The Pillars of Hercules

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Listen Here

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I have a task that is greater than all the labors assigned to Hercules. It demands that I live in the richness of this moment because that is all I have or will ever know.

Richard Bode

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Photo by J. Millard

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The Pillars of Hercules

To travel is to taste a deeper sensuality. No expectations. No possession.
Willing to be guided. Willing to be amazed. Willing to be changed.
My travels this May straddle a full moon. I watch her wax. I feel her in her fullness. I meet myself as she wanes. On a causeway. At a cross roads. At the southern tip of Europe. Spain. I stand still. Sideways. One eye to the west. One eye to the east. One foot pointing to the north. One foot pointing to the south. The wind kisses my face. On both sides. Arriving from both directions.

Spain. Morocco.
Andalusia
A fusion of seas and cultures.
A diversity of people.
Phoenicians. Romans. Moors. Christians.
Two bodies of water.
The Mediterranean. The Atlantic.
Two massive continents of land.
Africa. Europe.
Two mountains.
Gibratar. Jebel Musa.
Two Hands.
Tarifa. Tangier.
A door to the new world.
The known. The unknown.
The Pillars of Hercules.

This strait. This gate. These peaks. The legendary images created by the first Phoenician and Greek sailors to pass between them have been shared since antiquity.
Ancient mariners romanticised these peaks, with accompanying myths to explain their origins. Mythology married existence. Legends were born.

Hercules! I heard this story on the knee of my Greek grandfather, my Papou, before I could even speak. His face the greatest storyteller I will ever know. His eyes and mouth my greatest teacher. His ears my greatest lesson. His blood an energy that still sails in my veins.

According to the legends. Hercules was assigned twelve formidable tasks by Eurystheus, King of Tiryns and Mycenae. Hercules’ tenth labour was to capture the cattle of the giant Geryon, who lived on an island called Erytheia, in the mythical Hesperides in the far west of the Mediterranean.

At the far western extremes Hercules encountered a mountain. Instead of going around it, Hercules went through it. Hercules created what is now known as the strait of Gibraltar. The Pillars of Hercules. At that time of history this was the edge of the known Mediterranean world and the unknown mystery of the Atlantic Ocean. This huge ocean was known as a sea of darkness. An unknown deep abyss with no bottom. Occupied by monsters that would drown ships and devour men. By temptatious mermaids who could swallow a man whole.

I stand at the gate. Witnessing the pillars. Honouring the past. My own mother sailed through here in 1954 on her way to a new world. Across the dark sea. Canada. Somehow I sailed with her. I know this place. I feel into the present. It’s scent. My nose always meets this man of flesh first. Something here is bound to soul.

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The Pillars of Hercules

If I was never cast from paradise
dared to only - Be myself.
Which way would my eyes look?
To the old world?
To the new?

Which way does my back face
as the wind leaves her mark
wild and raw
in the sharp nails of discovery?
Exploring into an expression
that creates the flesh of a new map.

How many tasks must one life labour?
What is there left to prove to any king?
Beyond the one whose eyes shine.
Luminating out from the mirror.
Healing and revealing.

I moved mountains just to be here.
Bone and blood, guilt and shame.
Creating roads only to repair them.
Falling down. To start over again.
Rebuilding and rebirthing.
Opening up. Another way
to taste the scent in the sweating salt
of a different awareness.

A feeling finds me once again. A syncopation.
Underneath the rhythmic beats
of understanding.
My heart of years spread open.
Straddling the bleeding chest
of known and unknown.
One pillar drinks in the light.
The other swallows the darkness.
I arrive here as a confluence of both.
The shadow and the growth.
Born of two. Becoming three.
To disappear in-to the sand of one.
Presence of Being.

I stand at the edge of a climax.
Clarity leaving a cage to enter the fire
of a new way to sea.
An irrevocable gate.
Where mind will fracture.
Language will break.
To be fiercely claimed
by the incision of a new ocean.
Which wildly screams
for my surrender.

© Jamie Millard

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Photos by J.Millard

Thank You for Being - Here.
May has been cooler in my part of Canada yet has flowed into a verdant lush green. The scents and sounds of a waning spring are full on as we head towards a new moon and a long awaited meeting with June. May you enjoy the seeds and sudden approaches of the light as the sun arrives in all of its fullness. Some naked skin is ready to reveal all of its summer blessings. May you live into the moments.

Lots of Love,

Jamie