Literary / Arts
Mythic Archetypes Abound: On a Bench on Pandora Street
Barbara S. Julian, Victoria
Volume 33 Issue 10, 11 & 12 | Posted: December 20, 2019
In downtown Victoria the mythic Archetypes swarm around us. Offspring of ancient gods and goddesses, they throng the pavements. When the weather’s warm the squares and sidewalks are full, and the Archetypes mingle with the crowd. Like the homeless who put cardboard signs and alms-hats out on the sidewalks, they seem lost and disoriented. Disabled. Probably on medication.
It’s a sad sight, since they used to be super-humanly able, these images of gods. Gods, of course, can escape the laws of physics. They can be in more than one place and fill more than one body at a time. Trans-rights are nothing new to them; they've always had them.
In downtown Victoria the mythic Archetypes swarm around us. Offspring of ancient gods and goddesses, they throng the pavements. When the weather’s warm the squares and sidewalks are full, and the Archetypes mingle with the crowd. Like the homeless who put cardboard signs and alms-hats out on the sidewalks, they seem lost and disoriented. Disabled. Probably on medication.
It’s a sad sight, since they used to be super-humanly able, these images of gods. Gods, of course, can escape the laws of physics. They can be in more than one place and fill more than one body at a time. Trans-rights are nothing new to them; they've always had them.
Here on the street I see embodiments of Dionysus (the Lover), Athena (the Hunter), Zeus (the Ruler). I see Narcissus staring at himself in a shop window and Hephaestus lighting a fire in a back alley. His wife Aphrodite, bored with his metal-working obsession, is flirting with every man who walks by, even with Morpheus, who is sleeping in a doorway. Daphne lurks as a presence inside a boulevard tree, where Apollo trapped her in a fit of pique.
I sit on a bench on Pandora Street – well-named, for someone has released one big box of eccentrics into this neighbourhood. Sitting there I watch the passing mythological parade. The doings of these presences were once legendary. In today’s embodiments they all want something from me: cash, attention, a listening ear.
“My exploits were heroic,” many are at pains to tell me, “until cruel Fate brought me down.”
They’ve fallen on hard times, the Archetypes. Once heroic, they’re now pathological. Bullies, predators, addicts and egotists to a god and goddess, they no longer inspire us mere mortals. They invite disapproval, but are often excused as victims of post-traumatic stress disorder. Various agencies try to help by getting them into rehab or therapy.
Less poetry and more ideology, demand the social engineers. So Apollo’s undergoing diversity training, Eros is in a sex-addict’s help group, and Bacchus has gone sober and preaches abstinence with the Salvation Army. Hera’s running a single mothers' support group. The Muses have applied for City Arts Grants that encourage culturally sensitive singing and dancing.
Hermes’ messages, never politically correct, have now been outright banned by the language police. The luxury mansion called Olympus, once the mountain home of the gods, has been bought by the taxpayer and made into a homeless people’s shelter. On its roof sits a CCTV surveillance camera, spying on humanity from on high … so that at least hasn’t changed.
Barbara S. Julian, Victoria