Peter Ristuccia's Blog

“You still can’t hurt them when they do that.” I still remember the words twenty years after I first heard them. I was sitting at a bonfire with my friend Brent. He was reading some prose he wrote in a style heavily influenced by James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake.” One day, Brent was out and about, and he saw two turtles copulating underneath some powerlines. Observing the shelled creatures engaged in reptilian coitus, Brent was struck by the fact that during such an intimate, vulnerable act, the turtles were still fully armored against harm. The proem was one of his best, and always raised a lot of laughter.

Brent and I held regular drum circles in the woods behind his house. We’d light up a bonfire, imbibe heavily and beat on drums. Sometimes we’d read poetry or compose stuff spontaneously. We’d dance around the fire. There was even a sweat-lodge. People came and went, and while we banged on drums it felt like we were somehow whelming a higher order of change into our lives, like demented teen-age shamans.

Brent was a big dude, and looked like a hippied out Clark Kent/Superman: large frame, black hair, square jaw, and glasses set on a beard, tie-dye shirt, sandals and a face that looked out onto other places. Once, when we were hanging out, Brent up and decided he was going to run for a mile. I laughed at him and didn’t think he could be serious. He didn’t work out regularly and considering the lifestyle we led at the time, a full blown mile run seems a little out of the question. Good as his word, Brent went and ran the mile. Without stopping and like it was no big deal. Brent was a brilliant guy, and could rattle off long chains of esoteric information. Sometimes, it was a little elliptical, long strands of well-thought out and convoluted insights hung together for you to see, if you could follow him.

Despite Brent’s good looks, intellect and very gentle nature, he wasn’t all that good with the ladies. Often, women would approach-initially interested by his appearance, maybe by the life he led. Then, once they spoke to him for awhile, they usually left well enough alone. At the time, it mystified me. But not only was Brent untroubled by it-he just didn’t seem to care.

I dated a lot of women in my pre-monogamous days. Taking them to see Brent was a sort of litmus test, based on their reaction to him, I could tell a lot about who they were. Brent certainly never failed to impress. On one occasion, he introduced me and my then girlfriend to Joseph Campbell. It was one episode out of a series, The Power of Myth on Bill Moyer’s Enlightened America. She and I watched the whole thing, mesmerized by the wisdom dispensed so casually by Mr. Campbell. One hour can change your life as they say. That sort of thing happened a lot at Brent’s.

People go through phases. Sometimes we’d meet at the drum circle often. Sometimes, we’d go for months hardly seeing each other. Then, we’d pick up where we left off, as if no time intervened. Student life, the life of young people, is like that. Brent would have his episodes. He would get obsessive about astrology, about reincarnation. He wanted to grasp the meaning of his life, as if it could have hard, cold reasons wrung out of it, like old water from a dishrag. Brent’s mother killed herself when he was younger. Taking in the fate of the parents, the child sees themselves as destined to repeat in some fashion the actions of their forebears. The child is the parent of the man. Brent usually only mentioned it when we were drinking heavily, but the self-service death his mother gave to him set an opening, legitimized a way out that said it was okay to bail. She did.

Brent started to claim that he was the reincarnation of a man from Mars. His soul had come here from the doomed civilization of the Fourth Planet and this explained a lot about things…I tried to talk sense into him, and when it became apparent this wasn’t going to happen, just sat and listened. I watched him unravel. Brent drank more and more. He switched from beer and liquor to robotussin. I started to avoid him at the bars. Men do that, we distance ourselves, give out the space that is needed when it is, and then-if you’re a real friend-are still there when the room isn’t required anymore. My last memory of him is watching him stumble to a trashcan outside (I was in a Euro-style pub in Athens called The Globe) and puke his brains out.

Two weeks before Christmas, a mutual friend told me that Brent was dead. He killed himself-carbon monixide run by a tube from the exhaust pipe of his car. He’d been dead for awhile and I’d just found out. The sensibilities of today reel at this-but this was a time before email or cellphones. News-personal news-traveled slow. If no one told you, there was no way to know. My friend was dead. Gone on to whatever awaits us all afterwards. I never saw the bonfire again. I never drummed again either.

We all go through phases. I didn’t keep up with Brent because I was muddled in my own life. Within a few months I ended a serious relationship, dropped out of college and wandered through my life for next few years. Brent’s death was another part of it-darkness was closing in on me, at long last.

That night I held it in at the Christmas party for as long as I could. At some point, when no one was paying attention, I stumbled out. I walked home. My house on Boulevard had a large back yard, cleared of all its trees. I went out back. A cold night, shot through with a dim haze of light pollution. The sky was indigo and only a few stars were visible. There was no toast, no salute, no rationalization that this senseless act was somehow alright with me. I never discussed it with anyone. No one could possibly have anything of value to say to me about it. Brent was dead. He was dead and it was like the whole time we both knew he was destined to go out that way. Somehow, we both knew I was going to bear witness to his ending.

When someone leaves us  perhaps the hardest thing to cope with is the most obvious. They aren’t there anymore. They don’t come by to visit. They don’t call to say hello. Whatever you did together was over-it wasn’t going to be done again. Whatever you talked about together was over-there are going to be no more conversations. All that we have left are the memories. But what was left of Brent? Who is going to remember anything more than fragments of some strange, quasi-shamanic guy who tragically took his own life in the early 1990’s? The man who was into Joseph Campbell, who dug magic and mysticism, drummed all night, wrote automatic verse? That night, I looked at what the Egyptians call the Ikkhemmu Seku-The Stars That Never Fail. The stars are eternal. It’s why they’re etched all over the tombs inside of the pyramids. The only thing that can live on, here in the temporal world, are memories. Memories persist. Thus, I resolved not to forget. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t forget Brent, his life and death wouldn’t pass event less into the night of time, meaningless and forgotten. I’d find a way to eulogize him, to commemorate so other people would know at least a little about him.

A young man walks briskly up a hill on a cloudy day. The sky is coin-gray, monotone and the air is thick with an unborn rain. He crosses a break in the tree-line, a section clear-cut to make way for miles and miles of powerlines. They stretch from tower to tower as far as he can see in either direction, strange dolmens that will be wondered at in ages to come. He nearly continues his hike, when he pauses. There, in the grass only a few feet away, small against the broad expanse, two turtles perform the latest in a series of actions that hearken back for millions of years.

“You still can’t hurt them when they do that.” the young man notes, mystified. He observes for long moments. Then, satisfied with what he has seen, he continues on his way.

I’ve heard many people comment on death and what happens-or doesn’t happen-afterwards. I suppose everyone has an opinion, but it seems to me that the words of those who have come close or crossed over should count for more than suppositions laid by folks who never left the armchair, so to speak. I’ve had a number of near death experiences-enough that I can pick out my favorites and enumerate them:

I took a film class during the winter quarter of my sophomore year in college. Part of the requirements for the class was that we attend foreign film night at the university movie theater-which was every Sunday. This was a happy condition and I got to see a lot of great films from all over the world. The only drawback was that I had no car and had to ride my bike. Usually, this was no big deal. Athens, Georgia, where I went to school, is a small town and getting around on a bike wasn’t really difficult. If anything, it was nice supplementary exercise to work off calories from the vast quantities of beer I consumed.

That said, the films were at night, and I had to bike home in the cold-not fun. One Sunday,  Pedro Almodovar’s Matador played. My first exposure to this wonderful director’s films. Aptly enough, the film dealt with death-at least in some sense. After the movie, I hopped on my bike and began to pedal home. I made may way up the steep hill that went from the student center (which housed the theater), past the library to north campus and the way home. At that time, I was extremely asthmatic (it went away later, a tale for another day)-and perhaps it was the combination of cold air, the bike ride…I’m not sure. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. Gasping for air, I fell off my bike and collapsed on the ground. No one came to my aid. It was winter on a Sunday night. There was no one around.

Struggling to breathe is terrifying at first-but then, as asphyxiation sets in, it gets more relaxed. “This is it,” I thought. I laid on cold asphalt. Above me, the indigo sky was vast, full of the stars that never fail. I was going to die, cold and alone. It was okay. It didn’t feel too bad. It wouldn’t have surprised me if I went out that way. I felt myself rising up, as though I was no longer observing the night, but amid it. But then, something pushed me, gently, back down. It was like being lowered…and there I was on the ground and I could breathe again. Not tempting fate, I pushed my bike the rest of the way up  the hill and waited until on level ground to pedal home.

I had a spiritual teacher once who told me that in the near future I would have an experience that would leave me at a loss for words. She was a little enigmatic and while I thought it sounded cool, I didn’t really think anything too crazy would happen. Sometimes, when meditation is deep enough, death can result. There are probably a number of reasons why this is-perhaps the individual is at a point where they are prepared to give up their current incarnation, or they have gone too far to the other side and can’t come back; of course, the reasons may be more complex, personal and beyond our understanding.

While in deep meditation, I reached a space where events went beyond my own intentions. As in shamanic experiences I’ve read about, my body seemed to fly apart. I was going through the portal of death! And rather than feel the fear or dismay that I expected, I felt elation. All my life I had heard and read mystically inclined folks say “this is all an illusion”-referring to the temporal, physical universe. It’s sort of de rigeur, and a phrase that is repeated so much I got tired of hearing it. Yeah, yeah, it’s all an illusion. Whatever. Upon my experience, I found-to my surprise-they were totally right. It is all an illusion. The true, spiritual reality that informs the physical lays behind everything. It was like waking up-and I mean that literally. I thought: “It wasn’t real! It was a dream! Just a bad dream! Thank God!”  There aren’t words to describe the relief I felt. Have you ever had a dream where you were back in high school, never graduated, had to take a test on a subject you hate for which you never studied? That was how it was. This life, this physical incarnation, is the test I had to take that I never studied for. But it was just a bad dream! A goddamn dream! I woke up. I never told my master what happened-she probably knew, anyway. But she was spot on.

Nearly two years ago I almost died. I had a life-threatening health condition and was hospitalized for two days. This was different than the other times. There could be no willing surrender to the inevitable. I have three children. I couldn’t leave them. With a strength and a resolve that is born from the love a parent has for their sons and daughters, I fought my way through. I would not die. I would not pass through the doors. Not yet. It was the longest 48 hours of my life. When my wife picked me up-the entire experience, alone in the twilight and shadow of the hospital , seemed surreal, another dream. And when I was outside…there was a blue sky, the sun on my back. Birds, trees. People milled about, talking, meeting, doing their thing. I observed in silent wonder. Later, I was happily reunited with my family, my friends.

I’ll never forget that singular moment: blue sky, sun on my back.

Death is the silence, the meditation. Life is the sound, the action. The same golden thread is woven through them.

One thing that strikes any American traveling abroad is the extensive history the other nations of the earth possess. There may be cathedrals in renowned cities a millennium old, or a bakery in a humble township that had been in continuous operation for centuries. The folk of the old world know which pastures to graze their cattle to make the right milk for the right cheese, what terroir is best suited for a specific wine grape.

Here in America, our history relatively new, we are only now beginning to learn the land in such ways. Only now are appellations becoming apparent: Russian River for Pinot Noir, Colorado for mutton. Thus are the names of a place called out and recognized, as partners with our civilization.

But there are other, deeper names that go beyond practical functions. I’ve stood on the piazza built over a site sacred to Attis and Cybele. I’ve dipped my fingers in water drawn from the well of Niniane. Someday, I plan to walk the Camino Del Santiago and, in one of the great pilgrimages of the West, seek vision.

Once, the hills, forests and streams about me were named. In days gone by they were inhabited by mystical serpents with jewels in their heads, little people with hair down to the ankles, killer witches that croaked like ravens as they cleaved the sky. Not anymore. Only the river, the Long Man, Oconee, keeps the lore of the men and women that preceded me. The First People are gone-taken West long ago, and the names went with them. I make my way amid the  local world and wonder what the name was for the Granite Seats By The River. I wonder what spirit presides over the Stone Spring.  The rituals for the seasons, the trees and the herds held now only by ghosts unrecognized.

Sometimes, I sit on the hill overlooking the river, and wonder when there will be names for them again.

I grew up near the Oconee River-a brown, langorous southern waterway in Northeastern Georgia. Where I lived, the banks were, for the most part, undeveloped. Oak, hickory and poplar, reaching for the sun from without the other trees, stretch out over the waters, like revered old men leaning as they stand. Closer to the ground, mountain laurel and rhododendron cling to even the most precarious of hill-sides. The water of the river runs shallow, splashing over granite boulders, river stone and mill ruins.

Long hours were spent in these woods with my childhood friends playing Star Wars, catching fire-flies, building forts and dams.  Later, in my adolescence, I took long strolls into solitude. I would sit in a silent communion, amid the trees, seated on stone slabs overlooking the river there was a silence that contained everything.

There are the burial mounds of the Cherokee Nation near the river. Graves dug into the top of a hill, covered with stone. Cedar and holly were sacred to the Cherokee, and still grow among the remains. Part of the funerary rituals of the Cherokee were cleansing in the river, which they called “The Long Man.” I walked among the dead near the river, respectful, my presence to keep memory.

Once, I was in the deep wood near the river, after a visit to the Cherokee graves. Thunder lowed from heaven and warm, heavy rain came down-fat drops that shook hands with the trees. The path was narrow, thick with brown and green that gave some canopy from the down fall. And then, before me, there was a deer-but unlike any I had seen before. It was unhorned, a doe, it was the color of tea, legs like reeds. I saw many deer in my years on the river. They are skittish creatures and bounded away to a safe distance in all my encounters-except this one. The doe regarded me intelligently. It was unafraid and knew I meant no harm. Long moments passed, and then the deer stepped into the brush next to the path and vanished. I went on, through the woods, in rain, by the river.

Many expect spiritual experiences to contain great revelations, explosions that accost and interrupt our lives. But often, the greatest moments of illumination are quiet and personal things.

OOB (Out Of the Body) Experience, more popularly known as astral projection, was something that fascinated me since I was a child. Basically, astral projection meant the ability to send consciousness out of the body in spirit-form (usually invisible to the lay-man), where it could then wander the world at will unfettered by physical obstructions or limitations (walls, gravity, etc.). The astral form was connected to the physical by the Silver Cord-if this band is cut, it was said, death ensues.

I’m not sure when my first exposure to the phenomenon was. I was an avid comic book reader in my youth, and a number of super-heroes possessed the ability to astrally project at will in their arsenal of powers. Most notable among these were Professor X of the X-Men, who could do so due to his extreme-but innate-psychic talents, and Doctor Strange, who earned the ability after rigorous mystical training. I would lay in bed at night and try to force some latent mystical talent into functioning, and imagine myself, clad in the whiteness of the astral form (that’s how they drew it in the comic books, like a ghost coming out of your body) and flying over the world.

My interest wasn’t limited to astral projection. I also wanted to know about (and have) telepathy, precognition, telekinesis, you name it. I had a good friend who shared my interests and we somehow worked out that everyone had these gifts, the trick was we just didn’t know how to use them. My friend’s father (who lived in another city, his parents were divorced) was interested in mysticism and passed down texts to his children-generally, these were the Carlos Castenada books that were popular with the preceding generation. When asked about astral projection, my friend reported the answer had “something to do with lighting spheres up in the body.” Okay, I was good with that. After that piece of advice, I started to imagine spheres of light sparking up within me. Nothing still happened.

My freshman year in High School, I suddenly discovered that the bookstores in town actually had a section with parapsychological texts, along with a sampling of everything from aliens to Wicca; the silly to the nefarious. That said, it wasn’t until I was a junior in High School that I finally picked up a book titled, simply enough, “Astral Projection.” It was the first complete manual I had ever encountered, written by members of the Aurum Solis, an occult secret society with origins in Europe (stretching back, they claim, to the Renaissance).  The key to the program was a sequence of meditations/visualizations that entailed building up and lighting spheres on the body! The exercise was called “Formula One.” It was easy enough-I imagined spheres of light on different centers of the body (genitals, heart, throat, forehead and above the head), and in special colors for each one. From there, you project astral material from your belly-button, shape it into a human-form, project your mind into it and voila! Astral projection.

Unfortunately, teenage indolence got the better of me, and after a few half-hearted attempts, I stopped trying. I was too busy drinking, chasing women, and getting into trouble.

When I was in my early twenties, I took an extended sabaatical from just about everything as I tried to wrap my head around my life. During this time I got serious about my spiritual pursuits and gave the astral projection thing another go. I practiced the meditations, formed the spheres on my body, no clear results. I figured it takes time to master the talent.

Then, one day, I had a lucid dream-a dream where I knew I was dreaming. And something interesting happened. I tried “Formula One” and never got past lighting up the sphere above my head. There was a ringing like a tuning fork sounding, a brilliant flash of light and I shot out of my body. But it wasn’t like the comic books-I couldn’t control where I was going. I went flying outwards, through a bizaare and phantasmagoric landscape (I later learned this was the astral plane, more on that some other time). It wasn’t frightening, so much as disorienting. A lot of time seemed to elapse and I had no idea how to get back to my physical body, which was at 760 Boulevard. I had some pamphlets at home for shamanic week-end workshops, and supposedly, these guys knew about soul-retreival. I resolved that I had to tell a friend to go to my house, get the pamphlet and contact the shamans so I could get back into my body.

Perhaps it was the extreme desire to return that brought me back-I’m not really sure. I made it back to my room, my body was below me. But someone or something else wanted to get back in as much as I did. The two of us tussled for awhile, then, I collected myself and uttered a prayer for help. Whatever it was left, and I went into my body again with no problem. Later that same day, my friend approached me (before I mentioned anything about my experience) to say he thought he saw someone in his house, and then they weren’t there.

Since that time, I’ve seen the same phenomenon happen in drum circles, during plays, at concerts, while I’ve dreamed. I’ve had conversations about it with people who can project at will (I still can’t, by the way). One of them was, in fact, a world-respected head of a Sufi Order. It is plain to me that we are more than just bodies of matter, there are gradations of ourselves, that reside into more and more sublime levels.

When I was young there was, as today, a lot of concern about the environment. The cause celebre at the time was the wetlands-marshy areas that support a lot of wildlife that were being encroached upon by human development. It was in the weekly reader and there were talks about it. Species were imperiled-at that time the Florida alligator was an endangered species, along with a host of others on an increasingly long list that seemed destined to spiral out of control.

The mass extinction of species due to human irresponsibility weighed heavily on my young mind-the idea that there were creatures that once were and were no more seemed unthinkable. Children have a hard time conceiving of death, the why and way of it. Extinction was death squared, death cubed. It was death of geometric tragedy because, in this instance, it was unnatural. Strangely, most of the adults I knew didn’t seem to care. We were given “Save the Wetlands” stickers at school. The idea was to spread the message by placing the stickers where others might see them. The picture on the sticker was a mother duck on her nest with her young. I don’t remember where I put most of the stickers-but I kept one for my house, and put it on a small, white rocking chair that was kept in my room.

Sometime that year in CCD (that’s Catholic Sunday School if you don’t know) the class centered on creating a “prayer corner” in your room. It was suggested we set aside a place in our room where prayer could be made. I doubt if specifics were really gone into-I was only in first grade-but today I’m amazed that such a sound idea was presented to me at such a young age. No matter what tradition you are in, it’s good metaphysical praxis to have the same  place set aside for daily meditation/contemplation/prayer/ritual what-have-you.

It escapes me why I went and did as told. There were lots of suggestions made that year and in years to come that I never listened to. I can’t even remember what they were-because, like most kids, I thought Sunday School was dumb and Church was boring. I preferred Greek mythology and often wondered why my own religion was so lacking in excitement. At any rate, I did set aside my prayer corner. I assembled the things I thought were appropriate, the sacred things of a child: my rocking chair with the Save the Wetlands sticker, and then, a Children’s Bible Stories coloring book-there was an excellent picture of Mary on the cover. The chair wasn’t for me to sit in as you might think. It served as a make-shift altar, I propped the coloring book up-Mary served as icon and representation of the act of prayer.

Now, people often ask for things when they pray. Certainly, children pray hard and expect fulfillment. I sat in front of the image of Mary, her icon above Save the Wetlands. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t verbalize any need or want. I just kneeled there. I’m not sure how long-and then, I felt something, some brief moment of clarity, some second of the numinous-in a way that a child is ready to receive it. And, like a child, I took the experience for granted-I don’t mean that callously. I accepted the experience for what it was. I didn’t question it, I didn’t tell anyone else about it. But I never forgot it, either. Thirty five years later, I remember that day as well if not better than any that have fallen more recently.  Sometimes, in the act of meditation/contemplation/prayer/ritual whatever-you-call-it, contact is the reward we are given.

There are times in our lives when we cross over boundaries and migrate into new parts of the world. This may or may not be apparent in our outer life, but whether we will it or no, such movements are the dynamics of our inner being. If we are engaged in life, then its nature is to change us. To be able to change is to be alive. Such changes are more acute at some times than others, and accompany dramatic events involving loss or gain. The kingdom is besieged, it falls under an enchantment. We quest for the sacred through the wilds of other lands and in laying forth upon the unknown world explore whole dark continents of ourselves, unmapped places filled with lost civilizations and faerie castles.

When I was in my early twenties I entered into a dark time I jokingly refer to today as my quarter life crisis. As many who undergo the melding from childhood freedom to adult responsibility, I came to an understanding of the world that held frightening implications. We are free to make our own choices, and with that freedom comes a terrible knowledge that the world is our fault. It is what we make it. But how do we know what to make the world? Where do we obtain the source of that knowledge?

There was a lot of pressure, at that time, to graduate from college, and, upon graduation, to get a job and enter into the mainstream workforce. Not to do so was also an option, but this invariably meant dropping out altogether as a rejection of society’s conventions. Or did it? Perhaps it was really an admission to failure-a failure to find another way. Certainly, following the herd into the morning traffic was also an admission to failure, a surrender, a falling into a deep sleep.

I was fortunate enough to take a class studying Joseph Campbell, a man perhaps best known for having written The Hero With a Thousand Faces. In that class, Mr. Campbell went from being the subject of academic inquiry to a sort of shaman, a guide to my soul, as it went through the dark spiritual voids of a society that does not acknowledge the existence of such things. We were each required to hold a lecture on the source material, and to draw upon specific mythic cycles. I chose the Holy Grail.

In my work for class, I immersed myself in the Grail mythos. I read Parzival, I read L’Morte D’Arthur. I read the Mabinogion. I read Tennyson. I saw Galahad obtain the grail, as well as Perceval, Bors, Gawain, Peredur. The knights rode across the Wasteland, searching for the sacred item that could heal the Fisher King’s grievous wound. Perceval witnessed the holy procession of the grail and forgot to ask the Question. The Fisher King’s battle cry is “Amor!” The grail was the cup Christ drank from at the last supper, the cup that caught his blood-brought to England by Joseph of Arimathea, whose staff budded when he planted it in the earth…

These stories and their innumerable variations washed over me, fed and sustained me, kept me going. Somehow, contained within them was an experience that was bigger than life, its measure in fact, defined life while transcending its limitations.

And then, as I studied, something interesting happened. One night, I came upon the Castle Munsalvach, a dark bricked fortress on a windswept promontory. Below the cliffs was crashing sea. I entered the demense and found myself racing down the halls and through the chambers of a vast estate. Labyrinthine, I could have wandered through the estate forever. And then, I stopped myself. With different eyes, I looked closer at things and saw a door with a golden chain. Somehow, I knew this was my chance. With an urgency borne from my most deep seated need, I burst into the room.

There, I met the Grail Keeper. I asked him if I could see the Grail. Without demanding the passage of a test, or the levying of some great price, he happily complied. A procession with the Cross went before us. Then, the Grail was unveiled. He poured water and wine into four vessels: two were earthen ware and two were glass. I drank from them. The Grail Keeper replaced the Grail to its cabinet.

Then, with a supreme effort, I asked if I could see the Grail again. With a smile, the Grail Keeper allowed me to do so. I reached into the cabinet and held the Grail in my hands. The stories say that the Grail is a changing thing-it is, at times, a cup, a dish, a bowl, sometimes it is a stone. This is true: the Grail shifted and reformed in my hands, ultimately revealing a set of symbols and imagery that etched themselves like carvings onto cavern walls in the deepest part of my being. I put the Grail back. I don’t remember what happened after that.

Later, I tried to relate what happened to my friends, my family, to anyone who would listen, really. I was convinced that it was more than just some strange dream, that somehow, my deeper working with mythology had uncovered profound truths, and in some sense, the experience really happened. Life is vast, beyond the experience of any single person. Within life are all things, all experiences, all ideas. Actively undertaken, its stories, the myths and archetypes common to all humanity, intersect with our own, and make us a part of the greater tapestry that is immortal and transpersonal.

My family is from Lipari, a volcanic island in the Mediterranean. Lipari lies between Sicily and Southern Italy, and is part of the Aeolian Archipelago. It is perhaps best known  today from Classical reference in the Odyssey. It is here that Odysseus stops and obtains the Four Winds from the god Aeolus. Lipari is a small island, with a total surface area of only 14.3 square miles (37 km2) and a permanent modern population of eleven thousand. The primary crops are capers and wine grapes. The main industry is tourism.

The Turkish pirate Hayreddin Barbarossa attacked and ransacked Lipari in 1544. He kidnapped the entire population of the island, appropriating them as slaves forthe Ottoman Empire. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, incensed at this attack on his empire’s sovereignty, ordered soldiers from Aragon (a province in Northeastern Spain, near the Pyrenees mountains and the border with France) to re-settle the island. They built fortifications to repulse future attacks-the walls stand to this day. These men intermarried with the nearby local Sicilian population. These people were my ancestors.

There is a restaurant near where I work that I frequent. It’s called Antalya. I’ll go there and get kofteis, kebap, dolmasi. I’ll chat with the waiter/owner about things, sometimes world events, sometimes small-talk anecdotes. I always make sure to get the coffee-spiked with a little cardamom, it’s the best damn cup of joe you’ve ever had. The tea is good too. I’ll have to work my way to Ayran, though. Sometimes, after work, and with nothing pressing, I’ll sit back and watch some of the soccer on the big screen TV.

My Dad went to Turkey recently on business. During his visit he was fortunate enough to be shown the sights and sounds of Istanbul. Dad loved it, related to me all about the food, how good the people were, what a fascinating country Turkey is. I agreed. I told Dad that the tomb of Saint John is in Anatolia, as is the site where Mary ascended into Heaven. Of course, there is much more history than that, layers and layers of civilization all placed on each other like plates of gold, so much so that it is impossible to encompass it all in words.

No one in my family today recalled the events of 1544. Barbarossa was forgotten, a name that is only familiar to us because it was the code word of a Third Reich military operation. Always interested in history, I was the first one to read about it and tell the others. The fate of the former Liparians, and the fear our ancestors no doubt lived in afterwards, are, for us, anecdotes. They are interesting yes, but not a part of our living present. We do not  hate and fear the Turks; if anything, we like the food, the literature and find the culture fascinating. There is, I think, a lesson here.

The three little pigs were holed up in the brickhouse and no matter how hard Big Bad blew, it wasn’t coming down. Big Bad figured that was the way it was going to be-but he had to try anyway and give compulsory effort. He trudged away, head hung low and belly empty.

The pigs mocked him from within the brick house: “Maybe you need to hit the gym more, Big Bad!” the Brick Pig called. It was an intentionally ironic comment, of course. Brick Pig and his brothers Straw and Stick were notorious consumers of junk food and-strangely enough-diet cola. They spent long hours reclined on Lay Z boys watching-again, strangely enough-sports television.

Big Bad made no reply. The words stung his ears. However, despite the pride he took in being Big Bad, the wolf wasn’t too full of himself to not seek assistance. As long as it was from his own family. Big Bad made his way to the pool hall where Mid Bad sharked it with foxes, badgers and other unsavory types.

“Man, I’m game.” Mid Bad said when informed of the situation. He packed his Baretta and a stilletto and the two wolves went back to the Brick House. The candor of football blazzed out of the house. Within, the three pigs sat in a stupor, glutted on cola and video.

“Little pig, little pig, let me in!” Mid Bad intoned-it was an age old refrain. Silence followed. Mid Bad looked to Big Bad, wondering what to do or say next.

For lack of a better idea, Mid Bad repeated, “Little pig, little pig let me in!”

“Huh?” one of the pigs-it was hard to say just who-responded. There was a loud belch. “What? Are you kidding me? Jesus Christ, give me a break!”

The reply was non-traditonal and very disrespectful. Enraged, Mid Bad roared, “Then I’ll shoot you full of holes!” and he opened fire with the Baretta.  The bullets made pock marks in the brick, but could not penetrate the walls. Mid Bad, in his rage, emptied the entire clip. Disenhartened, the two wolves left the premises.

They agreed to go to Little Bad Wolf, who was at that time, engaged in a debate about supply side economics with a squirrel at a local pub. Little bad agreed to assist his brothers and the Three Bad Wolves went to the Brick House.

“Little pig, little pig, hey-we just want to talk.” Little Bad said. The TV inside was booming, but suddenly turned down and the rapping of cloven hooves on the floor drew close to the door.

“What? Talk? About what? You ready to come to terms?” it was Straw Pig speaking.

“Well, sort of.” Little Bad said.

“What do you mean?”

“Here’s the thing-we’re wolves, right?” silence followed. Little Bad continued, “we’re apex predators. That means we have to prey on you-you’re our game. Without you, we couldn’t exist.”

“Yeah? Well, I guess we just out-Darwined your ass!” Stick Pig broke in.

Little Bad chuckled and waved down Mid and Big, who were both incensed at these words. “You have and you haven’t.”

“What do you mean?” Brick Pig asked.

“Think about it. We’re apex predators, we need you to survive. But you see, you need us too. Without us to cull your ranks, you’ll overpopulate, consume all available resources and the next thing you know, instead of one of you dying, you all die. And a slow death too, as opposed to what we offer. You’ll starve to death. Just think, no potato chips, no diet soda…hell, I bet the way things go, you’ll lose TV too.”

This was unthinkable to the Pigs. But Little Bad’s words added up, they made sense. “Wh-what should we do?” Brick Pig asked.

“I’d kick the other pigs out, Brick. You’re obviously the fittest. You’re the one who built a house out of bricks while these losers were lazy andwent for straw and sticks. Kick ‘em out. We’ll sort out the rest.” Little Bad replied. The sounds of a scuffle and squealing followed, and momentarily, the door popped open and Straw and Stick came flying out.

“Let’s get ‘em!” Big Bad said hungrily as the Little Pigs dashed about madly looking for refuge.

“No, wait, wait.” Little Bad said and held his borthers back. When Straw and Stick exhausted themselves and waited for the end to come, Little Bad approached them.

“Are-are you going to eat us now?’ Straw asked.

“No-no. Look, this is an opprotunity for you to learn new behavior, adapt, evolve. We could enter into a enw partnership, inter-species cooperation, you know, symbiosis.”

“Okay, what do we have to do?” Stick Pig asked. Little Bad got the Baretta from Mid Bad and handed it to Straw Pig.

“Plug Brick Pg and you’re in.” Little Bad said. Straw Pig took the gun and went to the Brick House. He knocked on the door.

“Straw?”

“Yeah, quick, let me in. I got away from the wolves. I was too fast for them, so much for all that apex predator stuff.” Straw said. Lonely and guilty, Brick let his brother in. Within minutes the flash of igniting gunpowder lit the TV dark room.

The wolves went in, taking Stick with them. They made short work of Brick’s body, and it was soon roasting on a spit in the hearth. Straw and Stick were made to wait outside.

At one point, Little Bad, in between mouthfuls of roast pork said, “Thing is, fellas, you got to let the Pig let you in. Do that and you got it made.”

I like Christmas. The gingko trees of downtown Athens are arrayed with lights, and there is a parade through town where High School bands, wonderfully out of tune, play yuletide songs and various community minded folks participate or attend. The university takes a break for the holiday, and the students, for the most part, leave town. And so, despite the festive season, Athens becomes a quieter place with a pared down population. You can see who really lives there. Restaurants and bars downtown have their parties and the natives and regulars all attend getting free food and booze. As the students leave, others return. People who have left and gone off to other places, and there’s a good chance that at one of the bars you’lll run into someone that you have connected with in years (at least before there was Facebook). I believe in Christmas and the magic that attends it.

However, there was a time when I hated Christmas. As the town emptied out and a quieter time settled in I was left with my life as it was. It was still, cold and dark. I was typically alone on Christmas Eve. I always made sure I worked that night and often the next day. I’d spend as much time as I could working so I could forget that it was winter outside, that it was a holiday season. I’d work until it was over and things were back to normal-if I wasn’t working I made sure I was drinking or sleeping, no idle hours where I could think about things too much. No matter what I did, though, the one unavoidable session of silent night solitude came on Christmas Eve. Inevitably, I would be in my house alone, drinking and watching bad cable television until I was tired enough to go to sleep.

But one year, things were different. One year, everything changed. I worked Christmas Eve, as usual and got off work at eleven. That year a friend of mine, Andy, was working with me. Something was up at home for Andy, I never found out what it was, but he didn’t want to go home after work. Instead, we went out. Even in Athens, there were a few places that were still open that served alcohol. Or so we thought. Everywhere we went, we just missed it. Restaurants were closed, bars weren’t serving. Everyone was-sensibly-shutting it down early. For once, I had nothing stocked at home either. So as the night progressed, it appeared as though we would not face the oncoming hours of Christmas Eve with at leas the numbing warmth of a good buzz wrapped around our heads.

The whole time, initially as a joke, I said: “Don’t worry, And, I’m sure the magic of Christmas will come through!” A refrain that mocked all the specials we saw as children. We’d get to a bar or restaurant that had just closed: “Don’t worry And, the magic of Christmas will help us!” I said it over and over.

Now, the thing is, I’ve got an interest in metaphysical things. I practice and have taught meditation. I’ve witnessed transubstantiation, I’ve heard khutbahs in masjids, I’ve walked the paths of the Tree of Life, I’ve gone on shamanic journeys. I’ve seen and experienced things that are, quite frankly, hard to believe or explain. Despite what some may think, you can tell when a ritual is working, you can feel it when an invocation is properly conducted. There are lots of metaphors for it, a current one could be that the power of a higher reality is downloaded into our own and changes it.

Even taking into account my beliefs, unorthodox as they are in the norms of today, did I ever believe in things as banal sounding as “The Magic of Christmas”? Of course not, it’s beneath my intellect. The Magic of Christmas is something you see on bad holiday specials on network television. It’s saccharine crapola dispensed to children inbetween commercials for toys you don’t need. Yet, for all that, here it was, I was saying the mantic holiday invocation, “The Magic of Christmas”, over and over like some mad tinsel clad litany. Initially, it was an ironic joke on my part, but the more I said it, the less funny it sounded.

Andy and I returned home to my abode, 760 Boulevard, unsucessful in our bid to find something to make the evening more bearably anaesthetized.

“I guess you were wrong about the Magic of Christmas, Pete.” Andy said. I didn’t make a ready response. Just then, we heard a car pull up outside. That was odd. My room-mate and best friend, Jason, was gone for the holidays. Car doors opened and slammed shut. Voices-two men whom I didn’t recognize made their way to the front door. They asked for Josh, who was Jason’s brother (he was crashing on our couch at the time) and had gone with Jason to where it was they went on Christmas Eve.

“You mind if we hang out? We’ve been driving for a long time.” one of them asked.

“Sure, come on in.” I responded. They clambered in with a case of beer and a bottle of gin and more besides. In no time, we were drinking, watching Star Wars on an old Laserdisc player, smoking glorious blue Afghan double creeper mookie-mookie, making jokes and telling stories.

“See, Andy,” I said at one point, my voice slurred, “the Magic of Christmas came through. Haha. The Magic of Christmas came through.”

The two men eventually returned to the night from which they came. I can’t remember their names. I never saw them again. Magic is like that sometimes.