Tom Foran Clark

Frederik loved and hated Crete, just as he had loved and hated the island of Streymoy -- just as he loved and hated women -- just as he loved and hated life. "It was from Crete that Domenicos Theotokopoulos departed," Frederik reminded Emery, "to become the inimitably crazy El Greco in Spain! Talk about 'out of it'! Really, El Greco was out of his mind.

"There are two worlds," Frederik declared. "There is the world of our devising and the world before -- the world that precedes us and outlasts us. The phenomenal world we inherit is the place we live in. Then there is what we create -- including culture, which is the space we live in. Our original minds -- our original nature in the phenomenal world -- get smothered in our artificial cultures," Frederik preached, opening yet another bottle of cold beer.

"But by and large people just don't get along," Emery muttered. "There has to be some sort of social glue to keep things together. There is a need to coordinate things, to protect against abuses -- for example, of the environment -- to defend the freedoms of, for example, minorities -- and individuals."

"All our human history has been about the war between authority and desire!" Frederick howled. "Societies are built to dominate individuals, but individuals want to be free. Society is an ant farm, merely. Government, advertising, and the media all overwhelm us -- social control is internalized; conformity ensues. What are humans? Busy! Does socialization -- overwhelming government, advertising, and the media -- make individuals more human? No. Culture, society, manners, custroms, laws -- repression! -- have only made better citizens, subservient to the dominant social practices and institutions. But civilization has paid a heavy price paid for its progress. Has it been worth the effort? No. With material progress has come renunciation, suffering, misery -- contrary to our authentic nature."

Frederik was like Hamlet in this: he too was a tragedy waiting to happen. Past his frenzied painting fits, and his berserk fits -- past his drinking bouts and fits of fury -- he was seeking calm. He wanted to be a writer. He was writing a play -- this tragedy of his. He had already given it a title: "Character is Fate" -- "a theatrical peice -- a drama -- a tragedy. Not a musical, by any stretch of the imagination. But entertaining. I'm going to ask hard questions," Frederick orated, "about existence."

Frederik talked about anxiety and dread in the then recent transfer of power from one American ruler to the next -- President Clinton to President Bush. He saw connections between the moral legitimacy of a ruler and the health of a nation. "Your president Clinton was a strong, forthright ruler under whose guard the state was in good health," he said. "Now you have your George Bush Jr. -- a wicked politician who has corrupted and compromised America to satisfy his own appetites."

"And look at the Bush women," Frederik said. "They have no more clue to things than Hamlet's mother had -- not a clue about what is right, let alone what to do about what has gone wrong. Look at Bush's wife, Laura," Frederik said. "Tragedy stalks her like the fates themselves. Laura Bush, formerly Laura Welch, right around the time John F. Kennedy was assassinated, November 1963, when she was a teenager, had been driving on a Midland, Texas road one night, under a bright moon. She was going through an intersection she'd driven through hundreds of times before. On her left, she saw her boyfriend’s car approaching, where she knew he'd be turning onto the only highway in town. Knowing it was her boyfriend’s car -- the profile of the car was so small and simple it was easy to recognize, both in daylight and at night -- she ran the stop sign at high speed, striking the small car with such ferocity that the boy broke his neck. Some said the boy was her boyfriend; or he was a boy who'd been her boyfriend; or it was a boy she didn't want other girls to have for their boyfriend. In any case, he was thrown from his car with such force that it wasn't clear whether he'd died from a broken neck or blood loss from a crater sheared out of his neck."

Frederik compared America to Hamlet's Denmark -- and something was rotten in the state of Denmark. There were unspeakable things going on behind closed doors. We were losing the center. We told stories about our fears, but making sure not to unleash them.

"Words communicate ideas," Frederik said, "but they also distort the truth, manipulate people, and corrupt." Bush, whose wife was a murderer, manipulated words to enhance his own power. "Your president George Juniorbush is 'doing God's will'." Frederik whimpered, calling that "a sinister uses of words" and "poison in one's ear." Bush's dishonesty, and his wife's dishonesty -- Frederik said -- had a corrosive effect on America, "a once healthy body made sick through its moral corruption. The whole fucking ear of America is grossly abused."

Emery insisted cooler, greater minds would prevail.

"Yes, the authentic Jesus perhaps will intervene. The great thing about Jesus," Frederik declared, "was that he wasn't on the side of those who had the most secrets, the most daggers, the most cloaks, the most security, the most stuff -- the greatest protection, the greatest comfort -- the most power, the greatest blindness. Christ cared only about the children, and the innocent ones -- those closest to their birth -- and the poor, ill, injured -- those closest to their death -- those who could feel and see. Christ knew these were the ones who knew what mattered -- what counted. The inequities and the injustices made his blood boil but, finally -- ultimately -- Jesus was serene."

Frederik knew freedom and civilization were ever hostile, antagonistic, in perpetual conflict. Men and women were surrrounded by gods, good kings, bad kings, a jealous queen, pirates, brothels, mysteries, rites, suffering, sacrifice, and learning. He saw political philosophies, economies, whole civilizations -- triangles of ideological, social, and cultural constructs -- were inconsequential artificial fabric, and did not matter. These fell away like veils. Frederik embraced those people closest to the edge and surface of the waters, where the etheral and the substantial were one. Frederik insisted he was a "feminist" -- "on the side of women." Of course women, on their side, were expected to spread their legs wide for him.

"Jesus was not so far away from Minoa," Frederik pointed out, "where the very nature of religion was that women prevailed. Jesus married and adored his wife -- and he not only adored her, he worshipped her. In Minoa, the woman was worshipped. The goddess reigned. Religion was matriarchal. Cretan women weren't second class citizens. They participated in every occupation and trade, same as men. Growth of industry on Crete included skilled craftswomen and entrepreneurs. Cretan society was matrilineal -- kinship descent was reckoned through the mother -- and not patrilineal.

"Then came Christianity, Catholicism, and urbanization -- the end road for Matriarchal communities. Gender inequality grew. The domination of public life by men -- administration, rule, and military organization -- produced a reorientation of religious beliefs. In place of relationships based on kinship, cultures now organized themselves around abstract, inherently unequal lines. Society was reorganized around 'class' -- economic function -- rather than kinship. Life was divided into public and a domestic spheres.

"The split of creation from birth began when men discovered their part in reproduction. They attempted to control birth by controlling women, by separating the female principle from both men and from the Goddess and instituting male gods. From women and men as part of the Goddess, only men became and remained gods, and women and children were bound to them. By the force of patriarchy, rape and incest began. Men dominated the public sphere. Social inequality was established along economic -- and sexual-- lines. The new economics brought social inequality. Administrators, kings, and priests came to occupy economically more important roles -- distribution, and regulation (administration, military organization). The former cultural conversation about culturally transmitted patterns of violence -- rape, wife battering, child abuse, murder, warfare, terrorism -- was now met with silence.

"No value was given to caring and caregiving, which contributed to social and cultural dysfunction. Midwives -- -- women in the community to whom other women could turn for support with their problems -- 'earth mothers' -- were forbidden. The word 'midwife' was early English for 'with woman.' The French term, 'sage femme' -- wise woman -- reached back thousands of years like 'Jordmor' in Denmark -- earth mother."

The people living in the colony had separate rooms, and shared expenses and household work equally. Taking out the trash could become worst Schopenhauerian convoluted diplomacy when Frederik would ask, "Wouldn't you like to take out the trash?"

Emery to Frederik: "As you like."

"No," Frederik would say, opening bottles of beer for them both. "As you like. What is it to be?"

"You decide," Emery would answer.

"No," Frederik would insist. "It's not for me to decide. It's for you to say what you prefer. I have no preference -- none at all."

"It doesn't matter to me," Emery would say.

"God damn it, Dick! Say what you prefer! Don't you have enough character to know what you want? You're annoying me -- you are really pissing me off."

"I don't understand."

"Dick," Frederik would say softly, opening two fresh beers, "I just think we ought to be able to agree. We should even be able to learn from one another."

"I'd like that," Emery would say, "All this discord and confusion is lamentable."

"Why are you always so quiet? I had thought that was a strength. Now I think you have nothing to say! You sit there silent and indifferent as Ottar the Simple, like a dandelion in a train wreck, not caring whether the sun's out or there's monsoon winds, whether it's a full moon or a waning moon, whether others are happy or wretched. You go for days, thinking about nothing, then suddenly you say I cause you discord and confusion."

"Frederick, you cause everyone discord and confusion -- all the time."

"Shut the fuck up! I don't fucking want to talk to you! I won't listen to your fucking chatter! Thank you for all your good lessons -- now go burn in fucking hell!"

"Frederick, you lived too long in London. Can't you stop using the word fuck every single second?"

"Fuck?' Hey, Emery: Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! With enemies like you, who needs friends? Jesus God, if I only had your illustrious fucking brains for just a little while, maybe I could get you to shut the fuck up!"

Frederik raised a knife he owned -- a souvenir replica of a knife found in local excavations, having a picture of a fantastic, hybrid, boar-like animal elegantly engraved its blade.

"What? Now you're going to stab me? You believe I am your enemy?"

"I believe you are all my enemies! Even my mother, who did not want me born into the world because it involved pain, was my enemy. What if I am insane? Whose fault is that? Shouldn't you want to know how I became so? But that doesn't concern you at all, does it? So who's the fucking madman here? Whatever happened to good old fashioned fucking compassion? You three are always whispering together -- every one of you -- against me!"

"If you only could've stuck to just one woman... but no, you couldn't manage one woman."

"You accuse! At least I can shut up! Why do you alway have to have the last fucking word! Have you ever heard of Dionysus -- what a guy! He was the god of drink and orgies. He surrounded himself with wild women -- the Maenads -- crazed nymphomaniacs. Dionysus knew how to have a good time, but even for Dionysus there was too much of a good thing! He finally got very cantankerous, and then he went completely mad. He spent the next few years roaming the world, wrecking things. But this brought him no joy. Dionysus finally overcame his uncontrollable urges and desires -- and weakness of character -- and emerged, though scarred, able to transmute his negative tendencies into a more disciplined mode."

According to Frederik, Dionysians descended to the depths of physical or even mental degradation in order to rise from that abyss. Integration, disintegration, re-integration. Orientation, disorientation, reorientation. Solution, dissolution, re-solution. In dissolution, we make active use of the waters of emotion in order to re-own, or again-take charge of, natural emotions. It took expression of emotion to access and integrate the original, essential, authentic core within.

The Teutonic races -- Germans, Saxons, Franks, and Northmen -- had spread themselves along the coast and peninsulas of the Northern Mediterranean. The North developed individual freedom, the South social organization. The north gave force, the south gave culture. The other branch of the great Indo-European variety was distributed through Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Southern France, Italy, and Spain. From Southern Europe came literature, philosophy, laws, arts. Civilization at the South has passed into luxury, has produced effeminacy, till individual freedom has been lost under grinding despotism.

As for Denmark, before the birth of Christ the peninsula of Denmark was called by the Romans the Cimbric Chersonesus, or Cimbric peninsula. This name came from the Cimbri, a people who, one hundred and eleven years before Christ, almost overthrew the Roman Republic, exciting more terror than any event since the days of Hannibal. More than three hundred thousand men, issuing from the peninsula of Denmark and the adjacent regions, poured like a torrent over Gaul and Southern Germany.

The Scandinavians appeared again under the name of Northmen, invading and conquering England in the fifth century as Saxons, in the ninth century as Danes, and in the eleventh as Normans. In Upper Asia, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor, the plunderers were known as the Gomarian Sacae.

They began calling themselves Celtae -- "potent and valiant men." The Greeks, however, understood them to say Galatai, while their Roman neighbors heard their name as Galli. The aborigines of France, meanwhile, called them Gauls. "The Gauls are terrifying," Diodorus wrote. "In aspect and their voices are deep and altogether harsh; when they meet together they converse with few words and in riddles, hinting darkly at things for the most part and using one word when they mean another; and they like to talk in superlatives, to the end that they may extol themselves and depreciate all other men. Tall in stature, with rippling muscles, and white of skin, and their hair is blond, and not naturally so, but they also make it their practice by artificial means to increase the distinguishing color which nature has given it. For they are always washing their hair in lime-water, and they pull it back from the forehead to the top of the head and back to the nape of the neck, with the result that their appearance is like that of Satyrs and Pans."

"Their wives are comely," remarked Diodorus. "They lust in outlandish fashion for the embraces of their males. They feel no concern for their proper dignity but prostitute without a qualm the flower of their bodies; nor do they consider this a disgraceful thing to do."

Criminals were tossed into huge wickerwork baskets, Julius Caesar wrote in his book on Rome's wars. "These are then set on fire. The men perish, enveloped in the flames. They believe that the gods prefer it if the people executed have been caught in the act of theft or armed robbery or some other crime, but when the supply of such victims runs out, they even go to the extent of sacrificing innocent men."