The Ghostwind Mythos

Welcome. This is the chronicle of a quest. This is a stroll in the labyrinth, a pilgrimage: the pursuit of magic, faith, and -- the two alchemically bonded -- apotheosis.

Name:

I am eagerly awaiting the rebirth of wonder.

May 31, 2007

Istanbul, Revisited

And like that, Jerusalem is behind me. I'm walking my way out of the labyrinth, and I have a lot waiting for me when I finally get back where I started. Only it doesn't quite work that way, does it? It's more like a spiral than a circle; something is still gained...

Even if it's not what I went looking for. High expectations are dangerous things. But I started the quest, and things happened, and the ripples of revelations will keep coming to me long after I've returned. It'll be years before all this makes sense to me, and I've become comfortable with that. No lightning bolts, just echoes in a comfortable dark.

So, if no one objects, I think I'll continue to change a little once I get back: in small degrees, in tiny twists of personality, in the kind of subtle shifts that separate art from attempt. I have this image in my head, burned in like a retinal flare, of the man I want to be. I've flexed my will a bit on this journey, and I've felt my intuition stretch out. I just need to grow into this wider spirit.

I need to get in character and keep living this personal story. Everyday. This path closes behind me, but paths open up ahead. And like a fractal pattern, infinitely rich with detail, all is the labyrinth... all is the story.

Tomorrow that story takes me back to Florence, if only for something of an epilogue.

May 24, 2007

Via Dolorosa

This is the Via Dolorosa I saw.

I. In the courtyard of a Muslim school, a judgment is handed out. Release this depraved killer, or this crazed mystic? Pontius Pilate performs ablutions and thinks this story won't last much longer; he doesn't understand why the mob's so bloodthirsty as to free a murderer, but he knows it'd be dangerous to deny them. Besides, he didn't hear anyone speaking up for the mystic. Just a small group of people crying. They also know it'd be dangerous, and they know he... He... doesn't want them hurt. So Jesus is condemned -- doesn't even try and defend himself -- in a school, blatantly guilty of being a deviation in the paradigm. Miracles on the Shabbath? Blessed are the meek? The whole kingdom of the Most High God in the seed of a mustard plant, a weed? If we teach our children that, logic will eat them alive.

II. So the Mossad agents lead him across the street. There's evidence he's connected to some escaped Nazis -- dared to offer them redemption -- so it's time for a good old-fashioned scourging, but just 39 lashes, since 40 is considered lethal and they want him alive... they want names. But all he screams are the Names of G-D, and that never holds up in court because it's impossible to extridite divinities. So they put a bag over his head, a flak jacket on his chest (to keep some jackass from a mercy killing before he can be made an example), and put the cross on his shoulder. He takes it like he's been waiting for it, and the agents curse themselves because it's hard to break a masochist.

III. But it's a real cry of pain when his knees buckle and he drops to the street. The guards have come to hate that sound. Pathetic. Usually they get the inmate within sight of the table before he begins blubbering like a baby. Life isn't fair, boy. Touch luck. Got caught with a dangerous opiate/hallucinogen/upper and had so much the cops didn't even bother asking if he had intent to distribute. Deal with it. Suck it up and carry yourself with pride at least. But he doesn't. He manages to stagger to his feet and carry himself... but not with pride.

IV. Burned in from overuse, she can remember exactly the last time she saw him before they snatched him and he disappeared. His friends told her what happened. She remembers how scared he was, yet how determined. And as gut-wrenching as that time was, she wants to remember him that way, the way he was before he vanished into Guantanamo. Because she looks at him now and her words and his words seem so far away and she can't remember them exactly because inside she's screaming over and over again, "What have they done to my son?!" She wants to remember him right but his face is so bruised he doesn't look human, and her tears make it hard to see; so she blinks her eyes but the guards have already taken him away. She wants to scream out "Just give them what they want!" But she knows what he'd say, a little afraid but determined: "But Mom... I am."

V. They took him to the right, back onto Via Dolorosa from al-Wad Road. Not sure if Simon Cyrene ran into it all on his own accord or if the Klansmen grabbed him. Records are scarce and Simon was probably illiterate, so we have only secondary sources: a handful of writings and an eerie postcard of the end result. Either way, Simon carried the cross about 50 meters at most. Not sure if Jesus tried to help him or if he was "occupied" by the Klansmen, but I wouldn't call this much of a break for him. Besides, if he looked like he was regaining his strength, they would have put the cross on him again. The only record that later mentions Simon still doesn't explain if his help was voluntary, but his grandson records him as saying "We're all carryin' crosses anyhow."

VI. She'd been standing by the column, bracing against it so the crowd wouldn't push her away. This was crazy. She didn't go to medical school for this. She didn't sell her soul for school loans so she could watch helplessly as the Hutus drove this Tutsi man like he were cattle. And for what? Racial purity? She'd been here God knows how long and she still couldn't tell the difference except one group was killing the other. Killing and humiliating: rapes, mutilations, and now this. Every time he stumbled into the crowd they beat him mercilessly. He couldn't see for the blood in his eyes. And here she stood, feeling like an idiot and hating herself and thinking of what her mother would say. She wrings the handkerchief, her stomach twisting up more. She's with Doctors Without Borders. They can't touch her, right? She's politically neutral. But is anyone going to ask for her badge before she gets a machete in the face, or worse? If she had a syringe of morphine, she'd dope this guy up so much he'd think he's in Heaven. If she had a pistol, she'd put him out of his misery. But no. Little Miss Veronica has a handkerchief. She busts through the crowd and wipes his face before anyone has any idea what she's doing. They hurl her into the dirt and kick at her. She covers her head, screaming, and instinctively locks her legs tight because she's had nightmares about the stories she's heard. But the crowd passes on. She looks at the handkerchief and sees a face of blood and she thinks about medical school and the only thing that got her through opening up corpses: this is all of us; we're the same blood, breath, and bone; this is all of us.

VII. The intersection with Khan al-Zeit used to be a gate to the countryside, but now it's a flexing, thrashing arm of the market. The legionnaires shout for people to move out of the way, but no one here speaks ancient Latin anymore, and it's hard to scare people by waving a gladius around when everyone has seen 18-year-old soldiers with assault rifles. So no one was real surprised when a kid with a cart skidded past, jolting the cross, which drove the crown of thorns in deeper. He fell. Shopkeepers first started yelling that the Romans were clogging up the street, then they quickly began to implore the mob to look at their goods while they had such a captive audience. Two icons and a rug were soon sold. A Roman traded his gladius for a knockoff Japanese sword (the gladius was sold minutes later), while the rest of his platoon were trying to figure out where the gate was. Finally the captain got the attention of a young Arab boy and made a "V" with one hand and held up three fingers with the other. The boy pointed down Aqabat al-Khanqa and offered to guide them for just one dollar. The Romans shoved him aside and got their prisoner to his feet, leading him along.

VIII. There was a fortune to be had in Jerusalem. And, yes, the Holy Land needed cleansing. But when a man is driven mad by the sun, malnutrition, and disease -- and priests, equally mad -- he has difficulty seeing the difference. Fortune and purification. But this had to be done right the first time because not a one of them wanted to come back to this God-forsaken place (though they might send and errant son or two to make a man out of him). And that's exactly how it was done: in order to really secure the fortune, heirs had to be dealt with. They caught up to one they'd wounded, and he was shouting to two women: "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, weep rather for yourselves and your children." They overtook him and charged the women. One man, a toothless squire who used to be something of a mason, actually stopped on the spot and chiseled a Crusader cross into the wall, shouted "For Jesu!," and hurried to catch up with his lord who'd got ahold of one of the women. A precision strike in a densely populated neighborhood had become a massacre.

IX. Back to Khan al-Zeit, up some stairs above the market, and down the street to the three Coptic churches. In Queen Helen's Church (named for Constantine's mother, who made it a point to go around finding Christian relics), there is a cistern in the basement: narrow stairs with a low overhang which open up to a cavernous room, the stairs going down into the murky water. I sat down on the stairs, listening to the dripping. The sign outside said to try singing a hymn because of the long echo, so I hummed "Amazing Grace." I don't think I had the verses in the right order, and I don't really care, because I prefer to end with my favorite: "Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come. / T'was grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home." Halfway through the verse I heard a man call down the tunnel. I thought he'd hear my humming, but he turned out the lights. Pitch black and the sound of water. I smiled and sang the end of the verse -- "And grace will lead me home" -- because I'd walked the Buda Labyrinth and I was alone with the dark, Echo singing back to me. I could have happily sat there for hours. Nearby, Jesus fell a third time, and if there's a sliver of mercy in the world, he passed out and dreamt he was beside me, in the echoing dark that is at once intimate and transcendent. But the Via Dolorosa isn't over yet. I turned on my flashlight, smiled, turned it off, and felt my way out, back into the light of day.

X. Down through the Ethiopian church, and take a right through massive doors into a place of lanterns, paintings, and tourists. They strip him bare to humiliate him in front of the crowd; he probably doesn't notice. Then they gamble over the soiled cloth as a memento because most of us are floating somewhere between numbness and horror. If he has any comfort left, it comes solely from within.

XI. They nail him to the cross at the back of the Franciscan chapel while tour guides debate the mechanics of a nail through the palm of the hand or through the wrist.

XII. He is hauled up in place, the "Place of the Skulls" ("Golgotha"). Pictures are taken to make this moment last forever, like so many paintings and crosses showing him so often crucified and not enough resurrected. The various denominations argue who gets to nail the sign on the cross. Someone has stabbed him in the side, but the Romans are gone by now... except for those of the Catholic variety. No one sticks around the full, pregnant three hours, so we all just mentally fastforward to the end: the Word Made Flesh dies. An earthquake tears the ground so Jesus' blood can reach the buried Adam far below in the center of the world. The ghost of Queen Helen finds three crosses in the basement and the third one heals a passing invalid. Somewhere is an echo of words that may or may not have been shouted in agony, but which nonetheless ring true: "Daddy! Daddy, where are you?!"

XIII. He is taken down. He's gone. Mary holds him, and this torment reaches into the deepest parts of her, beyond even her womb. Her icon shows her red heart bared, pierced by a silver dagger. Like her son on the cross, the agony is what fixes the moment in reality, the sorrow pins it to the cosmos, sews it onto the moving skin of memory and legend. This scar has not healed. She has since died and gone to Heaven, become the spiritual child of her child. Perhaps she has transcended all this, her heart so wide that the pain and joys of the world are as the sigh of the wind. But we still remember her suffering.

XIV. He is buried in a stranger's tomb. Mary buries a part of herself. They think the story's over.

But a messiah comes to Israel every year, sometimes two or three at a time. The archangel Michael, still blowing the Trump of the End Times, hasn't taken a breath in centuries. And one day we will not only allow Jesus to fully ascend, but we will join at his side, all of us Anointed, all of us Christs. We will be a species of saints. We have much work to do.

So the question is: after the last station of the cross, where do you go?

May 17, 2007

Jerusalem

At first, when I arrived, the bus dropped me off and I had to walk a bit to get internet access and book a hostel. A celebration was going on: forty years of Israel "re-unifying" Jerusalem, so there were was a parade and plenty of people out on the streets. I worried that Jerusalem had gone modern, that its history had been almost completely buried in cafes and parks. Then I got to the Old City.

And yes, the old Jerusalem is still here, breathing quietly in walls built by Suleyman the Magnificent during Turkish rule. (He was so angry that the architects had left David's Tomb outside the new walls that he put their heads outside the walls as well.) The spice market makes my eyes water. A shopkeeper -- hoping to pawn off some Persian rugs -- made me a cup of sage tea because I told him my stomach was bothering me. Hebrew, Arabic, and English come at me from all angles. I'm staying at the Citadel Hostel, which is a truly mazelike, four-story place with low, cavernous ceilings; I don't mind hitting my head when I get to hang out in such an interesting building. I am surrounded by jews, muslims, and christians of many different sects. (Even met a German girl who was raised Pentecostal and spoke in tongues at the age of five!)

On the other side of things, we occassionally watch Al-Jazeera, and the news of fighting is more relevant when you know it's on the southern border of Israel. Packs of soldiers from the settlements roamed around yesterday, to help serve as security for the celebration; but these are kids, just eighteen years old, strolling with assault rifles. Barbed wire tops the wall outside my hostel. And this, too, is the old Jerusalem.

May 14, 2007

Istanbul

The Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque stand across from each other like old friends (one significantly older than the other). The Sophia was once like Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome; emperors were crowned there. Even when Constantinople fell to the Turks, the conquerors would not destroy such a grand work of architecture. They made a handful of (religiously) necessary changes and the ancient building served as a mosque, Arabic calligraphy still hangs there on massive disks from the balconies or curling around the top of the enormous dome. The Blue Mosque was later built across from the Sophia, its architecture and size like a proclamation of both the power of the Ottomans and -- "Allahu Akbar" -- the magnificence of Allah. It is the only mosque with six minarets; at the time, the great mosque of Mecca also had six, but they added one as a matter of honor. I'm sure someone would have complained about this, but Sultan Ahmet I -- who had the Blue Mosque built -- also had the same architect give the Kaaba its golden gutters... so critics kept their complaints to themselves.

Due to the location of this hostel, I get to walk between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia everyday. They are positively huge and beautiful (though admittedly the Mosque has been better maintained).

When there is a call to prayer, every mosque in the city bursts into the intricate song, each singer doing a slightly different version with the same words, like singing in rounds. "Allahu Akbar. La ilaha illa'Llah, Mohammedun rasulu 'Llah. Allahu Akbar": "God is Greatest. There is no god but God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God. God is Greatest." As if Istanbul itself is singing, the words echoing from all across the entire city, rolling through the streets, coming in waves.

Last night, I saw Sufi mystics dance. The same order as founded by the poet Rumi, they perform publicly to celebrate the 800th anniversary of his birth in Afghanistan. He was a man of intense love: the kind of love that destroys the world's illusions and frees the beautiful souls to express themselves as openly as the stars do. Musicians played, a drum beat lulling me into a hypnotic trance, a dulcimer's strings playing chords of light, three singers with deep and rich voices describing a world of peace and tolerance and the kind of love that -- far from boring -- makes the soul scream in ecstasy, all in harmony with the universe's own ancient sufi dance... and the sufis danced, spinning in place like the planets, slowly revolving around one who spun in the middle, their long skirts lifting and rolling, their tall hats drawing halos in the air, both hands lifted with the right palm up and the left palm down: "We receive from God and we give to man; we keep nothing for ourselves," as Rumi wrote. And in watching them spin, a part of me spun with them. We are always moving, even in the deepest stillness. Many wise men say to slow down our lives... it is a refreshing change when the soul itself is quickened and brought up to speed, whirring like a top, its vibrations creating sound and song and harmony. Allelujah.

I leave tomorrow for Tel Aviv, then to Jerusalem. I spin across the world as it spins under my feet. My path is a spiralling labyrinth drawn for a short while on the cloth of the cosmos.

May 10, 2007

Athens, Enriched

Couch surfing is one of the most fantastic ideas I've ever heard. From www.couchsurfing.com, people can connect with natives in a city willing to host them for free. I've met and had great conversations with not only native Athenians, but also other travellers. (Obviously, staying at a hostel offers far more of the latter than the former.) The only two flaws I see are that, (a) you have to begin the process at least a few days in advance, contacting a potential host, and obviously, (b) there's the "psycho factor." But I seriously doubt the couch surfing community would be as huge as it is in Athens if psychopaths were making the circuit.

It's hot and humid. I'm blatantly a foreigner, pretty much the only person with freckles and sweating like a maniac. I leave the trench coat with my big bag. The first day trying to carry that thing around was like torture. The sun here is a powerful thing, with heavy rays, and it doesn't help that I didn't bring any shorts. (Not, mind you, that I really own any shorts except for swimming.) At the same time, I keep wishing that this short-lived complexion of mine might stick around for a while. It's like looking at someone else in the mirror: some estranged brother of mine with a beard a little too long. But I know full well that two days of normal life will render me just as lily white as I always have been.

And this is a shame, because I like this man I'm becoming. Physically, emotionally, spiritually I feel great... if a little anxious. All in due time, and not long in coming. But I want these subtle changes to stick, even the physical ones. I can't let these things fade like a tan. I'll be going to Istanbul tomorrow, so we'll see what changes its experiences -- and its sun -- will evoke.

May 05, 2007

Athens

I spent all of yesterday trekking Athens with three Serbian girls. This is my third group of three friends (including my Graces, and the French architects), and I didn't realize that until one of them pointed it out. We needed each other anyway, everyone keeping everyone else awake because the train pulled into Athens at five in the morning. We pushed and pushed, stopping frequently to rest, talking everything from politics to music.

And plenty of times we would just stare in awe. The size of these Greek ruins is like the footprint of a giant. The Temple of Olympian Zeus is now nothing more than a handful of columns standing like sentries in the middle of a park, but they are massive; the temple must have had its own presence. But what it lacks now in completion, it makes up with age. These columns are the bones of a dead titan, from whom our cultures descended. Prometheus gave us fire: philosophy, democracy, and artistry. And now I pay homage.

Which is hard not to do when you turn a street corner and see the Parthenon looming over you like the eye of Sauron. Athens is a massive city, stuffed to the gills with apartment complexes and office buildings and all the other structures that keep a city alive. But in crawling around these streets, occasionally an alley or square will open up like a forest clearing, and the Parthenon -- from on high -- will call your name. And you have to look. Standing on its shoulder, Athens' off-white buildings look like coral in the distance, so many people that they spill onto the hillsides as if sloppily poured.

And in spite of the dominance of the Orthodox Church, it's refreshing to see a little good, old fashioned, unapologetic paganism. Christ is the redeemer, yes, but Dionysius threw some amazing parties, and his holy places are almost as common. (It should be noted that in his own mythos, Dionysius has died three times. The Greeks loved him so much they kept bringing him back to life... like Superman. Which is impressive, considering he was originally a mid-Eastern deity.) And I've shown my respect to him as well, telling a handful of favored stories and raising a glass in his honor, even as I stood at the same place Paul the Apostle once spoke.

But I love these places imperfectly, and like an adulterer I am not always thinking of Athena when I am with her. She is beautiful, yes, and fascinating. But she is not home.