Carcosa Bound

Sometimes, going out means going in.

Going through the Old World has recapitulated so many parts of my own development. All the facts learned in the classical studies classroom are attached to memories of growing up on a far edge of the world.

Athens, the famed city of the philosophers, and so much history, lends itself to these sorts of wankish ruminations.

Walking paths up the hills of the Acropolis for the first time, recognising the names of the shrines and turns, because they were a part of me. Education gave me an escape from a not-great youth, and this has escape led, eventually, here.

In the National Archeological Museum, facing the deathmask of Agamemnon, so called at least – an artifact signifying the point where myth and actual, material history meet. This was a myth, until it wasn't: Heinrich Schielman uncovered it as part of the funeral hoard in Mycenae, in 1876.

Facing the mask of a mighty, mythically cucked king, whose wife's elopement triggered the reckoning of Troy. The details don't exactly match, but they don't always need to when spinning a yarn this epic.

So, if this is real, or real enough, what else is?

Closing loops opened by a Classical education

So much of this trip felt like closing some sort of esoteric loop, built of time and text.

Shards of memory, polished smooth as they were handed down from impassioned high school teachers to eager students. No-one had seen what they were talking about, but all were invested in the majesty and thumotic vitality of these stories.

These lessons were a gift that opened up this world of old, cold stone and metal, decades later.

Through them, I could appreciate the form and function of the selection of kraters, the large vessels for mixing wine with water; ancient Greek proto-punchbowls.

Or entertain possible implications and intentions for metal votive figurines and other objects recovered from temple sites.

Or note the aesthetic development in particular sculptures I had only seen in scratchy reproductions.

Or admire the gear from Neoplatonic sage Proclus' home altar, in the end game of that phase of Greek paganism. The knife he used to sacrifice a pig; the mugs the celebrants chucked into the pit, after they shared wine and drank to the gods.

As something of an appreciator of both this line of thinking and of drinking parties with my friends, there was an immediate trans-temporal fistbump moment.

Classics and bold innovation

Nearby, at a bar I didn't catch the name of, some madmen and women have seized on and adapted another mystery tradition, replete with secret recipes, mythic tales and journeys, somehow in permanent, soft focus twilight: Tiki cocktails.

They've remixed tiki drinks and made them Greek ingredients. While initially highly skeptical, I can't go past a zombie.

It's one of the classic recipes of the genre, a potent mix of several rums, exotic ingredients like falernum, absinthe and grapefruit juice. It takes serious balls to mess with this – let alone substitute in and rebalance it to include ouzo.

But, the way they did it, it actually works, and is delicious. Not the same, but a solid homage, certainly.

Sometimes, you can remix the classics. But you have to know where you're coming from.

Mad, bad and dangerous to know

A few blocks away is a statue erected to the Byron as a warrior poet who came to aid the Greeks in their war for independence against the Turks in the 1820s. He died in Greece – of fever and not in battle – and is honoured as a hero here.

Seeing the monument to this notorious adventurer closed another loop I did not know was open – his was one of the first books of poetry I got, during my fumbling self-education; he seemed like a badass who scored a lot of chicks, and this was a strong recommendation at the time.

Personal experience is hard, and necessary

Travel like this is hard; shattering the comfortable context of safe everyday life, shaking it to pieces. Being surprised at the distance between what you think you know and what these places are actually like.

Also: handling the attendant hypervigilance, mood swings and untethered ideas this all provokes. As a wise and well-travelled old head (now dead) once said, reality checks don't bounce.

It's humbling, freeing and tough to replace old, comfortable hand-me-downs with new, very personal experiences.

But, ultimately, trials like these are what forge souls and make them shine bright, reflected through time.

Our potential, and how we reify this, is all we have, and what we are measured by.