was the grammar of this representation which intrigued the Novelist, aroused a mysterious fervour, its symmetric correspondences intuited by the architect, being as it were his personification and sermon delivered in precious stone: Pillars of Boaz and Jachin leading into Solomon’s Temple formed in the Novelist’s mind. Above the architrave lay a further horizontal frieze decorated in bas-reliefs discoloured by the pollution of time, but he identified Scales of Justice forever frozen in equal balance, surely an ironic statement of intent considering how the proponents of political correctness had corrupted the machinations of so many of those sitting in judgment on critical public issues. God had not given Australia another Solomon, but He had given the Nation Queen Elizabeth, figuratively and literally, an earthly Crown as a reminder of a greater Divinity, now openly and freely mocked as an irrelevance by the insidious cancer of political correctness destroying the vital organs of society. But the cornerstone of highest significance was the recognition of the existence of Good and Evil, subject to empirical proof, and thereby destined for reward, or punishment, the anathema of society’s very vocal anarchists. Higher still, if only physically, could be seen the cornice, also a horizontal embellishment, its mould a symbolic crown, completing the superstructure of the façade’s entablature.

Entering this Tabernacle in the Wilderness, the Novelist slowed and hesitated, noting there was an aromatic flavour in the air, exuding from the inner architecture, given grace-notes by the passing employees and visitors beginning to assemble to their assigned places within this Theatre. For his attitude was that of a quasi-fascination with the corridors and chambers feeding into the actual court-rooms themselves. He made his way through to the visitors’ gallery where he remained unobserved by the gathering teams of Barristers preparing to argue Corporate Law before the elevated bench. The politically correct spurned the truth this temporal representation might be modelled on that of a higher Spiritual Court with an Infallible Judge, yet submitted to the fallibility of human law, trusting to circumvent or misrepresent flaws to get favourable judgments. Criminal cases attracted larger, more volatile crowds to the visitors’ gallery, not Corporate Law, so the Novelist ensured he was suitably discreet.

Seated and awaiting the formal commencement of proceedings, the Novelist’s thoughts were energised by the theatrical nature of the scene, but how was a comedy to be performed here, amid so much acrimony? His mind was gripped by the tragedy of Socrates, perhaps the most renowned of all victims of political correctness twenty-five centuries ago, where an offended minority, as is prevalent today, and they are minorities for a reason, desirous of becoming a vocal majority, determined to execute a man wiser even than Solomon, for questioning and speaking out, no more. The unthinkable was instituted by three whose infamous names should be inscribed in the chambers of every prosecuting lawyer: Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon. Heresy was the charged, politically incorrect word, used to inflame prejudicial hatred against Socrates, as misogynist is today, self-righteously flaunted even by an insidious ex-Prime Minister with her accumulated arrogance and hatred, her detestation of the inviolability of that which is right, opposed to that which is wrong. Before Socrates, Anaxagoras also suffered from such a charge, with the former being acknowledged as possessing true rectitude in his observance of the spiritual functions and rituals required of the populace, unlike today’s modern men and women, but Socrates the free-thinker, heard and listened to the divine voice of his Inner Thinker, to the chagrin of the minority eager for his execution. The truth of that divine voice is attested to in Plato’s transcriptions, his Dialogues, which drew the ire of the litigants, charging him with corruption of the minds of youth, with destabilising the political foundation of Greece’s Democracy. A right-wing aristocrat, an associate of Socrates, then considered a traitor by the Democratic faction, Alcibiades, who had fought alongside the Philosopher in famous battles in Antiquity, was drawn in to bolster the accusation. And today, the Novelist surmised from the turmoil being stirred and unleashed against the silent majority, popular opinion was being corralled by minorities to represent their fabricated views how society should be structured and administered. The so-called humanist eyes of the minorities were ever casting about to lay charges of criminal impiety against heterosexuality, coupled with their anti-religious and gender-politics hostility, using social media platforms as the primary Court of Justice. Pride in these insidious minorities had been mortally offended, and social media was employed to alienate any right-thinking jury into changing Natural Law.

Socrates’ unshakeable belief in the Divine, substantiated even unto the voluntary submission of death itself, when he was subtly given a get-out-of-jail-free card to escape into foreign exile, was earthed in the truth that he himself was Divine, and he would never violate the instruction of his Inner Thinker. On trial then, Socrates’ opening defence statement was remarkable for its ironic humour, for he stated he was quite astonished at the prosecution’s convincing arguments against him, and perhaps he should have simply pleaded guilty and accepted the death sentence there and then. It was an illustration prominently employed today by the protectionists walling up society behind the razor-wire of political correctness, where the weaker argument always appears to be the stronger, when publicly and politically presented by its protagonists. Socrates then disparaged his publicly accepted skill as an orator, but added a tag, unless of course he was an oratorical deliverer of truth.

Now the arbiters of justice gathered, the opening ceremonial appearance of a Judge, the formal rituals of address and response were duly executed, and the Novelist could allow Socrates to fade from his thoughts so he might concentrate on the heroine, in his eyes anyway, of the drama preparing to unfold. His heroine was Lauren Mansfield among the Corporate Law Firm Barristers where she was a newly-promoted mid-level Associate, hushed and conferring briefly together. This was no case for the defence of a Socrates, so the intricacies of Corporate Law held no personal interest for the Novelist, not that he could possibly penetrate the legalese which was so critical to the eventual judgment. No, his focus was Lauren, angelic in her cool indifference, her profiled head of an exquisite beauty, the stage setting of the court-room a decided mésalliance with her physical presentation there. He felt at an extreme disadvantage, which he had repeatedly confessed to her, over the realisation her glorious head, seraphically angelic in its design and anatomical creation, harboured unfathomable secrets of case law, and then to endure the gaze of her eyes, similarly as cool as the finest lace of her skin, layered like moisturised silk about the structure of her facial bones. Her eyes were perennially framed within clear-lensed, designer glasses whose shape complemented her high-cheekbones, lending her a rarefied air, for her skin exuded exemplary Nordic hygiene. Her pale blonde, spruce-cut hair always seemed to be gently wind-blown free of her ears and the sides of her slender neck, almost wispy and gossamer in texture, sweeping backward off a gently sloping forehead. He always found the opening curvatures of her nose appealing too, for she was blemish-free there, despite Nature’s opportunity to be mischievous in despoiling otherwise perfection. Then there was her mouth, serene in its delicate symmetry, decidedly not thick-lipped with a moral looseness associated with anything-goes. All-in-all, physically, Lauren was a quasi-divine archetype, gifted with a curvature of jawbone to her chin flowing with minimalist grace: the Novelist had closely observed her mother and knew what Lauren would metamorphose into through the maturing years ahead. And what of her lips, which he so enjoyed kissing, but never in the brutal manner of embracing Hollywood actors and actresses? There was a slight suggestion of tautness and reserve, manifest too in her lawyer’s smile, a little sharpish like the righteous Judith’s blade, an image with which he occasionally teased her when she challenged his own righteousness: she professionally held back from calling it misogyny, although he would take the emotional cut from her, but never the ex-Prime Minister.

Soured in mood by the intrusion of the ex-Prime Minister, who had been called to the Bar before deciding upon politics, and the Novelist recalled her gruesome presence during that nightmarish period of the Left’s ascendancy. A veritable Lilith, and exuding that miscreation’s excruciating hubris, she had surrounded herself with a Circean half-circle of grinning chimpanzees of Labor politicians, a painted, coiffured wind-up doll. At such moments of personal despair communicated to Lauren, she suggested to him a mature Supergirl behind the transparent lenses of her glasses, offering him no counsel but folded arms. But there was activity, question and response on the floor of the court-room, an expiation gathering momentum through the logic of Corporate Law in sequential, lineal time, everyone resembling a convocation of black-robed Inquisitors. Was it acquisition, or takeover? For the Novelist, it was a rather stiff, melodramatic ballet, especially in the boneless gowns, a physical struggle of jellyfish against an outgoing tide. What was actually exchanged inside a court-room, what detritus hung there in the air where thought tried to breathe against suffocation? Was the place a kind of asylum? A legal femme fatale, the ex-Prime Minister was proving today difficult to dislodge from his thoughts, as if her ectoplasm clung the surfaces of the inner chamber, for he imagined her displaying the decorative manner of a high school gym mistress, the scythe of her arm dismissive of all peeping toms eager to gaze upon adolescent beauty swinging on the bars or vaulting the horse. When the Novelist was in high school his memory had to suffice, there was no Instagram gallery of photographs he could peruse at leisure, the dynamism of the moment was everything. Instagram was laziness, and he consequently had no desire to simply take images of Lauren with his smartphone, he was storing her live persona in the photograph album of his memory.

The Novelist waited patiently in the corridor, knowing all-too-well Lauren would be held up by the Law Firm’s Partners conferring after the morning’s session in Court, for, while she was Legal Oracle, as he affectionately whispered in her exquisitely curved ear, its shape almost mirroring her jawbone’s, she could never be punctual with him.

Hello, Lauren, have you determined the fate of many then, with this corporate acquisition, or is it a merger, a takeover? the Novelist began, as she allowed him to fleetingly touch her immaculate cheek with a kiss.

Please excuse me, John, but I have to return to the office. Perhaps you can walk with me, and we can catch up. And remember, later this afternoon I had agreed to that interview I mentioned to you, the Partners thought it would raise the Firm’s profile. They trust my discretion, as you know. Look at the messages on my phone! Shall we walk then, you talk and I’ll scan them.

Buying coffees and food for her from street vendors, the Novelist allowed her space to concentrate on her messages there on the city sidewalk, well aware she possessed a photographic memory, something useful for himself as he understood there was no point disputing a remembrance with her, she was always right. Even the scorching February heat, mostly dry, but with more humidity that day presaging a later thunderstorm, failed to extract dewdrops of perspiration from her thoroughly cleansed pores: she was generous in her laughter when he mentioned his own embarrassment at perspiring, perhaps offending the sensitive curvatures of her nostrils: this was nine months ago, crossing the threshold into deeper intimacy after the initial dating season. His turns of phrase amused her when in the mood, relaxing from her mind-set of absolute fidelity to the Law Firm in all its functions, human and otherwise.

John, you are a man! was Lauren’s standard response. Just as you do not desire a woman to possess the physical characteristics of a man, I do not seek a womanish man, nor a Neanderthal, I might add.

Neanderthals were a rarity on the sidewalks in this part of the city, the predominant man-and-woman was professional, never in equality in beauty though, providing further contentious disagreements between the Novelist and Lauren, for while she agreed to the inequality, she slightly knitted her brow when lamenting she was not in a position to discover what the pay scales were between male and female Associates in the Firm. Conversation between them then was stripped down, for the Law could only be embraced in intimacy with Reason, Logic was their foreplay. He had mischievously asked her whether Logic always guaranteed the Law an orgasm.

Thank you for spending so much time, so frequently too, away from your novel to watch me at work with my colleagues, Lauren began, drinking her coffee as they walked together.

Is a settlement likely? I know you will never breach confidentiality, but the media is all over this one.

You and I don’t see eye-to-eye over equations under Law, of temptation and punishment, of Good and Evil, but it is to be inevitable, grace is melted down in the cauldron of a court-room, no Counsel will admit God’s presence there to argue for either side.

Is it a corporate dispute between Antonio and Shylock, the threat of blood being spilt, as I note the antagonists are non-Anglo-Saxon?

The media identifies a scapegoat, yes, but logic is more puzzling within codified law: I am thankful you are simply spectating on this one, otherwise I should find myself managing another hostile litigant.

Lawyers are gowned mercenaries, Lauren, and you know my view, there are no ethics or aesthetics in a court-room.

Yes, I know your views, John.

In the world’s court-room, today, Israel is the perennial Villain, and the holocaust is not over as far as the Islamic tribes in the Middle-East are concerned. Our sneering ex-Prime Minister, and his companion, the ex-State Premier, openly endorse the threatening gestures of Islam, they long to see Judaism expunged. I see Israel’s profile, and it doesn’t resemble Shylock’s.

It is fortunate you are a novelist without a high public profile and are willing to leave being a Star Actress on the stage, to myself.

I may be a novelist but I cannot follow your verbal explorations through the maze of Law. So, I gather I shan’t see you tonight?

Lauren’s secretary and paralegal were waiting anxiously outside the revolving door of the Law Firm’s building and wrested her away from the Novelist, taking her coffee and wrapped vendor lunch from her hand while leading her inside. Taking out and reviewing his smartphone messages, he contemplated an afternoon ahead, then on the spur of the moment texted Glen Williams, a first-violinist with the City’s Symphony Orchestra, and Matt O’Brien, an exhibition painter, University companions with whom he had renewed acquaintance upon returning from overseas, and his Literary Agent, Martin Burns, asking if they were free for the after-five cocktail hour.

"Here comes Johnny B. Goode now," Matt announced, signalling from within the bar, already populated, and overheard by the approaching Novelist.

"I don’t know about Johnny B. Goode, today I feel metamorphosed into Johnny B. Badde," the Novelist joked, knowing the latter referential allusion must escape his friends.

"Johnny B. Badde?" Martin saluted, as he welcomed the Novelist to their table.

"Another of my father’s in-jokes he liked to share with me. A song title from long before I was born, a companion to Johnny B. Goode."

"You were always a good boy in high school and University, Glen laughed, never the bad boy, as I recall, except for being flirtatious with the girls. And a bad friend too, abandoning us to travel overseas."

You had your chance to try-out for a European Orchestra, the Novelist reminded him.

Don’t look just now, but you’ve caught someone’s eye, Martin indicated, looking directly over the Novelist’s shoulder into the bustling crowd.

"If you’re feeling like Johnny B. Badde you should indulge yourself in some worthwhile flirtation, Matt suggested, casually following Martin’s line-of-vision and identifying the young woman among her quartet of friends. Especially as it is noticeable the incomparable Lauren Mansfield is not on your arm this evening, yet again. Doesn’t she ever hang up her wig-and-robes, strip down to her underwear, want to show herself off in a setting like this? You can flirt, Lauren won’t suddenly appear and discover you. Go on, just for old time’s sake. Everyone has trust issues these days."

Can I look now? the Novelist laughed, half-rising to order his drink from the bar.

I would suggest you cross eyes before she loses interest in you, Glen said. She has a Continental look, from the deep South, maybe Spanish. Looks like she might give you a flamenco lesson, no infidelity there, strictly speaking.

The company of friends she is keeping, reminds me of impulsive millennials, crying out for sexual experimentation, Matt suggested. Martin, you’re married with children, what does your experienced eye tell you?

All my extra-marital dates are with the writers I represent, Martin joked.

What are you drinking? Glen laughed as the Novelist re-seated himself with a cocktail.

"It’s called a Fruit Tingle, with blue Curaçao," the Novelist laughed, amused.

If she sees you drinking that she’ll assume you’re gay, Matt frowned.

Or, I have a sensitive feminine side to my overt masculinity, the Novelist continued laughing. "We exchanged eyes as I passed her table, gave her my Johnny B. Badde stare, she started slightly, I’m sure, as her friend stopped speaking, mid-sentence."

See, flirtation is fun, and we can see you don’t get much amusement from Lauren these days, Glen commiserated.

This cocktail is sweetening my mood, the Novelist said.

Now that you’ve sweetened your mouth with that feminine cocktail, why not wander over and ask her, shall we kiss? Matt urged.

Just to kiss? the Novelist asked, sipping more of his cocktail, enjoying its effervescence. Kissing a woman these days is a dangerous business, no longer simply a harmless indulgence.

Too late, Martin alerted them, she’s leaving with her friends, and just threw us a shrug.

Just as well, the Novelist breathed, I prefer blind dating the companions who exist in my novels, and television episodes I’ve scripted. You both treat virility as novelty, you play with it to your pleasure’s content. I know I am bound by Law.

And there is a lot of contentment, Matt mused, especially when they know I am an artist, eager to hold a paintbrush in hand and render them nude upon a canvas or two. I wouldn’t mind being bound by Lauren though.

All the more difficult for me of course, Glen lamented, placed within the politically correct environment of a co-ed Orchestra, although I do give music tuition as an avocation and prefer female students, but I have to be so careful with every physical move.

"Which brings me to the circumstances shifting me into a Johnny B. Badde mood," the Novelist began, looking straight at Martin, who physically winced, suspecting what was coming, so he made a pre-emptive strike.

John received advance notice, an invitation, to speak at an annual Writers’ Conference being held here this year, and has been delaying acceptance, despite my best efforts to convince him he needs to become more visible. The media enjoys a free dinner and it is free advertising.

Is this true? Matt queried. John, imagine if I didn’t actively promote my latest canvases, just completed them, and stored them away.

My vanity is a little threadbare just now, the Novelist evaded.

Precisely, take on-board Matt’s words, Martin agreed. "The Egoist has finished post-production and is already being scheduled into the Autumn season of programming."

Flow along with the tide, John, like I do, Glen said. Some of the pieces the Orchestra schedules are insanely pretentious, and if the Composer is still living, they are personally unendurable to listen to, pontificating, as if their Work is comparable with Beethoven’s.

And would you allow a purchase of your works by the Royal Family? the Novelist asked Matt, knowing the nerve he was pressuring with his inference.

How can you display subservience to such blue-blood parasites? Matt questioned with rhetorical disbelief, knowing the Novelist’s reverence for Monarchy as a reflection of the Monarchy of God.

In the very beginning of time, Matt, everyone understood who placed the Crown of Immortality on our head, the Novelist instructed. Now that we have forgotten the Origin, only Queen Elizabeth is the remaining image to remind us where our deference is to be directed. A King is a King, part of an unquestioned succession, until some pathetic, would-be rebel, a Robespierre, tries to proclaim himself a Ruler. Succession is inviolable and absolute, from God-to-Inner Thinker-to-Man. Jesus did not carry the key of His Wooden Cross up the Mount for physical exercise, He planted it in the earth as a symbol how to gain entrance into Paradise. Crucifixion of our own human persona we refuse to put on trial for blasphemy, for heresy.

Martin, help me stop my ears, listening to this nonsense, Matt pleaded.

John won’t listen to me, he’s refused the invitation to be a literary star at the Writers’ Conference, and wait until he tells you his reasons, Martin moaned aloud. I’ll ask you to help stop my ears, which have been burning with embarrassment.

What indiscretion have you committed now? Glen asked the Novelist.

Heaping an insult upon me, the co-ordinator of this literary love-in requested if I would verbally give the now-traditional acknowledgement to the original, indigenous owners of the land, before the Conference commences. As if we were their mere guests and should have set about begging permission to land and civilise the Continent in the first place.

And I assume your response was, controversial? Glen pursued, Matt and Martin too dumbstruck to speak.

Occupants, owners, I asked if I could see the title deeds, as every true culture has them, very formal, whether we are talking Japan, China, India, Arabia, Egypt, Greek, Roman, or Western Civilisation. There is universal acknowledgement that such transactions be documented as proof in any civilised society. Then there was the guest list, reeking with proponents of feminist-only, political correctness, a corrupt mind-set whose burning acid is destroying Art. I asked if Meryl Streep’s collected works of public speaking were going to be read out.

Here we go! Martin groaned, burying his head in his hands.

Meryl Streep? Matt laughed. "Why her? Just because she cosies up to the Clintons, the Obamas, and the Democrats? Really, John, you should write her a consolatory screenplay, let her become your favourite Mamma Mia, you know she has more wisdom for humanity in one of her smiles than Trump can ever summon up in one of his pouts."

Timmy will be at the Conference too, the Novelist noted for them, enjoying the release. "You know, the favourite Leftist-environmentalist, whose opinions are considered pure gold by the darlings of the media. I believe another invitee was that National Treasure, the Oscar winner, the one with the Amish beard, and face, also so beloved of the Left. Both are very smug about it too. Not to mention the lovey-dovey fairytale authoress, throwing her prose around inviting a revolution to bring down the Monarchy and create a Republic. She uses the People’s Newspoll data as justification, obviously ignoring that the Peoples Republic is everybody’s code phrase for a Communist Dictatorship. I am stupefied. She also believes in the wisdom of youth, that eighteen-year-olds are possessed of superior understanding and experience over adults, and even warns they are a powerful voting bloc. Needless to say, someone should remind her of the phrase, Communist Bloc."

What you need is some humility, John, Glen advised, you should offer up your earnings, publicly of course, to ensure you receive due cachet, to wildlife funds, to Oxfam, become a Patron. Earn some respectability. Save a beached whale, for these are the acts of heroes today, am I correct? Politically correct?

"Look, I’ve finished my Fruit Tingle, the Novelist observed, his acute eye isolating loudness elsewhere in the bar, the self-flattery and defiance of a same-sex couple. DeGeneres would be proud, and her pals, the Obamas. No, I shall not demean myself by speaking at the Writers’ Conference, associate with women in combat gear while mocking the military, wearing gelled mohawks, regarding themselves as Poetesses, their green-dyed Triassic spikes showing. No, men must appear castrated in public at all times, it’s what the modern woman wants, eunuchs."

Yet, John, you will not allow Matt’s anti-monarchical hatred deter you from friendship with him, Martin argued.

Or my atheism, Matt inserted, gleefully twisting the verbal knife.

True, but I’m influenced by my prejudices, like the next man, or woman, the Novelist shrugged. What do these indigenous cultures think of the Judaic culture, for example, or Shintoism, Zen Buddhism? Contempt, yes?

John, you kneel like a primitive yourself, like an unfrocked monk, before the Cross, even if only metaphysically, Glen reminded him.

Did you raise your hand, with a clenched fist, at the co-ordinator, as reported? Martin dared to bring up.

I was mis-reported, the Novelist evaded.

A masculinist opposed to a feminist, Matt imaged, as if contemplating a painterly representation.

The Horsemen of the Apocalypse gallop through the sexual dreams of feminists, the Novelist prophesised.

Meryl Streep’s too, and DeGeneres’, the Poetesses’ you mentioned? Glen laughed.

Hollywood’s actresses have de-commercialised sex for an audience, it’s all give-away to total strangers, myself included, a charitable distribution by women everywhere, the Novelist delivered. All the late-night television comperes, all media commentators openly acknowledge this truth. What hypocrisy and self-righteousness. But most offensive of all is the declaration of atheism, then declaring it hideous to be a paedophile, to demand sexual favours for screen roles, the hypocrisy of crying out for gun control while indulging in the most senseless exhibition of criminal activity on-screen.

"Order another Fruit Tingle, John, to calm your fervour," Martin pleaded, rose and moved to the bar.

Paedophilia and misogyny are endemic in indigenous cultures yet are excused, deliberately avoided by the Left in case, God forbid, those cultures are offended. Of course, abuses in Western Religious Orders and Institutions are front-page news, especially misogyny. My point here is we do not know individually or collectively what will emerge through the human persona from their palimpsest of previous embodiments. Lucifer, the Rebel, naturally targets our spiritual lives and effortlessly infiltrates Religious Orders to bring them into disrepute. Just as Actors now infiltrate social media with all manner of perversions they trumpet as acceptable behaviour, providing they are the doer.

Are Writers’ Conferences battles between Good and Evil? Glen laughed as Martin returned with a Fruit Tingle.

No, I told the co-ordinator, I would not submit to the insolence of honouring the so-called traditional landowners, or feminist non-believers who refuse to acknowledge, let alone honour, the Gods and Goddesses Who tirelessly serve humanity. Blasphemy of the Inner Thinker is endemic, embedded even in the consciousness of those professing Faith in Deity. Those gays over there, behaving as if they shall outlive God, who say there is no God but themselves, possessed of an arrogant ecclesiastical blindness, clothe themselves in a martyr’s armour as anti-Christian. It simply identifies them as pro-Satan, being anti-God.

They hold there is neither God, nor Satan, Martin said, increasingly weary.

Which is the sub-text of my earlier comment, if neither exist, there can be no Good or Evil, and to condemn paedophilia is just personal bias, to uphold sexual misdemeanours as unacceptable is downright hypocrisy, the Novelist delivered. Without Good and Evil, we must accept anything-goes, and not punish anyone who disagrees with us. Otherwise, all is hypocrisy.

John, you are too much of a burning Phoenix in this mood, Martin warned. "Was the Fruit Tingle too powerful a beverage? But I know you of old, you flare-up then subside, like gently settling ashes. Getting you to lighten-up once you are wound-up is always difficult."

God exists, as Sir Isaac Newton’s Laws existed before he had the inspiration to describe them in equational language, seemingly invisible, the Novelist added. Those who deny the existence of God are the same fools who disputed Newton’s proven Laws. Feminists are Lucifer’s easy riders, his fools.

Presumably riding side-saddle, as women have done through history, Glen smiled.

Their destiny is to die into his embrace, the Novelist further prophesied.

You can’t say that! Martin emphasised.

I just did.

Not in public.

They spurn God in public as a masculine invention, and then expect men to allow all power to gather into their hands, where it will be equally misused, as we see girls torturing each other through social media, for example.

Look, John, if you wish to present to the world as a Christian cathedral, a devotee of Royalty, with all the panoply of stained glass imagery attached to such an edifice, you’re just inviting radical atheists to cast stones of disapprobation at you, Matt resumed after a period of quietude. "You really have to free yourself from this delusion, this longing to be an equerry, bearing the Crown for the Queen out here in the indigenous colonies. And leave God out of your narrative prose stylings. We read Russian Bride, preferring you to toil along with the rest of us in anarchy."

Matt has sound advice, Martin approved. Forget being an iconoclast, a quotation from Everyman, on behalf of every man, that belongs somewhere out of the past, and it’s obvious you have missed the Now, and will miss the future too.

But is he a good quotation? Glen quipped.

Friend, for so you have been, I commiserate with your frustration, Matt leaned across, placing a hand on the Novelist’s shoulder, for I would be devastated too if the dazzling Lauren Mansfield refused to move in and live with me on a permanent basis.

We need to talk about Lauren, and the status of your relationship, Glen began, enthusiastic for a conversational change of direction. She is Corporate Law, right? With not enough Gardiner-time for you? She barely seems to touch this temporal world’s earthiness, from my experience in her company, she’s Uranian in her remoteness. Sitting down to that rare dinner we had, remember, there was an absence of melancholy, of boredom in her eyes, steel-grey I believe, as if she has looked too long at a freezing Icelandic landscape.

Visually, I would paint her as a Byzantine Madonna time-shifted to 2017, Matt imagined, verbally. But there is none of the Holy Land warmth about her, Glen is right there. Along with the challenging severity of her choice of expensively tailored suits, giving her presence a strange lack of physical density.

I’ll mention that to her, the Novelist laughed. Suggesting she has a chiselled linearity, Pythagorean curvatures, anything else?

Is she a vegan? Martin smiled. My wife noticed she ate little. I was conscious of her ultra-hygienic person, exquisitely smooth-skinned, as if she practiced some occult health regime.

There is a purity about her presence, Glen resumed, and the Novelist allowed them to speak on, for in his mind he was formulating a motivation to begin that very evening, his new novel, a work he was determined was going to confound every expectation, clean as a gas-burner flame, rather than that of a smoky wood-stove.

I agree with your assessment, the Novelist said. Lauren sublimely models a feminine design laid down in watercolour pastels, as sketched by a celebrated couturier. Many would say I have discovered the jewel of existence itself in her, its storybook.

But what would you say? Martin asked, incisively.

If Truth has a geographical location anywhere on this Earth, then I shall journey to worship it there, the Novelist answered.

Now art thou unsociable, now art thou a stranger John Gardiner, now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature, Martin slightly paraphrased from Romeo and Juliet. Lauren is a legal antiquarian, holding you fixed in a perspective where she wishes you to remain, very much in the manner of an old storybook.

But how will you extricate yourself? Glen asked. Or don’t you wish to? John, you should engage yourself a Publicist, perhaps that Social Diarist, what’s-her-name?

I should be the Publicist for my Inner Thinker out here in the world, the Novelist insisted. I should be another Plotinus, conveying how we all are unrealised, unfinished sculpture, entombed still within this block of marble we call a physical torso. For I am a changeling given to my biological parents as a Ward from my Inner Thinker. As for you, Matt, you want to be Lauren’s Minotaur in life’s maze, but can only ever chase her down the corridors of your mind.

Perhaps, Matt reflected on the truth of the observation, but she does provide a man with the perfect opportunity, not sharing an apartment, always working late, to fool around. Having no time for Writers’ Conferences must mean you have time to actually write. What is to be your next offering?

"My working title is, The Ballad of JG Ballard. I have a lot of cumulative masculine angst to work through. Lauren’s intelligence is a quadrille, a rectangular card-dance, whereas I derive mine from my father exposing me to The Madison, and The Twist. My intention now is to drop out of society and leave the world my screenplay of The Egoist for viewing."

This posture of social rejection, what will it prove? Martin asked, alerted by something in the Novelist’s manner and tone of resignation.

"Like my father, I am finished traversing this urban millennial wasteland, with its unintelligible language, just as he hung up Elvis’ Blue Suede Shoes, and Dylan’s Cuban boots, decades ago. Speaking of Elvis, how can we ever divorce Blue from Suede from Shoes, as Elvis sings it?"

I’ve never heard it, Matt shrugged.

Me neither, Glen added.

"Or Heartbreak from Hotel?"

I have no intention of visiting that establishment, Matt laughed. All this attitude of yours, John, is like me trying to imitate on canvas a Renaissance Crucifixion scene. Fake!

I asked my father what the great poetic quests of Rock’n’Roll were.

And you’re about to tell us what he said? Martin winked.

"He illustrated for me, Elvis, Dylan, and Bryan Ferry. Notice our ancestry is pure blue-blood, the Blues, we don’t speak of the Reds."

Yes, we do! Glen challenged. "The Reds, and the Greens, too. And you crystallised so many vices embedded in Russian Brides, as if you had succumbed to their temptation along with the rest of us."

I remember as a boy being overawed by the vastness of the night-sky, whereas now I know that within an atom inside my body there is a Universe in a grain of sand.

Your point? Martin asked.

"Here I am, stranded at the end of a sunbeam, perilously close to an abyss from which there can be no return, except through grace."

There’s desperation in your voice, as if you actually mean that, Matt conceded, but there was scepticism in his voice.

Think of every word conceived in thought, or feeling, or memory, and spoken aloud too, as unfolding an actual, tangible image, reflecting upon itself too, and especially its author, just as one of your canvases does, the Novelist extemporised, highlighting Matt. We are incised in space by our Divine Sculptor, our Spiritual Biologist, the Inner Thinker, creating a rosary of endless, mostly unholy, words, strung together with thoughts, entwined about with themes. You ask about my next novel, probably a novella, where its words will be so many Zen pebbles washed clean of modern detritus, shining in the flowing stream of my sentences.

All this is very pretty, Martin said, but will it be marketable? Perhaps it would be best if these Zen stones of yours were to remain mute, rather than be witnesses to some outrageous folly.

Why is it everything this Zenist dislikes, I admire and embrace, submit myself to? Matt laughed. "Hey, I know we all have the phenomenon of a human persona fixed in a biological mask, living a life our creative mind sculpts and carves, mostly to our dissatisfaction. Didn’t you sum it up, our readymade existence, quoting Marcel Duchamp: Rose Sélavy?"

"Your novel, Russian Bride, served us all an ample version of cynicism filtered through a decadent mind, Glen summarised, even if you choose to deny that decadence within yourself."

Stay with writing television episodes, John, they earned you some wealth in the end, Martin advised.

He can’t resist turning back his mind from contemporary women, Glen said. He endlessly re-treads old-fashioned romantic themes, like men and women falling in love, with a fifties sensibility, so ugly to our modern eyes.

The Internet is a public manuscript scrawled over with all manner of graffiti, so I have to express my voice through old-fashioned media, the Novelist defended.

Preparing to separate outside the bar, waving goodbye to Glen and Martin, the Novelist hung back with Matt, sensing there was something his friend wanted to say. Moving off, Matt asked him to his studio-apartment for dinner, his live-in girlfriend/current model, Glynis Welsh, would rustle up something to eat while they talked. Who could have predicted time’s forward-groove would image the world as it now stood in 2017, say in the Novelist’s father’s day, 1967? Time-travel was non-deviant being bound up with Newton’s Laws, with the groove through to 2067 already laid down but he couldn’t place the imagery in his mind.

So, Matt, how long is this discipleship of yours to Picasso, to last? the Novelist smiled, finally recovering some equanimity. Even he couldn’t outdo our twenty-first-century’s visual impropriety, for all his misogyny and mistreatment of women on-canvas and in his personal life.

Even I can’t resist references to our culture’s victimised narratives, as they are so deeply woven into the fabric of our mythologies.

"Tragically, not only our mythologies. I know the German phrase, Entartete kunst, but not its Russian translation, as Stalin was infinitely more malignant than Hitler, and guilty of far worst crimes against Art. My father often talked to me while I was growing up about the Belle Époque late-sixties, where feminine silhouettes were lavishly swathed in flowing, ankle-length saris, with loose-brimmed floppy hats adorned with feathers and flowers. Is Glynis attuned to the Belle Époque, or more akin to Picasso’s world-view of naked, submissive, sexual receptacles for his masculinity?"

Art has its peep-show motifs, true, and I have stripped down Glynis to her visceral equilibrium, as a feminine idol.

"I notice you didn’t say, feminist idol!"

All women are temptresses, John.

Not all, Matt, there are a few names on the tip of my tongue, but I shall hold them there, rather than breach my normal good manners.

Why are you so resistant to Martin’s request you churn out more television episodes?

"You ask me that, as a life-committed Artist?"

Your novels are loaded with nostalgia, every sentence is like a shelf in a memorabilia market, trying entice the public to buy. Your television episodes were ready-mades, easy to sell too through the medium. Try selling canvases these days, when everyone is distracted with this smartphone’s infinity screen. The generations of an art-buying public have vanished, almost overnight, the only real traffic is between billionaires and Museums.

Television is simplistic for a reason, being like a child’s first reader, although, having observed my niece and nephew, their first reader was a smartphone.

Conversation drifted along in this vein until reaching the door of Matt’s studio-apartment, whereupon Glynis welcomed them inside, before continuing to prepare dinner, working with a pleasant enough emotional somnolence as was her manner. Climbing up to the mezzanine floor, Matt’s studio workspace, the Novelist waited patiently, figuring there was a purpose to this impromptu invitation. Without speaking, Matt retrieved precious sketchbooks, and began folding back the protective cover of a selected volume for showing. Taken-aback, the Novelist scrutinised the very detailed drawing, recognising Lauren brilliantly sketched, the draughtsmanship superb, and the scene had corollaries with remembered Picasso works. Matt had open eyes, but his glazed look possessed the lethargy of marble sculpture, not so Lauren though, imagined as fleeing Daphne, her drapery loosening and slipping free of her torso, with Apollo’s fingers (Matt’s likeness) sliding from her flesh, lifting off her perfume with them. All was produced from the sensual harmonies of recollected memory, Daphne transposed into Lauren, with Matt capturing the latter’s slender calligraphic volume.

In this day-and-age, such a work openly displayed would incite an epiphany of feminist rage against a male Artist, the Novelist said, realising he had to speak.

For some time, I have crept into the public galleries at the Law Courts, observing and sketching her.

As Daphne?

Call it revisionism if you like, but everything has to be filtered now through Picasso, when I want to get back to late-Victorian romanticism and reimagine it. I know, I know, Lauren loves being centre-stage, upstaging everyone in the court-room. Would you have agreed to her modelling for me, if I had asked?

You would have to convince Lauren, not me!

Retreating to his high-rise apartment overlooking the ancient, slow-moving river defining the site of the city for the original founding-fathers, painfully conscious of an absence of Lauren’s feminine presence, the Novelist surveyed the bachelor furnishings, preparing himself to begin a new book which had first gestated over the Christmas/New Year period. A literary contrivance by the nineteenth-century French writer, Pierre Louÿs, his prose poems, Les Chansons de Bilitis, had been an initial temptation, but sensibilities had metamorphosed over the previous hundred years, through the twentieth-century, and the Novelist’s passions included a spiritual dimension he determined to lay forth on the page. He decided upon a slender volume, an epistolary novella set at an historical turning point of great significance, around 500AD, encompassing the closure of Hellas’ long sunset, the vanishing of the Sun God, and the raising of a stunning new Image, memorialised as a Crucifixion, within the world’s encroaching darkness. But was he being a blind Minotaur here, stumbling through a maze of his own creation, and searching for what, remembrance of a glorious memory still beautifying his Inner Thinker’s palimpsest of incarnations? And there was his prose, his Keatsian ore, granite or sandstone, or, God forbid, too much chalk? Writing rendered his sense of mortality all the more acute and fragile, while haunting him now in the studio-apartment was the calligraphy of Lauren’s perfect figure etched into page after page of Matt’s sketchbooks. Somehow, the visual artist had been triumphant in crystallising the essence of her elusive sensibility, and within an impossible existential conception. What did he truly know of Lauren aside from her commanding voice issuing a fall of words into the Court with the distinctive power of an Annunciation? Her arabesque clearly deceived the mind as well as the eye! The Novelist was well aware his words were as the waxen wings of Icarus, fixed to his aspiration, they coruscated only to catch flame, before descending in a shower of lifeless ashes, scattered across the page.

Hygeia

Book One

Letter I

Seraphion to Solarion

Brother, Solarion, tremble with me in joy, even amid my feelings of sorrow for the absence of yourself, our sisters, and her, for my sandals draw again upon the divine radiations of Hellas, its glowing, precious soil, which I know you still treasure as I do!

Divine Parnassus on the horizon is blushed with the colours of sunrise, purple shadows wash through the valley separating the peaks from Delphi: a field of sunflowers, like a pollenated hive, drew my soul there as if it were a sacred bee, and I believed I could measure myself again against the glowing range of Holy Peaks, their spiritual vastness. To place our sandals on earth consecrated by the Gods is no idle matter.

But I see no heroes incarnating here in these troublesome times, no Plutarch attends the Temple ruins, the Oracles are long-silenced, their echoes have been washed away in the whirlwind of time. I shall have to restrain myself, for these letters have been written to convey something of the glory of having had her physically present in my life.

What a breath-taking gulf separates the Temple of Apollo and the mysterious peaks of Parnassus, curvatures of stone reclining like a slumbering Titan: did the Divine Plato make the pilgrimage ten centuries ago, interrupting his Syracusan journey? You, and I, Solarion, where have we stood in the world these past centuries, what have we witnessed, what have we heard from the mouths of the illustrious ones embodied in Hellas?

Do you still recall the wonder of our first glimpse of Parnassus, how we trembled with emotion standing before the ruins of Apollo’s Temple? The demi-gods too are sleeping now, the God Pan has closed his dreaming eyes, losing himself from human sight in the wilderness, and the earthquake-shaken columns of the Temple, the Tholos of Pallas Athena, stand crushed like my spirit. Once brilliant white, the colour of Greece now is blood-red, her treasuries bled of wealth, like her Philosophy, that cradle in which we were raised with such expectation of attaining glory. My generation’s inheritance is but debased custom, and no invitation is extended to the Gods to revive the glorious festivities of the past.

What conjuration arises now in my thoughts as I write? Wolves howl, and prowl the sacred precincts, drowning forever the songs of the Priests and Priestesses, the Apollonian Oracle, their music has faded forever, like our dreams. How can we bear to have been witnesses to the degradation of our heritage, subject to the mockery of the ignorant, for whom the magnificent sculptures adorning the Temple were but the trappings of a superstition? Yes, Solarion, the Gods have faded from the consciousness of the race as dreams do, except we have not awakened as we imagine, the reality we so dearly prize is but a hurtful illusion.

Clinging tendrils climb all over the columns now, in an orgiastic display by rampant Nature, for she too is stung by our collective neglect. It is not Nature, but we who are blind, our sight seared by the light of the Sun God, and today we prefer to work in darkness, slaves to our darker passions and desires. Is this to be the destiny of my tomb, lying in the sinking swamp of time, overgrown with forgotten memories? I must speak to you again of Proclus, his magnanimity, the Song of Life he sang opening our ears to the voice of our Inner Spirit, imploring us to join him in trying to raise the world from its dream, or, nightmare. Yes, I succumbed to the world’s nightmarish vision, fell into its darkness, perhaps further than you, Solarion.

O Hellas! O Mountain of the Muses! The mighty river of Plato’s thought drew into its flow all the spiritual wealth, the loveliest flowers of Philosophy, and cast them forth into the current of the sea, where they eventually seeded and took root on the shores of the known world. But didn’t his heart grieve as these flowers withered before the carelessness of men? Carelessness, there is a word striking terror into the hearts of men, for it is unknown to Nature: the acorn evolves into the oak, knows its destiny, and fulfils it. Dare we accuse the Fates of carelessness, Solarion? How we complain, especially of the cultural and social soil in which we are planted, dismissing the Fates as malignant for not complying with our wishes. As I fell on my knees before Apollo’s Temple, so too did I submit before her when introduced that first time!

Why do Philosophers imagine they can bring order to our chaotic world? Did Socrates believe men could be transformed into ethical beings, those who condemned him to death? Would I be happier, less estranged in feeling, had I not walked up the steps into the Temple of Philosophy? Now is the time in which I live, but my hopes are eternally shipwrecked on the shores of the past, and I cannot glimpse how the future will rescue me. Little wonder you and I clung to the robe of Proclus!

Nature, the Changeless One closer to us even than Helios, upholds the sinking heart, replenishes the spirit with the promise we can never cease living. Perhaps the Temple of Apollo transcendent amid the contemplative idyll of the splendour of Parnassus will awaken men in the future to the voices of the Muses! If the arms of the Gods sculptured in the Temple have been fractured and fallen away, how are They to hold us in Their embrace? Nature gathers us up with the turning of the seasons and brings us the hope of self-renewal.

On that note of hope, farewell.

Letter II

Seraphion to Solarion

Brother, Solarion, what do I possess, what physical forms can I say are eternally mine? Voices whisper to me on the breeze sweeping across the Aegean of those I loved, but where have they lost themselves in time? I too am abandoned by forgetfulness, and all I can say I possess in this world is the emptiness within my heart. The voice of the Inner Spirit sustains this nothing which I am for a brief time, moves the hand composing this letter, and you can believe I exist, but it is a fallacy.

In my youth, I defied the shores of Acheron, beholding the wonders I experienced boldly sailing the Aegean to my spiritual homeland, Hellas. But so many of those I loved sleep now beyond time, as they do for you, distanced from me, like the Gods, and I converse with no voices. Why does the past fall into profound, unending silence, why do we long for the clamour of the future?

How have I enriched time with my silence, how will I enrich future time? I listened to the Divine Proclus, his voice pure as the waters of a sacred spring, a Castalian Fountain, radiant with the glory of the Delphian Sun God, but the dust of the earth clings to me again. More than ever, my blood is steeped in mortality, tainted with the fevers of worldly despair, and the constriction about my heart tells me night is falling over the Hellas I beheld and traversed with you in our innocence of youth.

Shrouded in coming darkness, I now live unnoticed, a passing shadow, cast by Hellas’ lowering sun, amid the earth-shaken columns, the fractured pediments and entablatures, everything I so treasured dying like the Homeric Heroes. Dying in memory as well as in verbal story, in drama and poetry. Hellas has become a vast burial ground of demi-gods through which men now roam with the instinctual trepidation of hunted animals howling at the setting sun. With the coming darkness we are right to be fearful for we are now the hunted by an unseen force of limitless power: Ignorance!

And what of Helios, the Formless, Golden One, still daily shining with a brightness the clouds can never obscure for long? How I have dreamed of being his Son! There once was a time when I imagined the sound of my voice possessed the Sun God’s poetry, the purity of singing light capable of illuminating the world of men. And as I walked the increasingly familiar pathways, with-and-without you by my side, Hellas became ever greener, autumn vanished and summer lengthened: I strode then with the power of a snow-melted river being carried toward the Sea of Eternity. Nature provided in my passage some sweet timpani of sounds as I passed, harmonizing the dissonances of thought, tempering the clash of opinions which lessen our usefulness to the Gods.

Nature exults in a breathtaking lucidity bringing me wonder: an acorn effortlessly completes its identity as a sacred oak, as I have already illustrated, craving your indulgence, for you know these things as well as I, but it eases my anguish with the world’s chaos to speak of them again. The spreading arms of branches, the reaching sensitivity of leaves, like out-stretching fingertips, all is open in unashamed adoration of Helios, and after the rains have eased I have watched teardrops of thankfulness spill from the grateful trees, shaken free by the breeze, as feelings are from my heart.

Helios holds back from me this drowning wave of solitude, washing over, submerging me: O Divine Hygeia! Unnoticed, I clothe myself in silence and listen as the Poets do, to the mysterious music within the breeze, the breathing of Aeolus, and I am strengthened again for the trials of life. Or so I imagine myself to be. To be! Like you, Proclus touched me with the embrace of his voice, breathed his divinity into me: Reason apprehends the concept we hold of to be, Solarion, because it exists. Do the herded goats wandering under the guidance of their goat-herder reason upon the concept, or conception, of sky or sea? Can we imagine a Philosopher as a goat-herder?

Let us strengthen ourselves in the Unity of the One. How then might we know division? This illusion of darkness, my passing shadow, will vanish and only the lucidity of light remains: The One!

The One! Easily spoken, easily written, but the attainment staggers Imagination and Will, accomplishment of union infinitely far-off. Even amid the swirling storm of life, Helios casts a rainbow, the colours of His Heart, richer for the contrasting darkness of the brooding clouds which endeavour to veil Him from our sight. How we crave the rainbow, but we have to earn such Beauty, we too must radiate pure light through the clouds enveloping the Earth. Nature flourishes all about us in serene forgetfulness, though shaken by the storm, surrendering its feathering leaves and petals to a power greater than itself: if only we could do the same!

The bliss of dissolution, like the blending colours of a rainbow back into the Oneness of the Sun God, where Virtue is unassailable to the mind of Man, creating the dissonance of the world’s image, this is Proclus’ divine artistry. Fate’s sceptre is held in the Philosopher’s grasp, Death’s division from life banished, and our indivisibility with Helios affirmed. Let us honour the Sun God in our hearts as the Youth of Eternal Summers!

Delphi’s shattered remnants reflect my own abandonment and solitude. Alone, I climb the overviewing heights of Parnassus, leaving the refuge of Apollo’s Temple ruins, but cannot see the desecration clearly. A reflection of the world is sculptured in the fractured marble. Embraced, sustained by the natural world, I long to revive the once-rapturous pantheism of the Sun God striding through Greece, but even the precious stones inset in the eyes of the Son of Light and Poetry, have vanished from His statue. His sightless head has been severed too from His torso, but perhaps that is just as well, for Man’s perfidy must be veiled from the eyes of God. We have lost the gift of an understanding heart.

Walking the galleries of the Academy with you, under Proclus’ careful guidance and leadership, accumulating knowledge as much from his eyes as his voice, was a time of emergence from the tomb, a resurrection, and I need to remind myself of the power determining existence. Under Proclus’ guidance, the communication of his innate wisdom, we began to learn to live the knowledge he imparted, and sense that origination of knowledge could never be diluted or diminished through the transmission.

Memorising the splendours of Nature, acknowledging every seed was powered by an unseen, but divine, Reason, observing above all the joy of its manifestation, I discovered myself to be indistinguishable from that which envelops us. I too have been cast forth as a solitary seed from the Hand of the Sun God, our Divine Sower, to be warmed in the soil of earth by His Light, nurtured to unfold a destiny. Why then, today, do I feel myself exiled, shrivelled, as the Moon is amid the garden of stars in the night sky, unable to glow except by reflection?

Phaeton awoke from sleep and harnessed himself to Helios’ Chariot of Fire, gripped the reins of the horses, eyes lit up by the dawn, manes and flanks aflame, and leapt from the curve of the sparkling Aegean. Aren’t we all Phaeton, aspirants to leave the family home, bend our footsteps down the road into futurity, and set the world ablaze with our hopes and inspiration? Such is the dream of youth and blessed is the man followed by the eyes of the Father, guiding the return journey home.

Still journeying, farewell for now.

Letter III

Seraphion to Solarion

Does remembrance of time passing ease the burden we carry into today? Let me thank you, Solarion, for your words of encouragement: the messenger entrusted with your letters will carry mine on his return journey, bridging the distance between us, brother-to-brother, mind-to-mind. The geometer of my dreams draws the circumference of the circle from the centre of the world here at Delphi to touch you with remembrance of me.

Thinking too much is that whirlwind of the mind carrying me back to the days of my youth with you here on the shores of Hellas. I cannot write yet of Epidaurus. Instead, I have travelled to Delphi, to sink into the stillness here, but memories fracture, come apart, like the marble visions of the Gods, broken up by the Villagers for building materials. Here is where I played in my youth’s imagination. In boyhood you rather dreamed of the Plain of Marathon, before our discovery of Socrates through Plato, and the image we held of the brusque yet humorous Philosopher careless of his life, knowing a Divine Spirit was watching over him. But what is the purpose of such reflection, how does it advance me toward life’s cessation, and the arguments he presented regarding the existence or otherwise of our after-life?

Delphi! I watched the simple Village stonemasons removing the marble blocks from Apollo’s Temple, I listened to their appalling conversation, and it was as if the very fabric of my life were being dismantled: innocence was being despoiled, the past can no longer welcome me as it once did.

Hellas’ place-names are where you and I played through our childhood and boyhood, and now I find myself contemplating the peace and harmony which enveloped me then, before the heavy weight of worldly concepts, their building blocks, held me grounded. Who now has the gifts to effect a reparation of Apollo’s Temple? Its sublime innocence, memorial to the youth of the world, is being profaned. All conversation today descends into profanity, the language of barbarians, for the erasure of Philosophy from the fabric of society is almost complete: you and a few companions are holding out, but for how long?

Our childhood’s Temple of Faith, constructed around us by our family, innocent of the heartbreak thinking and feeling bring, is what we labour to dismantle, as our mind becomes overgrown with the strangling vines of thought, as our bodies wear and are worn down by life’s struggle. We leave the inner sanctum of the Temple and the shocks of