Apollo

True myths may serve for thousands of years as an inexhaustible source of intellectual speculation, religious joy, ethical inquiry, and artistic renewal. The real mystery is not destroyed by reason. The fake one is. You look at it and it vanishes. You look at the Blond Hero – really look – and he turns into a gerbil. But you look at Apollo, and he looks back at you. The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Apollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. ‘You must change your life,’ he said. When the true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message: ‘you must change your life.’” - Ursula K. Le Guin

I had troubling dreams last night. I was on a boat with my mother and others, in the Bayou, it seemed or someplace else mysterious. Something fell in the water, or someone, something that needed saving. My mother, who is historically hysterically fearful of water jumped in to save it. The boat kept going – leaving her behind.

I began screaming that we had to go back. We had to fetch her. How they didn’t understand such a bold move from my mother, who’s fear and panic in the water is inimitable. To risk what she risked by jumping in was more then it perhaps appeared on the surface. The boatman yelled that he couldn’t go back just yet. That he would, but right now it was impossible. I kept looking backward, stretching to see – but we were only moving further away and clarity was lessening by the moment.

Eventually the boat did turn around and fetched her from a medical unit. She looked pale and ashen, deathly really, and had a wound that had been tended, in the shape of an oval, between her ribs on her right side. It was though she had been speared with a sword and this is the mark left behind – neat, oval, and now sewn up. I asked her what happened, pointing to the wound.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I jumped in the water and that skin just fell off. I’m really not sure.” Somewhere along the line she had fainted, perhaps, blacked out and her memory of things were murky. “What was really disturbing,” she went on, “is that when I woke up I was on a cold gurney. There were dead bodies to the right and left. I was in a morgue. They thought I was dead.”

And we sat in silence pondering this as the boat swiftly carried us forward.

It’s unclear that she accomplished her mission. Unclear that she saved anything.. only risked.

And this morning I have this strange sensation of riding in a bright colored car – clear blue sky, soft warm wind, windows open, breeze in my hair, and I’m waving… waving while on my way. It’s all very… sunny.