An Oresteia

I am a restrained person. Otherwise my heart would race past my tongue to pour out everything. Instead I mumble, I gnaw myself. I lose hope. And my mind is burning.

PYLADES: I'll take care of you. ORESTES: It's rotten work. PYLADES: Not to me. Not if it's you.

We are slaves to the gods. Whatever gods are.

Yet again, isn’t there something terrible in randomness—the idea that at the very bottom of its calculations, real depravity has no master plan of any kind, it’s just a dreamy whim that slides out of people when they are trapped or bored or too lazy to analyze their own mania.

You have used me strangely.

Sophokles is a playwright fascinated in general by people who say no, people who resist compromise, people who make stumbling blocks of themselves, like Antigone or Ajax.

I am the shape you made me. Filth teaches filth.

Here he lies like something melting away. His mother’s blood comes quaking howling brassing bawling blacking down his mad little veins.

But whenever I take to my restless dreamless dewdrenched bed I cannot close my eyes – fear stands over me instead of sleep. And whenever I think to sing or hum a tune to stay awake then my tears fall. This house is in trouble. The good days are gone. How I pray for a change! A happy change! A light in darkness.

ELEKTRA: Whatever dooms there are men die, whatever harms there are men have-- Godsent: they blast, we bend. (Orestes)

ELEKTRA: If this is all you were, Orestes, how could your memory fill my memory, how is it your soul fills my soul?.... Look! You are nothing at all. Just a crack where the light slipped through. Oh, my child, I thought I could save you. I thought I could send you beyond. But there is not beyond. .....somewhere, I don't know where - suddenly alone you stopped - where death was. You stopped. And I would have waited and washed you and lifted you up from the fire like a whitened coal. ....Into your child's fingers I put the earth and the sky. No mother did that for you. No nurse. No slave. I. Your sister, without letting go, day after day, year after year, and you my own sweet child. But death was a wind too strong for that. One day three people vanished. Father. You. Me. Gone. Now our enemies rock with laughter. And she runs mad for joy - that creature in the shape of your mother - how often you said you would come one secret evening and cut her throat! But our luck canceled that, whatever luck is. And instead my beloved, luck sent you back to me colder than ashes, later than shadows. ....Oh, my love, take me there. Let me dwell where you are. I am already nothing. I am already burning. Oh, my love, I was once part of you - take me too! Only void is between us. And I see that the dead feel no pain. (Elektra, by Sophocles)

Oh stop whining . And why get angry at Helen? As if she singlehandedly destroyed those multitudes of men As if she all alone made this wound in us.

ELEKTRA: Apollo made us sacrificial victims in his murder exchange of father for mother. CHORUS: Justice, on the one hand. ELEKTRA: Evil, on the other. Mother, as you killed so you die. But you've ruined us all. You at least went off to be among the dead. I live on here as corpse beside Orestes' bed. Nights and tears and groaning, nothing else is mine. No marriage, no house, no children, just time. (Orestes)

I am the shape you made me. Filth teaches Filth.

I cannot not grieve.