Descent Into Madness by Catherine Woods-Field

Author:Catherine Woods-Field [Woods-Field, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2014-10-07T22:00:00+00:00

Centuries passed and Aksel traveled with me. My faithful companion, my friend.

In the winter of 1612, when Wesley and Aleksandra returned, we all left the fog stricken land of England for the Mediterranean.

We spent an entire summer in Athens, weaving our way through ruined temples. Aksel adored the Library of Hadrian on the north side of the Acropolis. The architecture amused him, the materials used to create the structure, the artisanship. He knew its history as well as his own. There was special significance to the Western Wall because, unlike the other three walls, which were limestone, the Western Wall is Pentelic marble, and decorated with an elaborate row of Corinthian columns. He told us that Pentelic marble came from the quarries of Mount Pentelikon in Attica. We found his facts amusing, but I could not share his passion for stone.

I enjoyed walking through the Kerameikos instead of taking part in his Greek architecture lessons. In 431 BC, Pericles had given his famous funeral oration there. As a child, I learned its call for democracy and freedom. Aksel never understood my desire to linger there in the wee hours before dawn. Morbid. That is what he called my fascination with the place.

Before we knew it, a year of Mediterranean midnights had passed as we traveled throughout Greece. Mykonos. The Pan-Hellenic sanctuaries. The birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, as Poseidon revealed it – the island of Delos. The legend of how Delos grew from the sea is one of jealousy, of betrayal, of human nature. When Leto, the goddess of motherhood, became pregnant with Zeus’s child, Hera, Zeus’s wife and queen of the god’s, raged with jealousy. She exiled the pregnant Leto, forbidding her to give birth on Earth. As labor neared, Zeus, besot and desperate, appealed to Poseidon for intervention. Poseidon then parted the sea, revealing the island of Delos, and Leto gave birth to the twin god’s Artemis and Apollo.

The Venice of Greece, Mykonos, a sparsely vegetated island surrounded in deep, sapphire seas, with cresting pearlescent waves stands as the legendary battleground for Hercules and the giants. The monolithic rocks scattered through the island were believed to be petrified remnants of the giant corpses, having fallen in battle and cursed to serve as eternal reminders of Hercules’s power.

While breathtaking under a star drenched sky, I felt no connection to the place and quickly left it for Crete.

Even on the darkest of nights, the sweet aroma of olive trees and orange groves, of cedar forests and sunshine followed us on Crete. The Aegean Sea stretched before us, vineyards grew at our feet, and cedar and palm forests wildly inhabited my nightly walks.

I recall now a spot near the edge of an olive grove, the grass grew knotted, and sand blew in from the coast. The waves crashing at night could be deafening, drowning out the world, drowning out the past and all future cares. There existed a few hours each night, right before dawn as tomorrow edged into today, when we would all separate, going our own ways before surrendering to sleep.

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