Oracle Under the Influence
My parents thought my name was an ancient Greek word for fate.
In September
I spend a week in Paris working, then fly down the Adriatic coast
in an airplane to visit Rodanthí, whose name means rosebud.
I’ve been to Athens before
and always wanted to come back
as if to uncover something
I arrive
and am soon put in my place by a silver-haired Piscean:
my name isn’t fate
or ancient Greek
rather
it's a crude transliteration of the still-modern Greek μοίρα,
or destiny
the O is silent
making the true transliteration M-i-r-a
and the root meaning: fair portion, or lot of the whole
making Moira a distortion of whatever allotment in life
the fates
who were sisters
would have spun, apportioned, and cut to size to describe a mortal’s time on Earth
a destiny compromised,
misinterpreted or deliberately misheard.
Stripped of my imagined status as insider among ancients
I buy a bus ticket for a daytrip to Delphi
Former most famed oracle in the world
The bus takes Apollo’s mythic route up Parnassus
I hate it when a dirt road gets paved over
Delphi is built on a cliffside that plunges straight down into flatland filled, brimming with olive trees
leaves flicker silver-lush like sardines in water when the wind flows through from above
single-file treetops bleeding out from between towering walls of rock
grow into a sprawling plain halfencircled by the mountains from behind
and bordered by the thin white line of Kirra port
built between thousand year olive grove and million year sea
to hold the center of the world together
where Apollo takes over
his titaness grandmother’s humble shrine of wax and feathers
obtained by theft or inheritance, they still argue,
builds a temple and crowns himself singular prophetic source at Delphi.
Where perishable honey cakes of barley sufficed as votive offerings to a titaness
exchanged for plainspoken prophecy
right inside the mouthpiece of the goddess
piece of cake for a Pythia
for an oracle: one word for prophecy, temple, and priestess,
the prodigal grandson’s reign draws tributes of gold and precious metals
who stimulate growth and gradual bloating
and Delphi’s most intact remains today
are not temples
but treasuries
you see one on almost every level
of this ruined terraced holy city
in slopes of red and gray
underneath which flows a subterranean river
its hallucinogenic fumes bring on the Pythia’s visions
now its water spills out of a pipe in the Delphic mountainside
now you can wash your hands in it and fill up your bottle
Pythia,
Apollo’s constant favorite among the mortals,¹
only works nine days a year
she’s special because
she understands him when he doesn’t really speak
and she is named not for the Python
whose murder the god foretold from the womb
and committed soon after in a cave downhill from Delphi,
but for the smell of the dead serpent’s rotting flesh
which hung over the place for days
priests are installed at sungod’s Delphi
to interpret and transcribe the Pythia’s utterances
which may or may not be growing more slurred and cryptic with time
relocated from within the changeful mouth of a drugged priestess
onto a prepared
slip of paper small enough
to fit inside a fortune cookie,
divine correspondence transforms from spoken sign committed unsafely to memory
to keepsake for the hand, the pocket
a blank space for negotiation opens up
almost of its own accord
between fortune spoken and fortune written
between incoherent priestess and pliable priests
brought in to streamline the prophetic process
but kept at arm’s length from the source being served
they wouldn't be the first to struggle with
the difference between a bribe and a gift
a crucial distinction at Delphi
where an offering is a gesture of submission
to a question and its answer,
but a bribe is an intervention in the unknown
material underpinning of a rhetorical question
designed to muffle confidential murmurings in the mouth
the cliffside fills up with monuments and minor temples
to help hold the now near constant influx of goods
divine outpost founded by exiled son of the father
gentrified into a hub for the psychic arts
becomes a standard source of pretexts for war and intrigue
relied upon by kings and generals
Strategies like dumping cash into wellspring
to divert an underflow of oracular secrets
typically work at first
to bribe a functionary of the divine should be futile
but on Earth, everything is timing
and in the unreal window where an oracle distorted in your favor
hasn’t been disproven
where queen-bride has yet to reveal herself as long-lost mother
any
empire is possible
this ruin
is covered in inscriptions
it’s the largest open-air library on Earth, plaques tell me
μοίραs misinterpreted in stone
for miles
Whether purposely misheard by a priest on-site
or unintentionally misread and then misspoken
millennia later by an archeologist
it was only a matter of time before modern hand poured ancient μοίρα over a 90s baby’s head in English
just to make another Moira
on an uninitiated tongue that says silent letters out loud
and renders others mute
an alphabet’s intended sounds
recede from the surface
waiting indefinitely to be
recognized
then pronounced
by a native or a more competent stranger
who does not hesitate
or stutter
+++
crowded bus drives away from pristine ruin at sunset
to arrive back in grimy cream and pearl city under palm leaves lit by ocher orb-shaped lanterns
these days in unwashed white
these nights in dim-dark muggy gold
the Piscean asks about my trip
he likes to hear me talk like a tourist about his home
I feel a sudden urge to tell him everything
that my name could be a sign misinterpreted across millennia
that it may require an excavation
a reconstruction, even
of the event of its mistransliteration
but excavations run all the same risks of corruption as the divination process does,
he says,
so why bother
+++
In Berlin I get a gig at an auction house for antique coins
I learn that, naturally, some of the oldest surviving western money comes from ancient Greece
and numismatic pieces are the items most frequently stolen
from archeological sites and illegal digs
to be sold on the black market
are you still a grave robber if all you take is cold hard cash?
there’s got to be a coin here that
bought some generously interpreted mortal fortune at Delphi
only to turn up at auction in the twenty-first century
just another archaic path retraced unknowingly, all owingly
become the aisle between rows of bidders
I pace like a cocktail waitress,
my tray stacked with precious metal pieces
like so many little lots in life
a coin auction is informal but highbrow and high stakes
for tight-knit circles of bidders and auctioneers who all go way back
family affair of real-life ancients
trading new money for old money become artefact of full-grown still-growing value
a coin that changed hands at Delphi would draw bids from all sides
even from telephone bidders who call to avoid bidding wars between friends or
high rollers with personal vendettas
just wait two or three thousand years to see a bribe become a prize
popular as ever in these new plague times, this gold boom back to the basics where value is as value shines and weighs
precious metal is always worth more than common coin
but a remnant from when common coins were made of precious metal
that’s real money in the bank
+++
Next trip to Athens I have more news for the Piscean
about the potential fortune lying dormant in his junk drawer
a pile of old coins gaining value in the dark—
doesn’t have to be an ancient current_cy
just out of circulation enough to look foreign
to our time
to hold the place of value now and value then
like characters in an alphabet we never learned to read
or the oracles now
lying idle and
forsaken by the spirits,
placeholders waiting patiently to be inhabited again²
by ms. right persona
even just for a moment
I tell him that numismatic pieces are the only thing they don’t replace with reconstructions
Maybe a bribe does stay a bribe
unless it was a gift
what better than a fungible offering
and a metaphysical favor in return?
the Piscean can’t recall our talk about my name
he says it’s a common misconception
that value can be made from nothing
that I could see my fortune change on a discontinued dime turned relic
of chiptooth value
or that a silver-gray look among shadows of impure iron ore on concrete late last summer
and a couple of love notes in the fall
could mean my whole lifelot transformed
his retreat is silent and silence too is golden:
universally exchangeable for any type of could’ve-been
in that loop, I learned at Delphi,
leading questions only muddy the precious unknown
the only inscriptions legible to the common visitor today are the repeated appeals PLEASE NOT TO TOUCH
(NE TOUCHEZ PAS S.V.P.
ΜΗΝ ΑΓΓΙΖΕΤΕ ΠΑΡΑΚΑΛΩ)
engraved on hexagonal blocks of marble distributed throughout the site
slanted upwards to meet the modern gaze
you break it you buy it?
fine then
untouched future that isn’t ours
give back my faceless portion
return unmarked to unformed matter
like there never was a sender.
¹ Wikipedia
² Plutarch
