Resurrection

According to Plutarch, during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius a sailor by the name of Thamus heard a voice on the water proclaiming that 'the Great God Pan is dead!'

News of this seems yet to have reached Oxford, where strange graffiti started to appear during our final days living there.


Perhaps a coven of witches was trying to invoke the ancient Greek god of bees, goats, pastures, caves, wild places, panic and the regenerative forces of nature.


Perhaps some old acid casualty was trying to immanentize the eschaton through a rehash of Operation Mindfuck.


Maybe it was a piece of ontological anarchy or poetic terrorism, designed to shake up what has become a frighteningly self-satisfied neighbourhood.


And maybe it was just some bored teenager out tagging. It's hard to say.


But now we have moved to Dartmoor, a land so fecund, so utterly alive, that ancient gods, horned or otherwise, need no invocation.





Rather, it is they who invoke the Pan-ish parts of us. We find they were not dead after all.

3 comments:

  1. Congratulations to you both, it's a whole new start, and I wish you all the best. We are quietly working on our exodus from the 'burbs, and hope to be somewhere far greener, and bluer, and wilder by the end of the year. And Pan isn't dead, he's been sleeping...time to wake him up, I think!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think a knowledge of French might benefit you. If you had read as many Tintin and Lucky Luke and Lieutenant Blueberry comic strips as I have, you'll realise that "PAN!" is French for "BANG!"

    ReplyDelete

 

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