Heinrich Leutemann's The Oracle of Delphi Entranced.
The
home of the oracle and final resting place of Aesop is in a word:
surreal. There are holy places I’ve visited: the Pantheon and St.
Peter’s in Rome; the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico
City; The Temple of the Monkey God in Delhi, India; Jokhang Temple in
Lhasa; and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, but Delphi supersedes
them all! The power of the ancient gods grows strong here at the
temple of Apollo, but as glorious as the sun god was, his beauty is
somehow tainted by Aesop’s bones because the fabulist was cast
alive from the top of the mountain looming above Delphi, which make
me wonder if the death of the truth-teller aided the superstitious
belief in the gods. Is it possible that this early “Age of Reason”
died at the place the sun dwelt, that Athena, the goddess of wisdom,
was powerless to halt Aesop’s fall from the sky? I’d like to come
back again in another twenty-five hundred years to see which was the
victor—mankind…or their gods.
From
my diary: “September 10, 1978. We drove across the busy seaport of
Patras in the Peloponnese, took a ferry across the Gulf of Corinth
and proceeded through the picturesque fishing villages along the
south coast of Greece’s mainland. The afternoon was devoted to a
tour of the ancient sanctuary of Apollo on the slopes of Mt.
Parnassus. There, at Delphi, we saw the Temple of Athena and the
Treasury built in 510 B.C. and I stood alone there, looking up at the
sky, sensing the power of the gods, smelling their power as it oozed
from beneath the ruined temple-for indeed that volcanic smell is what
enticed, lured and imbued the oracle to receive her visions.
I
didn’t exactly have a vision, per se, but I felt the awe, the
power, the sanctity of that ruined temple in that ruined place on
that mountain so high up in the sky that the ancient gods must have
seen the priestesses below especially as I stared up at the cliff
from which Aesop was thrown to his death
The
temple of Apollo, built in the fourth century B.C., where the Oracle
of Delphi lived. It is so high, it is said, that you can see the
entire world from the vista, and I can attest to the fact that I felt
exactly the same—indeed, this is one of the most spectacular sites
I’ve seen in my entire life! I rank it with Machu Picchu and
Iguazu.
I’ve
revisited this journey in mind dozens of times and even wrote a short
video play, Apollo, the Sun God, as my tribute to the gods who still
linger moaning and lonely along the precipices of Delphi.
Apollo,
the Sun God, a monologue by Scot Walker Premiered
2016 and was the winner of the Los Angeles Feedback Film Festival,
Los Angeles, CA, directed and produced by Matthew Toffolo.
Character:
Apollo the Sun God, as young as his name implies or as old as
dirt…whichever tickles your fancy, any race.
Setting:
A small apartment, overlooking the sunset, just outside Athens,
Greece.
(Apollo
sits in a comfortable chair, sipping wine or drinking a Zero Coke as
he relives and re-enacts his god-like journey in his chariot of
fire).
Apollo:
Dad
said all I had to do was drive the chariot—once a day he said.
Around the earth, he said, he never told me how I’d get back home,
just up, up and away and across the sky. Well ‘up’ was the easy
part—even though I had to hold back four maniacal horses and climb
to the nethermost tip of the atmosphere, gasping for breath (and yes
even gods gasp for breath). But the worst part was constantly
refastening my godly robes, knowing that even though I was driving a
chariot of fire all that heat and light was focused down on my front
as it charcoal roasted, yet on my backside, facing earth my ass froze
solid, and all I had to comfort me was a pack of Twinkies, a six-pack
of Zero Cokes, and a Hefty Bag filled with sparkling blue M and M’s.
My old lady packed them for me. She knows I like the red ones, but
she likes me to sparkle, so she packs a thousand blue ones in this
bag—so I can keep my sugar high, I guess…or because even with the
eternal heat blazing before me, they melt in my mouth and not in my
hands. Blue, though, blue is all I get. Venus says she’s blue
without me and I should be just as blue without her, so blue it is
and let me assure you, goddesses are no different than earthlings
when you rankle them, so I rankle her not!
And
now my hands and lips and the front of my wash-and-wear godly
garments are covered with blue sparkly things, even though Mars tells
me his is the only candy that melts in your mouth, not in your hands,
he lied! Those sugary blue shells don’t withstand the heat of the
sun god.
WHOA!
Damned
crazy horses! They keep forgetting earthlings have seasons, and our
race must be timed differently each—
I
SAID WHOA!
Thanks,
Ceres, for giving me the royal screw!
Thanks,
Atlas, for bumping the flat earth helter-skelter giving it a weird
bulge almost like it is round, it never shall be because I’ve raced
both above it and below—it’s more like a lumpy pancake or an
apple pie.
The
only god who gave me a break was Vulcan when he hooked up this
asbestos shield to protect Venus’s favorite parts of my body from
the heat.
The
rest of them—my godly brothers and sisters—well the hell with you
all. You get all the easy jobs like cavorting with earth women…and
setting up cheering sections for the Trojans as they. . .
Damned,
Trojans for leaving us with nothing more than those skimpy rubber
coats. I hope my old lady got a new supply. There’s only one
activity that keeps me rip-roaring after racing, squaring around this
flat earth.
But,
back to that devil, Mars!
WHOA
HORSES! DAMN IT! I SAID WHOA!
Sometimes
I think my mind melted along with those blue sparkly things.
My
arms ache.
My
ass is as frozen as an Eskimo pie and
(Sound
of lashing)
Okay,
it’s time to speed up a bit—noon’s approaching.
Where
was I? Ah yes, it’s time for another mouthful of M and M’s.
Ah,
(speaking with a full mouth) Mars never raced up to the heavens in a
flaming chariot of fire. He never understood the importance of blue
or wiped his chocolatey hands on his pure white tunic, wishing he’d
remembered to bring a dozen packs of Handi-wipes, but I survive—night
after night—after night, I survive!
WHOA,
slow down! You’re jiggling my candy!
Yep!
Those two—the delicious ones Venus likes to munch on before she
slides on my own extra-large Trojans!
(laughing)
Trust
me…none of the “real” Trojans approached average…let alone
large, so if your wife buys you Trojans, remember this—those sizes
above teeny weenie were all invented by Greeks.
Look
at these muscles. Go ahead, don’t be God shy—we in the heavens
have muscles you’ve never heard of. Not the muscle facing
you—that’s my gluteus maximus…well, don’t giggle. Your ass
would be just as huge if you had to hold back flame colored Pyrrhus
and blazing Aethon day after day.
Anyway,
as time went by, I learned how to hold my horses and when to let them
have their heads. Their heads, not my head, okay?
And
I learned how to keep my ass from freezing off.
Don’t
tell my old lady but I took that asbestos frame Vulcan made in her
image, broke it in half and shielded my both sides—it’s the only
thing that kept my nuts from roasting to hell and my anus from
retreating to the outermost ledges of Mt. Olympus.
WHOAAAAAAA.
Coming
down is always harder—oh close your dirty minds. The horses are
going down—not me—that comes later.
You
think Prometheus was punished! All he had to bear was having his
liver eaten out by an eagle—and feeling it regrow each night—and
watching the eagle rip it out and eat it again the next day—BUT—
Finally,
damned horses are under control.
Hercules
shot the damned eagle, now, didn’t he and Prometheus was saved from
his hell—but me—no, no. Not me—it’s like some damned fool
invented superglue and stuck me here.
DAMN.
Hold on. We’re setting now—earth will be dark in a minute—and
the horses and I will be galloping under the earth.
(LIGHTS
FADE)
That’s
why I learned to carry this: (holds up flashlight) with an extra Ever
Ready battery pack in my briefs—and yes, Superman is still my
favorite—so that’s what the big lump’s all about so purge your
dirty minds.
You
female earthlings are as bad as my sister, Minerva. She loves to run
her hot liquid-brown eyes up and down my body and ask, “Hey, big
boy, is that an Ever Ready in your Superman pouch or are you just
happy to see me?”
Well,
what she and none of the other gods knew was that my trip back under
the earth in Pluto’s Stygian Realm, was like driving through ink
because the moment I flew into hell, Pluto blew out the flames on my
fiery chariot. Bastard that he is! And yes, gods are bastards the
same as humans—look up the word—and you’ll learn a lot about
the sexual behavior of those you worship and adore.
It
was as if the glorious sun, itself, was nothing more than an earth
child’s birthday candle. And so without heat, I shivered all the
way around the back side of the flat earth, and yes—damn all of you
who believe in science and all that nonsense. It’s freaking flat,
okay? We’re the gods—we know what the earth looks like—we
created it as flat as a pancake so you’ll never fall off.
But
fiery horses are blind in the dark and kept bumping into goodness
knows what night after night for the past sixteen million years,
turning as blue as my Old Lady’s M and M’s but now, my brother,
Zeus, tells me I’ve graduated.
Well,
that was a big damned let-down, let me tell you! No more solar trips
for me—just quiet evenings at home here with my old lady, Venus.
And
yes, she has arms. That statue you’ve seen isn’t Venus—it’s a
perverted attempt to focus your attention on her boobs, which I might
add, are hotter than any god’s chariot of fire and still make my
battery hard.
So
now, all I have to look forward to is my retirement check from Aetna,
my monthly allotment of surplus gluten free heavenly ambrosia, and
playing bingo with the Harpies on cloudy days when the sun doesn’t
shine, in a sleazy Olympian bar, so you tell me, which would you
rather be, the glorious virile god of the sun or Apollo Angelopoulos
, a gluten-free ambrosia eating, bingo-playing retiree with M and M’s
dangling off his fingertips?
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