Aphrodite and the Mimic

A new minimarket opened in the area recently … well arranged aisles … bright lights … freezers for fresh produce … canned olives … and frozen seafood mixes. I made a bee line to it … and ran into a tall … well built Indic lady at the cashier's … with a voice that was shrill as a bird. It was inevitable I suppose … the pagan Aphrodite managing the cashier … in a modern supermarket. But it is a novel sensation … to consider again our experience of the rural pagan … after being buffeted with jet engines … and limousines in recent times.

Its heart rending to consider the innocence of the unconditioned mind … as it contemplates … the light of its being … projected to the mind … as a ball of desires … enthusiasm … sexuality … flavors … scents … and sights. The arms move to catch them … the feet moves to activity that will experience them … and it forms a bodily mimic of its expectations and pleasures of the physical experience. Its not too hard to see … how an Aphrodite … rose from the stillness of creation … or at puberty … to find herself in a physical world experience.

She is met by the light … that intimates to her … the memories of lives past … of the tales of cities … of the personalities of lives … and for me … in the struggles of learning … a philosophy of the cosmos … we live in. Her eyes beam with wonder … as I attempt … to bring to her a notion of my life … lived in this part of the world … and the knowledge I have come to receive of the world. We muse over our beginnings … and where we hope we will go to some day … in our journeys … and we appear to laugh together in anticipation of such achievements.

I tell her about the rigorous nature of living experiences in these times … how it threatens to wipe out all of our fond memories … and leaves the mind bare with emptiness. But she brushes that aside … and looks expectantly to fill them up again. Its the nature of the pastoral after a forest fire … the river swollen with the melting snows. Its the re-birth of life … in the modern times … as the learning mind … transforms our pastoral past … into a modern view of man … in the world.

Indic literature speaks of the native proto population … living in South India today … along the banks of the river Saraswati … that is identified with the Tamil population … to which I belong. The King Rama … was reported to have passed the area … on his way to Ravanna in Sri Lanka. The natives were described as wild and untamed … and viewed any other life form as a threat to its own. Its curious to find … almost 4000 years after the event … that a man today … may still retain aspects of his proto innocence and untamed nature in himself.

Tamils in South India and Malaysia today … demonstrate an outlook … that is as much filled with shock … as it is woven into the nature of their personalities. They bring this to the modern world of science … with the quality of the mimic … that emanates its responses from its body … without a chance to think about it. It founts with the consistency of fountains … and lives in a place … like the sculptures at the Palace of Versailles … that seem to have a remote personality of their own in bustling Paris.

Such a duality of nature … reflects itself in my own personality … as I approach the pagan past of my person … with the light of the gnosis in my mind … that attempts to discern from legends … stories … and news events … about the nature of the self … who resides in man. Its quite a job … to try to bring it into expression … and communicate it clearly. But more than that … its the way it attempts to merge a knowing sense … studies even … with the nature of the passions … to derive a sense of normal and ordinary personality of the times.

I'm reminded of Dion … the quintessential mind of the bard … in the days when he roamed the rural regions of his homeland Greece … in search for a way to bring the uncivilized into civilization. We continue with the effort today … and may pause to wonder about the purpose of our acts of the living … and wonder about its achievements. And it makes me think about the Americans … who attempt a curious union of the pastoral with modern living … with warts … underwear … and all.

It reminds the rest of us … run away from the travails of the pagan and the barbarian … why we learnt the art of living … as an act of mind and passions … not a truly living reality. And we realize why … its grapplingly tricky … to try to match the act … with the body's mimic of its own art of the living. Our manias … must have two demons … guarding its precious content … obsessive and willful. The Indics reported the Vasudeva … as living on an island called Dwaraka … two demons.

The sultry Aphrodite … hints at the possibility … of a merger of the two demons … in a common purpose of life. Juno … the great Roman Goddess … brought her legends to the merger … that eventually lend itself to a reference to our learning about our lives. I … on the other hand … attempt a rationale explanation of the experience … in accordance to science and the experience of daily living. I'm trying to say … man can understand … and relate to this experience … and express it with a patch of the old and the new … male and female.

A mind given to learning … is bold and uncompromising. It combines the light of its beginning with the pagan … as much as with institutionalized faith. It befriends the mind of bards in the way … man has in the past … created a scheme of life and expressed it with the instruments of the times. We need something new today … to bring to life a new quality of expression … with a high relevance to our own experience. It makes for a new mimic … our own.