Introspection

You must understand that I understand it was a very wrong thing that I did. But her part in it all was far more terrible. “She was justified”, you say? Well, I’d disagree on that, but she treats me well enough these days, although I think she only comes around on account of her smugness. And, oh, the agony I’m in, and she knows it well.

Now that I’ve so tactfully captured your interest, dear reader, you could be forgiven for craving a degree of context. It’s a long story, but you’re here to read, so I assume you do not mind, and in assuming such, I shall begin.

The flight was cramped; I was next to a noisome couple, and I was as tired as I’d ever been and bored-er still. I felt dreadfully groggy, almost confused, and my nose was closed up, and there was some rumbling within me, which, I hoped, the noise of the plane overpowered, and I was trying, harder than you’d appreciate, not to fart. I was half trying to sleep, but my head was just off wherever I lay it, on the brink of falling, or the angle of my neck was wrong and sore. But I had to sleep. You have to understand, I was just so bored, desperate to fast-track the time somehow. Much of the flight was spent in a cruel limbo between nearly awake and nearly asleep, and in my long-suspended hypnagogia, the couple’s chat and the plane’s hum blended with wafting dreams, just out of my grasp. Far below, green islands splayed out, lazy on dazzling blue, Earth’s flawless petri dish.

The plane landed a lifetime later, and to keep it brief, after 2 hours, I was at the villa. But the drive there - oh, the drive to the villa - changed me, I truly believe. Kefalonia, you see, is an ornate hillscape - great mounds laze all around, and they comfort rather than loom, decorated with pale, ashy rocks and trees of a dark, Mediterranean green.

The roads are dry and dusty, and winding - where you’d expect to meet God. The sea is a perfect turquoise, and as clear as anything. Oh, Kefalonia, how I love you.

The villa itself was a pink building, a very typical Greek rural style, with a balcony and a large porch, and a driveway of that same dust that made the roads. Olive trees decorated the perimeter, gracefully wonky and untamed, and dry grass gathered around the back of the house.

Inside, the floors were all of a cream tile, the walls a pale pink, curtains sheer and beige, and round, black-rimmed mirrors hung all about. It was bare of plants, or much decoration, but a quite beautiful home all the same. And oh, it really was a home. Battered old books made beds for themselves on shelves embedded in the walls, and aged, mismatched cushions lounged about on chairs and greying white sofas.

It was a writers’ retreat, I realise I’ve neglected to tell you. I’ve been struggling with some lack of inspiration recently, you see. Or until recently. Anywho…

About a dozen of us, mostly women, mostly of a certain age (myself included), were picked up from the airport. A rotund lady, with box-dyed red hair and enormous black hoop earrings, was squashed up against me in our packed little minibus. She chatted to me of her son, and her husband, and their dog named Billy (or was that the husband?), and Greek yogurt, and the tragedy of Brexit, in that she could not take any home. Her voice was loud and grating, and I smiled and nodded and waited for her to stop talking.

We passed a woman on the way, dressed up for some historical reenactment, I initially supposed. She was tall and on the heavier side, and thick, blackish chocolate hair hung heavy on her back. She carried a comical scroll - whiter than life paper about an ornate metal pin. She wore a simple cloth dress, white, string garnished with silver beads about her waist, so that there was an elegant excess of fabric hanging below her chest. Material clung to her belly rolls like a statue. Further cloth hung about her arms, and a general aura of grace and floatiness radiated from her. She was quite lovely, with a classic Grecian nose, and a beauty as old as the hills about her.

She floated right into my head, this woman, and of course, my writers’ imagination ran away with her. She was a goddess, perhaps Aphrodite, I thought. See, my knowledge on ancient Greek mythology is severely lacking, and I could not think of anybody else, but you must understand that she was incredibly youthful, flawless even, though she appeared old, so, so incredibly old, in a way that you must see to believe.

I shall not linger long on the retreat itself, for it was dreary, and not truly the meat of this tale. I do not have long, you see. Today is my do-over if you must know, one last try, and I must do it before she arrives. She must find me.

We visited a cave on the third day of the retreat - a very beautiful cave; the “Cave of the Nymphs”, the pamphlet heralded it. The Melissani Cave, it was called - a huge lake, underground, with its vast, rocky ceiling caved in some 5000 years prior. Lit up by warm electric lights, its stalactites like some disgusting organic matter, spongy and beautiful. Again, I shall not linger, but this was our daily dose of inspiration that day.

I left our writers’ soiree early that day (this was our schedule: excursion then group writing); it was terribly dull and I felt uninspired still. I shall tell you now the meat of it all - or at least how it began. But you must not judge me. Hear it now, you must not judge me. It was some urging from the Gods, I tell you. You’ve heard, I’m sure, how they play those games with us. Or some vengeance perhaps on her, so who’s to say she didn’t deserve it after all? Anyway, I helped her. This is how you know it wasn’t me, you see? Why would I after all, after saving her? I’m good, you see? I get ahead of myself, you’ll see it all soon.

When I saw her next, I was driving again. I’d left the afternoon social, truth be told because I was embarrassed at how dry and empty my brains were. The trip the to cave had awakened an excitement within everyone’s imagination, the intention I suppose, except for, seemingly, my own. We had these rental cars on this trip - four identical, large, white vehicles, and so I told the other writers that I was off running some errands. It wasn’t run by some organisation, this retreat, you see. It was the fruits of an online forum and some good planning, so nobody was really in charge, so if I wished to run errands, then errands I could run.

Anyway, I drove down these roads, winding and dusty, swallowed whole by great, maternal hills, and along a hairy cliff edge, a woman lay still in the dry shrubbery. I nearly missed her; it was extraordinary that I spotted her at all, you must realise, as if some divine games were at play. She was on the other side of the barrier, and it was as though she’d tried to hide herself in plant matter. She was not a woman who wanted to be found.

The woman, who looked more like a pile of cloth, stirred as I approached. An instant of panic ripped across her face. It softened as I knelt by her, and I slowly stretched out my hand. This was the woman from the drive days earlier, it struck me, to some surprise. She wore the same garments, now torn, and a gold crown upon her head, in spite of her sideways position. I helped her up.

I was right in any case. Not that she was a goddess, but she was not far off.

When Calliope stood, she stood tall, and when she spoke, she could have commanded nations. She told me who she was, and I listened like a child. The woman before me was a muse of myth, weaver of divine inspiration, Homer’s drug, the engine that drove epics.

I do not know why she followed me to my car. She must have seen the good within me, so why, dear reader, did I do what I did? But Calliope trusted me, and so I know I am good. She walked with grace to my car, an air of authority and majesty, and wisdom beyond the ages. She sat in the passenger seat, this ancient being, and I felt like a small child driving my teacher in some terrifying dream.

I spoke, and it struck me that these were the first words I’d said since I left the social.

“I don’t know much about you”, I told her, my voice small and childlike. “I’m sorry.”

She laughed, a chuckle like dark honey, gently condescending. “Do not worry. Nobody does.”

I turned left. “You told me you inspire people”, I said, my voice even smaller. “I’ve been struggling myself with this great old case of bloody writer’s block since… oh God, I don’t even know when. Not that I’d ever ask such as yourself… you know.”

Calliope laughed that treacle laugh again. “But you are asking, aren’t you? I don’t do favours as a rule, but… I could do with a sort of cleanse. Do my job at least partly on my own terms. Things have been, well somewhat…” It was funny - until now, she’d been so articulate, authoritative in how she spoke.

Her voice diminishing, she told me how some mad ‘creative’ had hunted her down, and forcibly extracted her divine spark. She had escaped and run for miles before collapsing, exhausted, on the roadside. I hadn’t even stopped to wonder yet, what it was that she was running from.

I asked her where we were driving to.

She told me that that was for her to know and she asked, with that gentle and effortless authority, that I stop the car, and so I did. Right there, on the empty road. She took my hand and looked me in the eyes. Hers were the deepest, darkest black, and sparkled and swam in the afternoon sun. She told me to look within myself, and so I did. But I had this engine, this sort of drug, propelling me further, clearer into the deepest reaches of my psyche. But it was all a great tangle, and a heavy fog sat about it all, and nothing was quite clear. The further I went into my soul, the further away it became, and that pit in the centre of me began to build clingfilm walls around me until I could not breathe. I screamed and screamed in silence, until I was back on that still empty clifftop road.

I felt very angry now, a childlike anger, intense, blinding and pure. But I pushed to remain calm, and I asked the muse, “What was the point in that? My insides are tangled and I cannot make out a thing.”

She spoke to me still like a child. “So explore the tangle. Navigate it. Search within it. True revelation will only come from within.”

She was right, I realised. I needed to go back inside, but I needed that push, that driving force, that clarity. I could never explore fully alone. So you see, it was not me, but this moment. This realisation. And something from above that took it and ran with it.

I don’t even remember how she got in the car boot. I decided then to leave the retreat. If afflatus came truly, wholly from within, what was therefore the sense in more caves and ruins and bullshit talks? So I got a cheap room in an empty motel, and three days of caffeine pills and techno music later, a sleep deprived divine being was ready to cooperate.

Her black eyes were bloodshot and glassy. She still held her grace, but she seemed unwashed now somewhat, dull and oily, clammy. Her treacle voice came out slow, and this once articulate muse was now incoherent and confused.

It felt now, when I drove within myself, that the ride was bumpy, and full of stops and starts. But even through the clingfilm, I fought now, and I looked. I pushed through the folds and fog, and looked within the knots and twists. And I wrote. I wrote and wrote, driven by the fuel of epics, I wrote, and it was something spectacular indeed.

Next day, I visited my soul again. This time, I had even more clarity, but the ride was even more bumpy. But I saw, and I felt, and I wrote. Who knew I had all of this within me? All the while, I kept her awake and captive, and all the while she got more drained and confused and corpse-like.

So, the next day, when she stalled, she stopped. And there I was, stranded within the fog and twists and knots of my own soul, left without a driving force. But she was still there somehow - not driving me, but illuminating, clarifying all that was around - out of spite, I believe. Too much of a good thing is a true sentiment indeed, and introspection is certainly no exception.

Who kidnapped a woman and tortured her for days?, the fog cried out. A woman vain and lazy and dull. What do you see here? Nothing. You are nothing and you have nothing - just knots and twists and folds and fog. Some writer. No passion, no charm, no feeling. What is there at the centre of the knots and folds and fog? Nothing, they call. And they tell of brutal honesty with only the brutality, and insecurity, and a woman who puts others down because she does not like herself, a woman who on some level does not see others as people the way that she is.

And all of a sudden, I am out, and the sun burns my eyes, and I am changed, but only in understanding, and not for the better, and I scream and scream for the truth I have been avoiding so long has come to light.

And this is why she is wicked. Out of spite, she showed me that I was not good, although I am good, I am! And she made me do what I did, made me what I now am. I tried to end my life, you see. Did she do the same? No, and this is why her part is worse in it all, because who came out better? She recovered, and I’m sure she’s seen worse in her time, but she ended a human life. Will have ended.

I am bed-bound now, after my injuries, still in that empty motel. She visits me, to help, but I believe to gloat, but oh, I have no time! She will be here soon, oh no, oh no. Oh, I must sign off, she must find me, but, oh, please remember that I am good!