Issue 04: Dear Eliza, Part ii

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I could not answer your question directly. I can, however, tell you what it is not.
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To begin, I reproach the subject with another question: What is the rhythm of today? – if I may digress for only a moment, in the story of the hero Perseus and the gorgon, Medusa:
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Some years passed and Perseus, grown to manhood, defended Danae [his mother] against Polydectes who, with his subjects’ support, had tried to force marriage upon her. Polydectus then assembled his friends and, pretending that he was about to sue for the hand of the daughter of Pelops, asked them to contribute one horse apiece as his love-gift.
‘Alas,’ answered Perseus, ‘I possess no horse, nor any gold to buy one. But if you intend to marry Hippodaemia...I will contrive to win whatever gift you name.’ He added rashly: ‘Even the Gorgon Medusa’s head, if need be.’
‘That would indeed please me more than any horse in the world,’ replied Polydectes at once. Now, the Gorgon Medusa had serpents for hair, huge teeth, protruding tongue, and altogether so ugly a face that all who gazed at it were petrified with fright.

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Athene overheard the conversation at Seriphos and, being a sworn enemy of Medusa’s, for whose frightful appearance she had herself been responsible, accompanied Perseus. First she led him to the city of Deicterion in Samos, where images of all the three Gorgons are displayed, thus enabling him to distinguish Medusa from her immortal sisters...then she warned him never to look at Medusa directly, but only at her reflection, and presented him with a brightly-polished shield.
Hermes also helped Perseus, giving him an adamantine sickle with which to cut off Medusa’s head. But Perseus still needed a pair of winged sandals, a magic wallet to contain the decapitated head, and the dark helmet of invisibility which belonged to Hades. All these things were in the care of Stygian Nymphs, from whom Perseus had to fetch them...
Perseus...collected the sandals, wallet and helmet from the nymphs, and flew westwards to the Land of the Hyperboreans, where he found the Gorgons asleep, among rain worn shapes of men and wild beasts petrified by Medusa. He fixed his eyes on the reflection in the shield, Athene guided his hand, and he cut off Medusa’s head with one stroke of the sickle; whereupon, to his surprise, the winged horse Pegasus, and the warrior Chrysaor grasping a golden flachion, sprang fully grown from her dead body...Hurriedly thrusting the head into his wallet, he took flight; and though Stheno and Euryale, awakened by their new nephews, rose to pursue him, the helmet made Perseus invisible, and he escaped safely southward.
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The Greek Myths: Volume 1, (1955) Robert Graves 1
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Strained relevance is everywhere: Future-ready, speculative futures, choose-future, radical futures - as though the present were a weightless cloud floating to a destination of its choice.
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But perhaps this image is unhelpful and certainly lightness is all talk.
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In knowing this, are we really at any kind of turning point? If anything the rhythm shifted long ago and only now are we feeling its weight. Moreover, can this kind of agonising critique ever produce anything except add more to the pile and weigh us both down? I finish this letter with Maurice Blanchot and perhaps our discourse could be little more light-hearted next time.
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“If it is a certainty, then it is not a turning point. The fact of being a part of the moment in which an epochal change (if there is one) comes about also takes hold of the certain knowledge that would wish to determine this change, making certainty as inappropriate as uncertainty. We are never less able to circumvent ourselves than at such a moment: the discreet force of the turning point is first and foremost that.”
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I wish you luck in seeking the answer to your question.
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Sincerely yours,
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Dan SCLZ

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1. The Greek Myths: Volume 1, (1955) Robert Graves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greek_Myths