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Cruelest Intentions

Spring is the time for snow, rain, miserable cold and a complete lack of sun, or so it seems this year. It’s also the time for renewal in every culture of the world, some kind of cynical hope that things are actually getting better despite the fact that there’s snow in April which just shouldn’t happen.

Speaking of hope, in Greek mythology humans were created by the Titans, those forebears of Zeus and the gang who are still mainly archetypal but are just starting to exhibit anthropomorphic characteristics like, well, stupidity.  I’m thinking especially of Epimetheus, the Titan charged with handing out positive traits to animals and humans alike.

His name means afterthought and he’s portrayed as a sort of Harpo Marx-esque bumbler who can’t do anything right, isn’t funny and can’t even play the harp.  Just the person, or immortal, to entrust with such a task!   So of course he screws it up.  He goes around handing out positive traits to the animals, you know, things like having a warm pelt, the ability to chew a cud and I don’t know, lightfootedness or something.

But he hands them all out and forgets to give anything to humans. Idiot!  So his brother Prometheus (forethought) has to intervene and give us fire and civilization for which he will later be punished by Zeus and have to hang chained to a rock while a vicious, pate loving vulture eats his liver every single day until Hercules finally rescues him.

And then, as if this this weren’t bad enough, Epimetheus goes and marries Pandora who opens a certain box containing all the evils of humanity including plagues, disease, famine and Adam Sandler movies.  The only good thing in the box was, you guessed it, hope which springs eternal but really only serves to prolong the misery of it all.

Ok, so it’s not warm and apparently won’t be for some time but on the bright side I’ve got fire and civilization and a vulture is not currently eating my liver, although the bottles of mezcal I brought back from Mexico may do the job just as well. Still, I’m not chained to a rock so that’s something. Although, now that I think about it, that’s probably just hope talking. Insidious hope.

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