Soulful mourning, sweet memories

Soulful mourning

I woke up cold and damp. I stood and stretched my already aching joints. My eyes squinted at the light streaming in through the arched entrance of my current dwelling. I stepped out of the cave to survey my surroundings, and it took only a few seconds to realise that I was completely lost. Don’t get me wrong, this was something that happened every lifetime. I died, was reborn, and this is when it takes me a while to work out who and what I am now.

Do I die? I know in human terms I die, but then am I human? My soul has lived for millennia, and I expect that it will continue to do so until that day when it no longer has a body to be reborn to.

Are there others like me, or am I the only one? I don’t think we are all the same; otherwise, what are we doing with all these religions? Anyway, all this procrastination isn't helping me figure out where I stand.

Normally, I can look at my terrain, pick out a feature and then work out what part of the world I am in. The sun was out, and the temperature was high; that, along with the sea air, told me I was somewhere tropical. Behind me was mountainous terrain, but nowhere I had already been or studied.

I have held many different professions throughout the centuries. I seem to exist only as a fountain for knowledge. One life, I am a scientist; the net, I am a mathematician, then a philosopher. After a while, the cycle seems to retrain me, and therefore, I accept each life as a necessary frustration.

I do not fear love as I live and ‘die’ the same as other humans. To be honest, I thrive in love as I can recite the sonnets, explain the stars or tell the stories of the ancients as they should be told, from one who was there.

The one thing that I have never been is a father. I guess, whoever is in charge up there has a reason for this, and I tell myself that perhaps, it’s so that I don’t spend my time constantly looking for my offspring.

I decided to follow my nose and head for the source of the salty sea smell. The body I was now in was in great condition, unlike many before, which slowed me down. I once spent a lifetime with rickets and crutches. I learned a lot about humanity then, and not in a good way.

I travelled in a downward direction and after about two hours, at a guess, I broke through the thick growth to see and hear the tide below me. I was standing at the edge of a two-hundred-foot drop, and another step would have taken me to another body in another world. I knew nothing of my current life or what I was expected to learn. Right now, I was just happy that I had an agile body, so I quickly stopped, adjusted my balance, and looked for a slower way down.

When you have lived, or certainly known life for as long as I have, you also learn to adapt and accept things without overthinking. The last time I ended my life early was when I returned with rickets! I took this to mean that whoever was controlling me was teaching me a more valuable lesson, in that all life forms are precious and not to be discarded, even if it was my own.

I have never returned to the past, and I generally return within a few years of when I died. This allows me to fit in easily and not be the smartest person on the planet. I would say man, but this isn’t the modern answer, even though I've never returned as a woman.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to experience being a woman, and if that happened, I would probably learn more about life than the last three hundred years, but this is not my rodeo. I’m only here to ride the steeds.

I am very diverse with my sexuality, as this keeps me more alive than someone afraid of what others may think. Imagine going into a bar and everyone in it is a possible love interest? My last male lover was Plato, but since those glorious days, same-sex love has been frowned upon. At least the times are changing, and I can enjoy myself to the full.

I brought my mind back to the current situation. Steep cliff, long drop with a short stop, and the need for an alternative route.

I backtracked through the undergrowth, far enough so that I could stay on a downward route without going too near the cliff edge. It was slow going, but it wasn’t as if I was in any hurry to get somewhere. I would find my way to the sea, and there would be some way for me to continue my life learning amongst other humans. All I had to do was make the effort and follow my instincts. Sure enough, after a while, the sound and smell of the sea became more intense.

The sound itself was ferocious as the waves were coming in high and then fell, slapping against the misshapen rocks. The spray came over my head with a beautiful cooling effect. I stopped and admired Mother Nature at her finest. I sat down on a wet rock and let the spray wash down over my face and shoulders. My body was new, but my mind and soul were ancient with memories both sweet and tragic. Such memories often overtook whatever part I was playing in this temporary vessel of mine.

Nearly three and a half thousand years have passed since this memory was made, but to me, it is currently being lived. I was a childhood friend of Odysseus before he was king and a legendary hero. We were taught to sail, fish, hunt and fight by the best in the kingdom.

“Euameus, hurry up or we’ll miss the timing of the tide for our return.”

Odysseus was impatient. He always wanted to prove himself, and today was no different. We had been given the task of providing lunch for the great table, and, yes, many skilled fishermen were already sea-bound and casting their nets, but this was no ordinary request. The king had ordered his prince to prove his worth in the realms of the mighty Poseidon, and I was delaying our task. I knew that we could easily set sail and come home with our boat laden with fish, but today we had to sail from the north shore, where the waters were treacherous. Leaving now, with low tide, allowed us to sail around the visible rocks. If we took too long, the high tide would take away our map.

“Sorry Ody, but that darn dog had taken one of my sandals again!”

Odysseus laughed, “Of course he did. If you cleansed your feet after the grape crushing, then he would have left your smelly sandals alone.”

We pushed hard, jumped into our small craft, and Odysseus took hold of the sail. He was a natural master of the wind. He pulled the rope tight and pushed his feet against the frame of the boat. The wind obeyed its master, and he expertly guided us through the danger, and soon we were casting our net. We were in favour with Poseidon as our net filled with each cast.

Looking up at the sun, we could tell that we had plenty of time to return with our haul, so we lay back, closed our eyes and rested. We had no alarms back then, just old sea shanties to sing and stay awake.

We didn’t sing for too long as we were not foolish. We had a lot at stake, mostly our pride. Odysseus pulled on the sail, and we were soon homeward bound. The other thing that we didn’t have then was weather forecasts, as we suddenly realised the sky was darkening.

Zeus and his brother were trying to outdo each other. The speed of the wind with the constant change of direction, was beyond our control. The sail became too strong to handle, and the ten-year-old Odysseus had the rope pull away and burn through his fingers. The sky was black when the lightning wasn’t flashing, and all we could do now was to hold each other and pray to the gods to let us learn and not die.

Thankfully, our prayers were answered, as the storm passed nearly as quickly as it had arrived. We now said another prayer for the other sailors in it’s new path.

We had no sail, but we could now see our land and the rocks that needed to be avoided.

I shouted to make myself heard, “Odysseus, we should swim ashore. We can't steer the boat, but we can maybe swim around the rocks.”

“No, we have to bring the fish or we die trying.” He yelled back.

I nodded and understood what had to be done.

We both jumped over the side. Odysseus held onto the front for steerage whilst I grabbed the rear to achieve the same result.

It was much more difficult to see anything from our new positions. We feared we were now going to be remembered as the boys who died for lunch. As Odysseus was pulling, I had a more advantageous view, and what I saw was the most glorious sight these young eyes had seen. The fire in the three cliffside cauldrons had been lit. We had been taught the rocks' positioning to the cliffs, so that we could navigate these shores blindly, as our teacher would claim. We were about to prove his theory.

“Pull right.”

“Keep her straight.”

I shouted, Odysseus pulled, and I did what I could from the rear.

After a few collisions, we crashed onto shore, exhausted, bruised and with blood flowing from many gashes. We hugged each other with such exuberance and joy.

We were greeted as heroes, as we found out later that everyone had watched our endeavours after the king himself had lit the cauldrons for our aid.

Strangely, this story was never told to Homer, but I remember it now after three thousand eight hundred years. I wiped the tears and sea spray from my face. It was time to start my next life.