Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

Cheeniya Sir,
Don't get surprise, I always like to read your writings. True, we do some mistakes knowingly and some sins unknowingly. While reading your post they were came into my mind and agree they are different versions of bad people in this world. That's why I just read headlines of any newspaper.

 

Add Woody Allen to that! Our strength to endure nonsense operates in stealth mode. Until QPQ happened, I had no inkling that I had tremendous potential to spout and reciprocate in kind so much nonsense.

The Greeks are a funny lot. They couldn't agree on the system of their Athenian education. Aristophanes lampooned Socrates in his plays as that empty-brainer who eulogized logic and reason over the marvelous human folly. I like this Aristo dude who came up with the most inventive myth of the origin of soul mate to elucidate how a man seeks a woman or vice versa. No apple and snakes! Only smashed-up chimeras.

In his dialogue The Symposium, Plato has Aristophanes present a story about soulmates. Aristophanes states that humans originally had four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces. He continues that there were three genders: man, woman and the "Androgynous", each with two sets of genitalia with the Androgynous having both male and female genitalia. The men were children of the sun, the women were children of the earth and the Androgynous were children of the moon, which was born of the sun and earth. It is said that humans had great strength at the time and threatened to conquer the gods. The gods were then faced with the prospect of destroying the humans with lightning as they had done with the Titans but then they would lose the tributes given to the gods by humans. Zeus developed a creative solution by splitting humans in half as punishment for humanity's pride and doubling the number of humans who would give tribute to the gods. These split humans were in utter misery to the point where they would not eat and would perish so Apollo had sewn them up and reconstituted their bodies with the navel being the only remnant harkening back to their original form. Each human would then only have one set of genitalia and would forever long for his/her other half; the other half of his/her soul. It is said that when the two find each other, there is an unspoken understanding of one another, that they feel unified and would lie with each other in unity and would know no greater joy than that.​

Probably Aristo meant that decent education does not endow you with such fanciful imagination to fabricate just-so myths.

 

I will respond to his post later as I have to dig out my Rome and Vatican pictures from my forsaken and untidy albums and show to you what happens in Vatican and Rome. Later, soon.

 

I have a porous memory! So, before I lapse in my senile rambling, just wanted to ping you that I was impressed by that mention.

I had met an aged father during my India visit who prides himself as a 'migratory bird'. He shuttles between India (retirement home) and US (kids). He is a jolly fella well adapted to the retirement home lifestyle. He reasoned that maintaining a house is painstaking in his fragile age even with very well-disposed maid and driver and the other surveillance. He would rather live in a retirement home where his quotidian needs are taken care of so that he can focus on more fulfilling aspects of passionate living. I was equally impressed with him. True! Who would want the overhead of a demanding house in that age. I too would rather put up in a Tibetan monastery to an abandoned family home as long they serve butter naans in the hilltop of that monastery ...er..bribe the warden.

But the point is, I am chipper that the times are changing and gentrified crowds are not stigmatizing this old age rehabilitation as abandonment with effusive yet tawdry sentimentalism but are sensible to the family leanings. Personally, I have cheerful affinity for new-age retirement homes having reviewed and heard about them. I think the 'abandonment' is expedient vestige of a cultural trope than sound indictment of modern adaptation to practical living.

I am glad you brought in a relevant mention, that too of a dancing lady in her ripe 87, that though might not be prevailing yet resonates very intensely with me, that families are not succumbing to impractical choices for cultural prestige and conventionality in ostentatious love. In my generation, both the parents and kids grasp that aspect of the shifting times and accordingly tweak their expectations to lead on with a fulfilling and goofily senile indulgences amidst their peers, with little or no interference from their hurried kids.

 

Unusual cultures

If you were wondering where this scout had disappeared, I had been gathering material for our QPQ undertaking.

So, there's this 13-part series called "Unusual Cultures" on Netflix. Each episode encapsulates the unusual aspects of the culture from two regions.

I was intrigued and thrilled and amused, the usual Ira-style of reaction when I chance on such incidental finds. I liked the series very much. The episode on Ethiopia was interesting. I also liked flash facts on Belize and Transylvania and Maori dance and Punta and Paranda drums.

When we encounter culture so alien from our native culture, we are liberated from our small-mindedness and unreasonable prejudices. I don't know, I love watching documentaries on history and civilization. It makes me feel awakened and disaffected from other petty skirmishes around.

Tell you, when someone comes to me with the complaint: I had a big fight with my friend. All her fault! She was acting presumptuous and ...

I interrupt without even listening to their lament fully and chide: Go and watch how the Wetu Telu conduct their daily prayer and social business, you might not be so disturbed in life over a petty disagreement with your friend.

Needless to say, my advice is never taken for serious and real when I had meant it in all seriousness and reality.

 

Cheeniya, I have a feeling only two men in this entire planet grasp my consistent excitement in life, rest either pretend to be sympathetic or rhetoric of my effusive gush in discovering fluffy amusement. One is you and the other is a childhood friend of mine. You bear me because you too exhibit natural affinity for nonsense. The other guy bears me because he feels I am of no danger to anyone but myself.

I can assure you that this nonsense streak in me will continue unabated because I cannot make sense of the larger and profound arc of life. In fact, I fear when people talk too much sense and purpose of life. I get very confused about the noble and necessary enlightenment of life. I prefer to indulge in the small and silly discoveries.

So, be assured, it's not flair or talent but its crazy DNA that cannot be reset to anything meaningful.

Recently, I was confiding in a friend, may be I am a (mild) narcissist because I love myself, the way I am, the way I think, the way I drift in life, the way I leapfrog, the way I bypass, the way I am easily amused, the way I am feverishly obsessed, I love myself so much ...if this is not narcissism then what is.