Dinner with Attica

Dinner with Attica.

“My dear, dear friends, I delight to welcome you to my home once again. How wonderful that you all had the time and agreed to travel south to celebrate our mid-winter doldrums, in joyful reunion and stories that I expect shall unfold as our time together progresses. It has been much too long since we have all spent time under one roof. You have welcomed one newly arrived, with Cicero. For the moment we shall call him ‘the Seeker.’ He has a story to tell, I am sure, for he has a quest to find his son, whom I have met. This is all that I know. But his is an adventure that one or more of us may contribute a leading clue or a known word, who can tell! We shall hear from him in due course, but first, of events to unfold before you depart, to my sorrow. Tonight’s theme was included on the Invitation. I know that you will have come prepared to participate, either verbally, or in gestures of understanding, to express the love and risks of living, expressed by one woman and everywoman, by one man and everyman, by friend with friends.”

The guest to my right spoke forth as the first course was served. I had been introduced to her as Linda.

“Attica, if you will indulge me, I would like to be first to express my thoughts, for I have pondered your theme for the evening, and prepared these notes as my beginning contribution. Though, before I do, to the Seeker, though we have not yet spoken together, welcome, I am Linda.”

 “I call this: ‘Two Wishes from the Genie.’ And Genie said to God, ‘behold the lamp. Brazen its shape with heat from a fire and caste thy breath within its midst. You will see a world, void of shape and life. It awaits your decisions. Linger with thine arms and hands and mold life as you deem it. But remember, once conjured, your creations cannot be returned. You may influence them no longer. They must find their way or perish. The question will be if you, as their creator, taught them well.

And God said to Genie, ‘I fear for my beloved. The trees retreat and the birds of the forests fly in codes of confusion, the waters shift and the fishes lie without hope, the animals of the earth hear warnings and seek higher ground, but my creation of a higher being does not hear nor heed the wisdom. I despair of their time, cut short, their reasoning cut short and their consciousness diverted.

Genie stayed silent and God continued.

“Recuse me time again with them in order that I may reshape my creation. This I ask of you.

Genie responded on all that God had said and answered forthright.

‘This was not our agreement. But fear not, for I shall give you other planets in the universe to populate in hopes of lightening your sadness.’

And God accepted the inevitable, promising to learn from his mistakes and to do better with his creations the next time. He would recreate the birds and the animals of the forests and the plains with the brilliance of color and plumage and with more variety that had driven his earlier expressions. He was inspired to recreate the fishes of the seas in the abundance of his love. But he would have to give his Beloved more thought before moving forward with expression.”

“Linda, darling, as arbiter for the evening, may I say you have set us on the path of discussion. As usual, your wit sets a high bar for us to follow.”

“Yes, Linda, my Love, tis a high bar for us to follow. As you all know, I am not a religious man, but to you comment that we wait for God’s next coming, we wait for his appearance, without warning or precursor to his expectations or future plans, what if he has already come-and-gone, and we did not see his passing?”

“Oh, Claud, must you be so negative? As your other half, I would say, if I were God, I would gather all of the hopes and dreams of the world and tuck them as if under my wings like a mother duck with her ducklings. You know, like a nursery rhyme Mother tucking all of her children under and between the hoops of her skirt.”

“But to hide, dear wife, is not to see. To protect is not to challenge. Soon, love and nurturing would turn to disappointment and despair as the future unfolds without interest or expression of self. What started from love would become a drama of curiosity to know and a longing to explore, alone.”

“Claud, you are hasty with your response, let me finish. Like a Mother Goose, the knowing is in when to open her wings and fly away, and in doing so releases her goslings to their singular endeavors. Don’t wait for God.”

“Seeker, did you know that Claude tried to commit suicide once because he could not support Camille and their first son? He jumped into the Seine. That’s why we all love you, isn’t it Claude! The romance of the sheer and utter final gesture of desperation of the artist.”

“Oh, Linda, don’t be so dramatic. It wasn’t romantic at the time, I only remember how bloody cold the water was and the realization that I could probably have chosen a less physically battering and protracted exit, but who had the money for it. Camille has since forgiven me and I have promised not to repeat the folly.”

“What say you, Seeker, to Claude’s words, will you venture a thought?”

“Well, Attica, I am still thinking of Camille’s’ comments. I am in agreement with her views. I would add that: ‘To walk in front of another, as a parent to a child, allows the follower to observe the thoughtful, the thoughtless. It allows the follower the space to seek another path and to embark upon it with a flourish. When the time comes, and we become the follower, we must be clear not to call in warning or when we lose sight of that child. I say, be patient, for it is not our journey. If love is present, it will draw us back together again.”

“And to Claude’s views?”

“Well, a Priest who has not loved another human being cannot console you. A Politician has not experienced the madness of war should not morally ask a new generation to repeat the folly. A man who has not been humbled by loss or circumstance should not consider himself a leader of men. A man, such as Claude, who has visited death and postponed his rendezvous is to be applauded, for he has experienced life at its extreme.”

“Your thoughts have clarity to them, Seeker, but if we think beyond the experience, to what might have been my death, it would have become a measurement of time, the beginning of a new clock for those who remained. My life started over following that misadventure, but it became a fixed reminder of other milestones of a life lived, a reminder of lessor memories remembered of a lesser life lived. Neither are richer or poorer, neither are nurtured or valued more or less by my soul, they just ‘are.”

“Seeker, I am Artimus, could I interrupt your response to Claude by asking him: ‘is there no free will? Must we all learn to die, or does it just happen to us? It seems to me that most delay the preparation until the end can be seen to be close. Some embrace it with the strength and determination of a time and place chosen by them. Others are taken by surprise and forfeit any protest or expression of choice. Death is not the measurement of time; time is the measure of death. The earlier in life or the later in the cycle it joins us, the more comforted we appear to accept it. I believe that the acceptance belongs to those who remain, not with us, the departed. It is they who keep us close to their hearts.”

“Artimus, your words ring true of my experience, but, for the moment, I shall remain silent.”

“Yes, Artimus, hold silent for a moment, and introduce my to your new friend, I am Louis, and I would say that love and recorded notice must survive the death of both the artist and the scientist, for how else can it be real, and the love measured! Look how Claude is still loved, look at how his paintings survive in prominence.”

“Attica, Louis speaks rarely, but when he does, he speaks volumes. I salute my dear friend, and I hope that tomorrow you will continue to try and explain to me what you does with all of those moving life forms that we cannot see without your microscope, but that make us ill. And after that, I shall ask Marie to interpret what he has told me. But now, if I must sing for my supper, I must do it before the wine befuddles my brain and my brain befuddles the words.”

“Ah, Cicero, my oldest friend, stand and be recognized at my table.”

“Thank you, gracious hostess. You all know me as an Advocate of the Law, and this is what I have learned. Words must be judged as words of the mind or of the heart. From the mind they are expressed with all of their confusion in the telling. Words of the heart are known to all human beings as trustworthy, although few listen or heed their learnings. The heart cannot claim falsehoods. Man can extinguish written words that are cast as law, but he cannot expunge truths from his heart. Sad is the man who ignores these truths beyond his earthly deathbed, for it can never be said, even in a final confession, ‘he was a good man at heart, a man of conscience.’ The mind can be distracted by the richness of the earth, it can be drugged by insatiable want, but the heart cannot be distracted from its quest for love. With that, I ask you all to raise your glasses to our hostess, and to the thought: ‘be not timid in thy quest to reject the allure of excess from the earth for it demands obedience of routine for lesser comforts. This is what I would tell the living. Celebrate love my friends and, with luck, all will fall into place before the end.”

“Seeker, another thought for my table, something more hopeful for it seems that we are falling upon melancholy in the lateness of the night.”

“Thank you, Attica. Little of inspiration or uplift comes to mind, but I would say, when I was young I would dream of what I could become. In mid years I did not dream. In my twilight years I dreamt again, this time of what might have been.”

“Tell us of your quest, Seeker. The journey I alluded too when we gathered.”

“I seek a Son, Attica. Lost to me at his birth. I have carried his absence and my unanswered question heavily for almost forty years. I want to celebrate the instant when the hurt will be liberated, held so long in a darkness of sadness. It will free the congestion that has limited the relationship from an opportunity to grow from understanding to love.

“Your question, Seeker?”

“A single word, Attica, why?”

“How heartfelt that you claim this quest to find your Son. I shall do all that I can to help. I heard words attributed to Publis Strus, once: ‘How unhappy are those who cannot forgive themselves.’ I hope that you can forgive yourself for something that was not yours to forgive in the first place. You should pass that to God, or Linda’s Genie.

“And with that my friends, your journey’s here were long, thus I bid you good night and the gentlest of dreams. We shall meet again tomorrow.”

end