The Old Woman in a Basket

The Cumaean Sybil

Southern Italy is quite the hotbed for pagan practices. Even today after hundreds of years, there still remains a shroud of secrecy around the witches of Benevento, a town not far from Naples. While I delved on the witches of Benevento in my novel, The Mascherari, today I want to explore another mysterious place in Southern Italy, the village of Cuma.

Campania

Like Naples, Cuma lies in the province of Campania. It is a village which corresponds to the 8th century BC Greek settlement of Cumae. 

Once upon a time in Cumae, there lived a virgin prophetess, the famous Cumaean Sybil (from the Greek word sybilla = prophetess). Like the other Sybils of antiquity (there were a few), she had the power to read into the future. Apparently she even prophesied the coming of Christ.

Randy Apollo

According to legend, the Sibyl of Cumae acquired her powers by attracting the attention of the sun god Apollo. Much like all randy Greek gods, Apollo was quite smitten by young virgins and was determined to bed the Sybil. He offered her anything she wished if she would accept to spend a single night with him. 

It is said that she picked a handful of sand and said, "As many birthdays must be given to me as there are particles of sand." 

Apollo granted her wish. She acquired a thousand years of life, along with her divine wisdom. 

But the young woman had no intention of honoring the bargain and summarily refused Apollo's advances. 

Apollo, furious at getting no action (it's a pattern in Greek mythology and in modern slighted men), decided to get even; he did not rectify her omission to request eternal youth such that the Sybil was cursed to age with every one of those thousand years. 

The Old Woman in the Cave

Where did the Sybil of Cumae live? Now it gets a little creepy.

She lived inside a dark cave which according to Virgil, had one hundred entrances. Atlas Obscura mentions that the "official" Cave of the Sibyl was uncovered near Naples, in 1932, by archaeologist Amedeo Maiuri, who was in charge of excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum for many years.

The Sybil Cave

The discovered cave has many entrances (though not one hundred), along with cisterns and galleries, and its longest passage measures 5 meters high by 132 meters.  At the end of the long passage, there lived the Sybil who sat in a tiny niche. 

Entrance to the Sybil Cave, Cumae

While this cave is a fascinating archaeological site, its shape has since been attributed to Etruscan origin. It is believed that Etruscan slaves of the Romans would have cut it around the 6th century BC which makes it a little younger than the Sybil cave referred to by Virgil. 

The Seer

In the past, people would visit the Sybil for help. She either sang her prophecies or wrote them on oak leaves that she then left at the mouth of the cave for people to read. If no one came to collect them, the wind would simply blow them away. 

Her prophecies were complex and written in verses. So enigmatic were they that every meaning and its opposite could be interpreted (a little like your regular astrology column).  Sometimes she bound her prophecies into books or scrolls which she then guarded. 

In this manner, she possessed several scrolls about the future of Rome. The legend says that around 500BC she traveled to Rome with nine scrolls filled with her wisdom. 

I particularly like this representation of the Cumaean Sybil by 19th century painter, Elihu Vedder. I love the determination in the Sybil to carry the scrolls to Rome and ensure their safety. Actually when I first stumbled upon this painting I thought it was the picture of a dude. But that is probably because she was by then many hundreds of years old. 

The Cumaean Sybil

Elihu Vedder (1876)

What happened when this woman reached Rome? That is another legend.

The Sybil in Rome

Rome was then reigned by Tarquinius Superbus (the very name makes one shudder).

One day Tarquinius the Proud was sitting around eating grapes and having his toes sucked by his Nubian slave, when he saw this old lady striding into Rome bearing nine scrolls and thought, "What THE..."

Little did he know that this shriveled old lady with the moustache was the wise Sybil. 

What did he know, Tarquinius? He was probably too eager to tend to his orgies and could not once imagine that these nine scrolls were so important as to foretell Rome's future. So when the Sybil offered him the nine scrolls for an outrageous price, he balked. I'm guessing the answer was probably more something like, "Get stuffed."

In retaliation, and without a word, the Cumaean Sybil took three of the nine scrolls and burnt them.

Then she turned to Tarquinius and offered him the remaining six scrolls at the same price as before.

Tarquinius was getting a little tired of this old crank, so again, he refused.

Bad move.

Again, the Cumaean Sybil burnt three scrolls so that now, only three were left.

In a foreboding manner, and knowing the worth of her own prophecies, she offered the three remaining scrolls to Tarquinius at the original price.

Perhaps the king took fright at her assurance. Either way he understood that these were valuable scrolls and that if there was a chance these three remaining scrolls could save Rome or ward off perils in the future, he might be better off purchasing them... 

And so he did.

The Sybilline prophecies as these were called became a famous source of power and knowledge. They were kept on Capitoline Hill in Rome and were consulted on important occasions by the Senate.

In 82 BC, the books were destroyed in the burning of the Temple of Jupiter.

The Tragedy of the Sybil

For having slighted Apollo, the Sybil gained eternal life without eternal youth. 

What happened to the Sybil when she was almost a thousand years old? It is said that she aged so much that she withered to a tiny form until there was nothing left of her, save her voice. 

When she had reached a tiny size, the people of Cumae suspended her in a basket in a public place.

(Kind of like what animator, Tex Avery does to every mother-in-law character in his cartoons.)

In the famous Roman novel, Satyricon, written by Petronius under Emperor Nero's reign (37- 68 AD), a boastful Trimalchio recounts having seen the Sybil hanging in her basket. 

Local boys asked her, “Sybil, what do you want?” and she replied: “I want to die.”

Be careful what you wish for.

I leave you with this moving chant from one of my all time favorite music bands, Dead Can Dance. 

Song of the Sybil - Dead Can Dance

The Mascherari - Magdalena

In The Mascherari, my protagonist, Antonio da Parma, is haunted by visions of a beautiful and mysterious woman. Her name is Magdalena. For months after completing the novel, I pondered over Magdalena's features and over who I could best use to illustrate the raw quality of her beauty. I was pleasantly surprised when I chanced upon a photo of a long admired actress with an Italian origin.

Here it is, then; a portrait of Magdalena on canvas. It is based on a dark-haired version of the young Ornella Muti. She is perfect.

Chapter One

     Journal of Antonio da Parma

     He dreams on a gondola as it glides in silence.  Sound asleep, he lies, beneath a fiery dawn, while the palace’s Eastern wing rises above, and casts golden shadows upon his face.
     This is how I may have appeared to my guide as I drifted off, while he strained with the oar, drawing us closer to the Ducal stones, closer, beneath the towering Campanile, closer to this monstrous Republic of galleys with its islands and canals, into the heart of this lagoon fortress gilded by the sun’s first rays, and past her mansions of Istrian stone, whose glorious facades looked on, across a sea of silk and glistening foam.
     Curious, isn’t it?  How I saw her.
     I would see her differently now.
     Daughter of Venus, Venezia, you rose from nothingness. The memory of you…
     How could this not be my first diary entry?  For it was that day, as I arrived in Venezia, that I experienced my first vision.
     She was standing on the Rialto Bridge.  I write, standing, but now that I remember–and it is hard to recall after all that has transpired since–I think, yes... I think she was floating.  I swear that I never once saw her feet touch the ground.   I remember the fluttering hem of her gown and the way it thinned into a vaporous mist. I remember that I crossed myself and whispered the names of the saints upon seeing her face for the first time.
     She stood alone. She was watching me.
     And I, I saw only her.
     She seemed to have eluded the vanity of Venetian women.  Perhaps she did not live in our times. She cared not for the blonde locks they coveted, had not shaved her forehead in the new fashion, and wore no silk, nor jewelry.  Her hair–I crossed myself again–for it was night, and her black locks were like the manes of a strega; insolence upon her shoulders.
     Oh, the dark beauty of that face.
     I saw, even from afar, the longing eyes beneath their sultry lashes and the parting of her lips as she whispered.  She resembled those Southern women or perhaps those forbidden beauties of Constantinople into whose eyes one dares not stare too long, for fear of some lurking evil.
     It struck me at this instant. I ignore how, it struck me that this woman was a harbinger of some fateful event, one that I was soon to encounter, here, in Venezia.
     The sun rose, filtering light through the rios, casting flames upon her black hair. My gondolier’s vessel meandered through the lagoon.  Light shone on the Canal Grande.
     Still in dream, I gazed at her form but she drew away. No, she floated away, vanishing to the other side of the bridge. And as the morning rays bathed Rialto Market, not a trace of her remained.
     The loss of her wounded me.  Abandoned by the unsettling vision, I rose from my slumber.  I awoke to the stern Ducal Palace looming over our gondola.  It lay still.  As silent as its secrets.
     Later that morning, I spoke of my vision to Almoro Donato, member of the Consiglio dei Dieci.  He told me what I did not want to hear.
     “Antonio. Antonio, you grieve, my friend. But it must end. Yes, don’t you see? You must find a new wife, si?  With so much beauty in Venezia, a man like you—“
     “Basta.  I am already past the fourth decade. I care not for another wife.  It was not her I saw in the dream.  The woman, there was something about her—”
     But he interrupted me.  I think he has studied me carefully over the years. I suppose his position demanded it.  It was under his recommendations that Venezia had appointed me, a Florentine, for the second time. The Consiglio dei Dieci had a well-earned reputation for respecting nobody’s secrets and my employer was a master spy.  He gave me that look of wariness, that short disapproving glare which I remembered from years before.
     “Ah, Antonio, see how you drift again. Your preoccupations always lead you into visions. But remember your place, avogadore.  I will ask you to prepare for your future role within the commune, yes? We will have none of that in the Republic, will we?”
     He looked at me again.
     “Will we, Antonio?”
     I may have shrugged my shoulders, but the foreboding manner of his words taunted me, even then.
     As we crossed inside the palace’s entrance hall, I waved away my unpleasant feelings. I cast aside my dream.  Already Venezia tugged at my soul but I attributed my ill-feeling to his sermon.
     “Tommaso Mocenigo is very ill,” he explained, gesturing gravely toward the Doge apartments to our left. “He has been confined to bed for weeks already. When the New Year commences next March, do not be surprised if the patricians are called upon to appoint a new Doge. It is not known how many months Tommaso has to live but I feel his time is near.  And between you and me,” he whispered, “our young procurator, Francesco Foscari, would want this time to be nearer still.” He cleared his throat. “Antonio, the Consiglio would prefer it if you remained in Venezia until then.”
     I started. “Until March?”
     His eyes narrowed. I understood that I had little choice.
     I calculated that I would remain in Venezia until at least the commencement of Lent.
     And the realization struck me.
     Carnivale is upon us; diabolic days where madness surges and unfolds, unrelenting. Where the masses of Venezia, the popolani, forget themselves into debauchery and descend ever deeply into the odious core of their fettered being.  Carnivale, a season of obscene songs and erotic dance, when the masked rival for attention while making believe they are free.
     I never long so dearly for the rolling hills and scented valleys of Tuscany as when I find myself in the Republic during the infernal period of Carnivale.
     I refrained from sharing my thoughts and moved inside the Consiglio dei Dieci gathering room for my briefing.
     It was after my visit to the palace, when my gondolier had led our boat through the nation of Santa Croce, that I encountered the first abomination.
 

***

Four with a Five Wing

Yes, it's all true. I'm a loner. 

From the age of five, when I preferred to roam the playground alone, lost in thoughts, rather than play with other children, right up to my insistence, as an adult, on having lunch by myself every day at work - despite invitations from co-workers that I do like - I mostly enjoy being alone.

I live in my head, and I imagine things that make me wonder, at times, if the likes of Salvador Dali and Patricia Highsmith have not found a corner of my brain from which they command me to do their bidding.

Over almost four decades, I have had to surmount extremes in introversion and sensitivity, in order to function 'normally' in a predominantly extroverted world that abounds with stimulus.

Beneath the seemingly aloof, collected veneer, I am constantly adjusting, recovering, and moderating my own - often violent - reactions to what I perceive as overbearing, crippling and vivid stimulus, all around me.  I am getting better at it...

Human micro-expressions, voice tones, traffic noise, bright lights, weather changes, intonations of conflict, loud music - the world can be an overly jarring place, and only in the comfort of my own mind or else, in nature's embrace, can I find true peace.

Living this life can be exhausting and I am often physically tired, in need of an escape, or else riddled with migraines.

Call me precious. One day I will find a balance!

My Enneagram type is Four. Many writers who have delved into the ancient Sufi philosophy which is the Enneagram, will discover that they are Fours. As such, it is hardly unique.

Still, I could not help but smile at this apt comic interpretations by Clare Cherikoff:

And then there is this, which is my subtype:

"The Four with a Five Wing"

 It is so spot on that I just had to share some quotes from: http://enneagram.tribe.net/thread/beb08410-b129-4c19-b32a-0ede58786629

Healthy, gifted individuals of this subtype are probably the most profoundly creative of all the types because they combine intuition with insight, emotional sensitivity with intellectual comprehension, frequently with stunningly original, even prophetic, results. 

 This is where I hope to be someday: prophetic; but I am not there, yet. Some of my novel characters are certainly prophetic, and so I can relate to this. This statement accurately encapsulates my aspirations.

Four with a Five-wing burn brighter than Fours with a Three-wing, but at the risk of burning themselves out faster.

 Hence the migraines. Hence the recurring exhaustion with everything, and with living...

Average persons of this subtype are given not merely to self-absorption, but to philosophical and religious speculation. Their emotional world is the dominant reality, but with a strong intellectual cast. People of this subtype tend to be extreme loners, more lacking in social connectedness than the other subtype.  

This entire post is an example of the said self-absorption.  

Thus, their artistic expressions more completely substitute for the person than in Fours with a Three-wing. 

 This last point is interesting. There have been situations where, by no fault of my own, I have fooled people into thinking that they know me, when all they actually know is my artistic expression (whether in writing or visually expressed, especially through clothing). Humans are awfully simplistic and will use all manner of heuristics, judgments or else incorporate prejudices of all sorts in order to arrive at an opinion of someone. 

These people also frequently have an otherworldly, ethereal quality about them; they are extremely independent and unconventional to the point of eccentricity. They also tend to be secretive, intensely preoccupied with their thoughts 

 Are you kidding? I live in my head; I float outside of my body; no, wait...do I have a body? 

and purposely enigmatic in their self-expressions. 

*Smiles* 
Let us just say, that if I do not wish to share something with someone, I won't.  At the same time,  I can make it appear as though I have just shared a large part of myself, while in fact, I have revealed nothing. 

Their creative ideas may also be somewhat unusual, possibly even surreal 

I swim in the surreal and so I completely agree with this. 

 Members of this subtype care little for communicating with those who cannot understand them. 

Most people can't and won't suffer an eccentric (and they are absolutely justified). I would much rather not burden them. 

Memories of Dakar

Almost seven years ago, I wrote about my childhood in Dakar, the memories I have kept, and the amazing local women who helped take care of me, but this post brings with it some evocative images and thoughts that I thought worthwhile to share.

Avenue Jean-Jaurès

I was born in Dakar, Senegal where I lived at least 7 years of my life in an apartment, on Avenue Jean-Jaurès, with my parents and grandparents. You can see it here. It is a noisy and busy street with relatively tall buildings. Here, building constructions seem to linger on for years. I remember that as a four year old, I would be frightened of the pounding at construction sites, which I called  " le Tam Tam".

"Tam Tam" is actually the name of a traditional Senegalese drum whose sound is wonderful, but that was my way of describing the noise which, as an introvert, I already found difficult to live with.

Avenue Jean Jaurès was relatively safe, and on Sundays, from the age of six onwards, my sister and I would walk together to church all the way to the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Cathedral of Notre Dame

Shopping in Dakar was completed by our maids who spoke Wolof and knew where to find everything and how to bargain in the markets. We usually ate plenty of fish.

a market in Dakar where supermarkets did  not exist

On weekends, we would regularly drive to the Pointe des Almadies and visit the resort there where I learned to swim, and where I would invariably pretend to be a little mermaid.

Hotel des Almadies - the pool was my Sunday joy

Our apartment was simple and functional with four bedrooms and two bathrooms for six-seven people, yet as expats, we were living in luxury compared to the majority of Dakar's slum dwellers. On my way to school, I saw signs of poverty everywhere, including limbless children getting around in wooden wheeled carts. But I never once stepped inside a slum, or what the locals would call, bidonville. I regret that now.

Bidonville in Dakar

Senegal is a poor country and my parents tried to shelter me from the cruel realities of life as much as they could. I remember that one day, I must have been about five years old, my dad was driving us to the coast, and we took a different route. I did not know it, but we were heading towards a slum district. We drove past what to me resembled large cardboard boxes and masses of greyish houses stacked so near together, that one could not even see what lay inside this maze.

I asked  my Dad where we were, and what we were doing here. I was absorbed by this alien place, a place so unlike the palm lined resorts, so unlike the pleasant breezy Corniche on the coast.  I could have never suspected that this ugly place was home for most of Dakar's inhabitants.

My mum told me to sit still but I hassled her with questions. My parents replied that people lived here, that this was their home. I remember that my jaw literally dropped and I entered a state of denial. I was persuaded that my parents were lying to me, telling me things, only to keep me quiet.

"That's not their home. How can they live in cardboard?" I asked. It was a notion I found so horrifying and unpractical that I was convinced that it must be a lie.

My Dad parked the car and stepped out. He said he had to meet someone and pay him. So I waited with my mum and sister, looking on with anxiety as my Dad stepped to the edge of the bidonville and disappeared behind a grey wall. I thought he must be playing a prank on me and was merely pretending to go and see someone, given that nobody in their right mind could live here.

I know that on that day, a truth had awakened in me, even though I buried it deep and tried not to look upon it.

What I had called, 'cardboard', was in fact flimsy building material but it seemed like the right thing to call this brown material at my age. I had not even acquired the vocabulary for describing what I saw.

It seems that slums in Senegal have resorted to using garbage as a building material. Even with the risk of disease and stench, even with a pride for cleanliness, they will have no choice, due to poverty, but to use garbage so as to lift up their homes from the bog and avoid death.

Dakar had the power, very early on in my life, to make me see the world. Really see it. It is a gift that I cherish. Because the majority of those who live in wealthy countries, just as I do now, have no conception of what the world looks like and, often, I think it hardens them. It would be a jaw-dropping experience for them to understand that just as the majority in Dakar lives in slums, the majority of the world's population survives on nothing. Almost one billion people in the world (one seventh) live in urban slums. In India, the world's second most populous country, people are more likely to have a mobile phone than access to a toilet with 50% of people still defecating in the open.

So that's all I wanted to say.

Swimming In the Collective Consciousness with Wojciech Kilar

As writers - artists, often we are let loose; we become searchers; we seek, swept on an endless trail of letters, ideas, music and images.

We hunger for more, enraptured by our quest; we seem to find ourselves, again and again, within the subtle interconnections between what we have loved, what we love, and what we grow to love.

The memory of what we have loved is re-ignited with every new discovery that we make, and there is enlightenment in this reunion with our nature.

But later we find, that our nature is not our own. Because by some unexplained happenstance, we flit back, we return, time and time again, to those who have inspired us, and there, through some subconscious force, we are awakened by them. By their side, we come to create.

In this pattern, the face of our obsessions slowly surfaces, and with it, the ties that bind us to those who have made us, come to be revealed.  It becomes evident that in this web, this collective consciousness, we have a place; snug, we fit. And those we look up to, are close, much closer than we could ever imagine.

Do you often experience this? As a writer? When all the stories, ideas, artwork, cinema or music that you have loved, and whose essence have shaped you, are somehow woven by the same thread. That everything you admire or that fascinates you, is related; magically.  That the more you look into these, the more you see that those obsessions are tightly bound.  That they have, not just one, not two, but numerous links between them, and that when all those inspirations are laid out, that you fit, in there, at the very center.

When you discover this center, you are surprised to discover that it is not yours alone. Your origin, those individuals whose art has imbued your psyche - you commune with them. They are there, by your side.

As a child, how I loved Jacques Prévert's and Paul Grimault's Le Roi et L'Oiseau. This 1980 French animation sets Hans Christian Andersen's The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep within a dystopian kingdom, ruled by a narcissistic despot.

It is the story of two fated lovers, who must try to save their relationship from the tyranny of a king enamored of the shepherdess. The surreal intrigue is compounded by the fact that it is the king's portrait who, having emerged from his own canvas and sent the real king to the dungeons, sets off a ruthless chase for the Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep.

With the help of my favorite character, L'Oiseau - a gregarious and anti-authoritarian mockingbird who protects them at every turn - the couple flee through the canal city, a world reminiscent of a sci-fi Venice, where they are chased by a black-clad, sbirri-like secret police.

This animation, which borders between lyricism and social satire, was the joy of my childhood. It is deep, with levels that I am still discovering. Its imagery often evokes Salvador Dali landscapes, where unbearable emptiness stretches across intricate details of spires, bell towers, endless steps and mechanical contraptions, stirring with it, paranoia and anxiety. To think that Salvador Dali has been my favorite artist since my mid teens.

There is much to like about this surrealistic masterpiece of French cinema.  As an aside, my favorite scene takes place in a cell where the Chimney Sweep has been imprisoned by the King's men, and is about to be devoured by a pack of lions.  Seeing this, the mockingbird urges his fellow cell mate, a blind musician, born in an underground subculture and who has never seen the sun, to play a happy tune with his accordion so as to distract the lions. And so the music plays on.

But the mockingbird, a master storyteller, and fluent in several languages (including "Lion"!) has a plan.  As part of the 'entertainment', and still accompanied by the happy ballad of the blind accordion player, the mockingbird begins to recount the poor Chimney Sweep's tragic love story to the hungry felines. Together with sound effects, and heightened pathos, the bird tailors the story to match the lions' interests, until the beasts' indignation towards the King reaches a climax. They force open the cage and free all the prisoners, before marching towards the tyrant.

That's the Bird. Protector and Catalyst...

But the real jewel of Le Roi et L'Oiseau, and the soul of this post, is the astounding soundtrack, by Polish composer, Wojciech Kilar. His wonderful music is in my bones. It is part of me, just as Le Roi et L'Oiseau has seeped deep into my psyche.

Wojciech Kilar returns again, later in my life, as the composer for Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and later, he brings his dark arts to Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate (2000).

The Ninth Gate, a film based on the novel adaption of The Club Dumas, has been a vivid inspiration for my upcoming novel, The Mascherari. I remember watching the film and feeling irrevocably drawn to it, believing that I had always known it. It's a strange feeling that one. Then again, perhaps it is Kilar's music which holds the key to my memory.

Reflecting on The Mascherari, if I were to look into the face of Venice, in the manner I have drawn it, with The Council of Ten's shadow looming over my protagonist, with its secret police- its sbirri, at every turn, I come face to face with the menace I remember in Le Roi et L'Oiseau.  In my creation, I return to what I have known, and through this, I remember that Wojciech Kilar's haunting notes are never far.

Thank you Mr Kilar, for the music and for the inspiration.

Wojciech Kilar died in 29 December 2013. But his music lives on.