Bleeding Fiction

Y'know, why is it always the amateurs that make these "amazing" discoveries? The people that found "Troy" all were amateur archaeologists who'd devoted time and money, but yet strangeley very little in the way of education, to their pet obsession.

You will find what you want to find. You will not find what you directly ignore.

...and if you give me a big enough research grant, I'm pretty sure that I can find the ruins of Atlantis on the patio of some bar in Ibiza. In perhaps...2023, about 19 years after you've given me the grant. That sounds about right.

Spot on, Mr. Bard. Heinrich Schliemann, while he may have elsehwere discovered the Mycenaens, was so intent on finding Troy in Turkey that he virtually bulldozed through a dozen distinct layers of history, destroying centuries of valuable historical evidence and eliminating any accuracy to do it. He found something, that's for sure, but he himself screwed us on ever figuring out for sure what it was.

Now, to be fair, no archaeologist before around 1930 was anything more than an amateur, including both Schliemann and Howard Carter (who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen), so it's not entirely right to condemn them for their failings. They let their obsessions guide them, yes, but they did the best they had with the tools they had, and in the process they turned what had heretofore been nothing more than grave-robbing into a science.

But today we know better. We can learn from the mistakes of those who came before and we can trace a surer path through a more complete historical record. Today we have professionals and no matter how well-intentioned, no matter how spirited and sincere, the amateurs should really go back to their sandboxes. Anything else is just insulting.

But if you do happen to get a grant, Mr. Bard... well, I'll join you for cocktails in Ibiza, hey? :)

Big deal. I've found Atlantis twice so far. Once under my bathroom sink.

Mister K, if I get a generous grant to find Atlantis I'm going to buy a submarine and paint it yellow. Then after we and all our friends have gotten well and thoroughly pissed in Ibiza, we'll take some more booze with us and have us a nice submarine party in international waters.

And then I shall declare that wherever the most bottles of beer drop on the ocean floor...THAT is Atlantis. And I've got the bottles on the ocean floor to prove that they were right alcoholic buggers to boot.

I was under the impression Atlantis had been uprooted and flew off to the Pegasus Galaxy .

Didn't they make it into a Caribbean resort?

Nothing says ancient bastion of mythic civilization like organic body massages and mai-tais.

Of course. The Atlanteans stimulated orgone energy in their citizens with organic body massages. And EVERYONE knows that mai-tais contain large amounts of orgone energy.

As for moving off to the Pegasus Galaxy...I blame the orgone. Too much orgone caused Atlantis to become a natural anti-gravity engine.

...for those that aren't familiar with orgone, it's a psuedo-scientific substance/energy that was supposedly used and mastered by the people of Atlantis. It's also just a fun word to say!

Interesting, Bard. I went surfing and found a site that will tell you all you ever need to know about orgone. Which is actually very little. It includes this handy guide for building your own orgone accumulator. Basically you sit in a big wooden box until you get all sweaty and "glowing." When you've had enough you get out.

Pants optional.

Not just a box of wood, Erik - a box of wood and iron!

Maybe I should build one in my apartment. I have tons of room since I don't own a couch...

Hi Jason. Checking out the blog after a while. Thought I should interlope. "Because it's a . . . metaphore!" How do you reconcile the whole Guadior thing in your mind? Just wondering. We haven't discussed that for ten years, but you're kind of bringing it up. Feel free to e-mail a response.

I think I found Atlantis. It was in the bottom of my fridge. I don't believe the maintenance guy when he says it's just crud in a pan.

Hey Vitaly; been too long. I'm emailing this, in case you don't check in on the blog for a while, but I figured I might as well post a reply here, too.

We haven't talked about Guadior in around ten years, yeah. I haven't really even thought about that in almost that long.

Thinking about it now, well, I guess the older I get the more I value metaphor; the more I come to see it as important and the more I come to see the lessons of the spirit as metaphors.

There are religious and spiritual things that cannot be true as we know the world today. As a great number of Americans will tell you, taken literally the bible leaves no room for dinosaurs. Archaeology will find no ark or tower of babel. The small evidence that exists for King Arthur does not suggest Camelot. the top of Olympus is the same as any other mountain. As literal truths, these are things that just don't work.

But as metaphoric truths, these are lessons for us to learn. The Guadior experience was a lesson, and if that lesson was couched in metaphor for me to understand it better, that's ok with me. I don't see that as any different than the methods of any other spiritual teaching. At the end of the day, the lessons are the important thing.