Before Sunrise, Reading The Aeneid
Morning Thoughts #262
Some few have realized it, but we are Trojans. Our culture is besieged. The walls are infiltrated. What we once had cannot be recovered. This, sadly, is the way of history. It has already gone too far.
Many will attempt to fight through the slaughter. They are the noble ones, the brave. But they are not bearers of eventual victory. No future is carried by them. For a time, we too must fight before we flee, if only for the sake of our conscience. If only to prove that our next undertaking is of good and courageous origin, that it rises from worthy ground.
It is also a final testing. If we give our full spirit to this defense, our souls — not our numbers — will be reinforced for our further and greater purpose beyond this futile last stand. Meaning and vision are born of no-choice desperation. Escape is not always cowardice. Escape can be the genesis of a new founding, the best antidote to impending destruction. I write not an ode to despair, but an ode to creation.
That our lineage not be erased, we must move from conquered ground. Ground, mind you, not taken through open, honest fight, as it always should be between men of equal honor. No, it was occupied by trickery. By that damned, recurring horse motif, which has taken a different form in material but not in spirit. Victims again of a recurrent horse, here is our chance to become tomorrow’s creators of a new Rome, by another name.
Oh Virgil. Oh spirit of Aeneas. I believe in my heart I am not rereading you by accident. Friends, blessed are they who find meaning in everything. And the only way this is accomplished is by always looking for it.
Become scientists of coincidence. Search for meaning in all occurrences. How much there is to discern. What self-created gifts are waiting for your spirit to discover!
New cities. New communities. New peoples. We, friends, are called upon to be founders of them. The old world is crumbling. Beginnings are the climate best suited to glory.
The sun is setting. Sail.