"Prologue"
Monsters are not born but made.* As babies, they are given names and even baptized, but as children, they grow into monsters, creatures with wills beyond their own control, villains their parents cannot discipline. And thus, they are reborn as archetypes of mythology but not as heroes, or gods and goddesses, but as monsters, inexplicable facets of nature, necessary to keep the scales balanced, not the scales of justice but of context, to allow humans to make sense of dark forces beyond their ken of clarity, for what is opaque to understanding is a gift that leads to enlightenment. Behold divine wisdom, I am that child, I am the Minotaur of King Minos, son to Queen Pasiphaë, forced to walk the Earth, a wandering Jew, for the myth is a legend not a fact.** As I come from the seed of the white bull, I am half-divine, and a royal figure, my name, Asterion, is little-known, that I escaped the Cretan Labyrinth, even less-known, save for those who have aided me in my journey as an immortal child of Poseidon***, or Zeus. Who my father is, I am unconcerned. I can only say to others: "I am not a monster! I am not a bull-man! I am human! I am a man!"**** Though my head be misshapen, I am not deformed. My appearance may be ghastly, and for this I was imprisoned underneath the palace.
At least, they brought me children to play with. Though I was hungry, I did not devour their flesh. I have no need to eat the tender flesh of the lambs in the fields, their beautiful faces, their tiny skulls so easily crushed with a palm-sized stone, the blood mingles in pools along the bed of sand, the white and gray worms escape the confines of each cranium and squirm gently down my gullet by the handful, sweet with Topikos Oinos (Vin de pays), left in a wineskin with each flock that enters the labyrinth. The quickest way to end the childrens' screams is to carry the palm-sized stone; it is my dearest friend, though swift and brainless, he is merciful, as per the gods' demands. After I struck a child, he or she slept, for days it seemed, perhaps weeks, months, nay, even years. Their dessicated bodies lounged around the maze, no longer dancing for their lives. Then, the flies came to inhale the putrid scents of rotting corpses. Only much later did I learn what the merciful one did was wrong. It was not wrong in technique, for the art of the palm-sized stone was exact, a good thwack between the occipital and parietal lobes, in the back of the head, and all the beautiful worms would spill out like candy for me to gobble up. Quenched with the oinos from the goat-skinned wine sack and the flavors melded so gloriously on my palette. No, it was not wrong in technique, but ethically it was abhorrent.
However, as ethics had yet to be revealed by Plato and Aristotle, and was not delivered to me in my prison, as these beautiful children were, I was judged innocent by the gods, but presumed a monster by the Cretans and Greeks alike. But still, they brought me children to play with. How strange those primitive peoples were before they were offered the fennel branch by Prometheus, the fire-bringer. Who in society is decreed a monster is decided upon entirely by the status quo, those who hold power to judge. Those who are decreed monsters may simply be infantile morons...dull-witted, uneducated fools, like myself. Until knowledge was bestowed upon me by Theseus, who strangled me, allegedly to death, and decapitated my gruesome bull's head, did I realize my luck, in that, I am not unlike the gods, as, I am immortal.
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*"Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so."
~ Andrea Dworkin
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**"There was a story -- which Thucydides is too austere to mention -- that each year the Athenians had to pay the tribute of seven youths and seven maidens to a dreadful monster, the Minotaur, who lived in a labyrinth at Cnossos, until they were set free by the royal prince Theseus, who slew the Minotaur, aided by Ariadne and the ball of string which she gave him to guide him out of the labyrinth. Such was the legend: here are some facts. Of the name 'Minotauros', the first half is obviously Minos, and the second half 'tauros' is the Greek for a bull; and from what Evans found at Cnossos -- friezes, statuettes and the like -- it is quite clear that these Cretans worshipped the bull. Then, if anything ancient looks like a labyrinth it is the ground-plan of the vast palace which Evans dug up. Further, there is abundant evidence that these Minoan Cretans used, as a symbol of divinity, or of authority, a double-headed axe of the kind that the later Greeks called 'labrys'. Finally, Attica certainly came under Cretan influence culturally, quite possibly then politically as well: it is therefore not at all unlikely that the lords of Cnossos did in fact take hostages for good behaviour from noble Athenian families, just as the Turks did many centuries later. Theseus seems to be a mistake, as he comes from a later period, and so far no one has substantiated the romantic Ariadne or found the string: otherwise the legend emerges with credit." (Page 17) ~ Kitto, H. D. F., The Greeks, London: Pelican Books, 1951 (Penguin Books 1957, 1991).
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*** "Poseidon Opines"
Pleasure leaps at the chance to satisfy
Or peruse the loins of a sacred bull.
Sure of her artifice Pasiphaë peels
Ears back to withstand and to gratify,
Ignominiously, the divine bovine.
Decisively, she lures the beast with dull
Onomatopoeia, how a cow feels
Need to bellow a "moo" to fornicate.
Originally, Daedalus supine,
Peering at the stars from the Labyrinth
Invented wax wings to escape his debt.
Needless to say, for Icarus, this state
Engineered to take flight became a plinth
Sending him back to Earth, full of regret.
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****John Merrick: I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man! ~ The Elephant Man (1980)
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Chapter One: "The Secret to Running"
On the 4th of July, the pain crept up his leg from the metatarsals to the head of the fibula.^ He knew he was done for...the pain was excruciating. He decided to walk back home as he was hobbling, a new hobby, his gait broken. His hopes to run° the Chicago Marathon in October dashed. Anxiety pulsed through his temples; he needed to get home, shower, dress, and get his sorry-ass foot to the nite club to shake a leg and work the box office in two hours.
He'd been running since September last year (when he was laid-off at the bookstore, where he'd worked for eleven years) to keep up his spirits. A veteran bookseller with twenty-two years under his belt, now, "simply forgotten" ("out of sight, out of mind"), the former events coordinator for A Labyrinth of Books in Chicago.
He had six-months to find a job and get back on his feet, after receiving severance and a final paycheck, including vacation time. But that wouldn't last long, even with unemployment insurance checks coming bi-weekly for six-months at two-fifths his pay rate.
He was about to go on vacation the day his boss, the Director, asked if they could have a talk down in the basement. He was looking forward to relaxing at home, a "staycation," making order of the boxes of books, papers, and other clutter in the two-bedroom apartment he shared with his girlfriend.
Hyde Park was an anomaly on the South Side of Chicago. Safe, even with all the university police, a double-headed battle axe (labrys) of concern. But he could walk home after the club closed and not worry about getting mugged or beaten-up for no good reason other than being drunk and easy-prey.
Skinny-fuck with high tolerance for pain, and alcohol, he loved to run ever since childhood, when he and Sam, the Dream Weaver°°, would race for fun ("wanna race?" "sure.") during recess back in '79, just to see who could sweep over the lawn with wings of the messenger god, Hermes. Sam was not tall but fierce with a swagger typical of men from Southern California. At nine years, Sam's mother allowed him to sport shoulder-length golden locks like a Grecian hero. By ten, Sam often plunged his dip-stick into the under-aged girls who loved him with their lips covered over with peach-fuzz.
I was dark from the sun, the desert heat that scorched the coastal towns. Intelligent but socially awkward, I couldn't even stamp my feet to catch the attention of my classmates. Running was thus a blessèd state, where the coastal breeze was my closest friend, the only friend worth an ounce of fidelity, the ever-present guardian spirit, Daimonion. But, I did not have a name, at that time, for this breath of inspiration guiding my destiny.
Little did he know I, the Cretan Minotaur, was five thousand years-old and hidden inside the body of his small body. A boy of Goan-descent, born in Bombay, on the most important date reflected in the mirror of modern history, June 28. But it meant nothing to the child, whose mind my spirit entered at birth, and left him utterly confused for four decades.
The Daimonion of karmic enslavement decrees, after the body dies, my spirit will move on to another body, as a ghost, a spectre of Greek mythology and legend. But, for now, he and I are bound together by Daimonion.
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^He didn't realize the exact location of his pain until much later. When he self-diagnosed his injury by referring to the Trail Guide to the Body, a book he owned from his time studying massage therapy and kinesiology, anatomy, physiology, and pathology at the Chicago School of Massage Therapy, better known as Cortiva.
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°"I ran because if I had not, I would have died. No one told me that you take your world with you, that running becomes a habit, that the secret to running is to know why you run and where you are going---and to leave behind the reason you run." From "Two or Three Things I Know for Sure" (1995) by Dorothy Allison
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°°"Dream Weaver" (1975, Gary Wright)
I've just closed my eyes again
Climbed aboard the dream weaver train
Driver take away my worries of today
And leave tomorrow behind
Ooh dream weaver
I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light
Fly me high through the starry skies
Maybe to an astral plane
Cross the highways of fantasy
Help me to forget today's pain
Ooh dream weaver
I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light
Though the dawn may be coming soon
There still may be some time
Fly me away to the bright side of the moon
And meet me on the other side
Ooh dream weaver
I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light
Dream weaver
Dream weaver
Dream weaver
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