#345 - Atanltic Sketches

I have now been trying to write about Atlantis forever it seems. I keep starting and keep stopping. The best pieces I do about it are factual, and speculative, not fictional. Even though I am longing to explore the world which I see so clearly before my eyes everything I think of it. Also the story of its fall - what created it and how did it fall? And is Ireland a remnant? Also did they all end up in Asia and South America? Did they go on to create the monuments we see? And how was Atlantis related to Lemuria? There are two civilisations in 19th century literature, which inspired travelers - Lemuria or Mu, and Atlantis. Jules Verne did the roaring trade in world building - from 20,000 Leagues to Journey to the Centre of the Earth and From the Earth to the Moon. These, far from being science fiction, were ideas which were being explored by the most cutting edge institutions of their time. 

The thing about fiction for me is that my writing is so unconvincing in this area. I tend to write from the head instead of from instinct. But the truth is, I am discovering, is that all writers write from the head. There is not a lot of writing that comes automatically. Pieces, like jigsaw puzzles but be tried and discarded. This is not something I understood previously. There is also the problem of having too much information - because I've been collecting things. And also no information at all - because of fiction means that you have to make stuff up. I'm discovering I'm not very good at this. I'm good at having ideas like - Oh I think I want to write about this, but the shape of everything is quite fuzzy. 

I cannot decide, for example on my protagnist. The very central part of the story is rubbish. I did try making my protagonist a female photographer living in New York, but that was rubbish. It didn't work at all. I tried making another protagonist a woman who LIVED in Atlantis, was very old and was trying to recall her story.

So this is the other problem with Atlantis - the corny factor is super high. I hate corny. When I think of novel I love... hmmm... what novels have I read recently which I love? I can't think, but in any case, they tend to be quite dark and keep it real. I now am on the horns of a dilemma: how do I keep it real and have something magical, like Atlantis. It is like I need to decide on a mood. The cataclysm, the hubris, the refusal to learn, the kind of madness which will lead people to do crazy things resulting in the destruction of a civilisation.

I'm thinking of Moby Dick for some reason. 

I'm also thinking that I have always started with the exodus from Atlantis. 

The end is always known. Atlantis falls. It falls for so many reasons. Corruption. Nepotism. Technology beyond control. Being used for wrong ends. It falls because of the refusal to come to the limits and the greed of the people who are in charge. In many ways, it feels like humanity has never left that Atlantean state. We are always, always in a state of disgrace, in state of pathetic uselessness when it comes to being able to do good. When we do good we tend to have a monomaniac driving us to do this. Sadly the intention and impulse, when it is wrong, the monomania eventually ends up corrupting the success, the end. Literature and mythology is full of stories like these. How come we are so fucking useless at learning them?

These are the thoughts of any researcher who goes looking for Atlantis. It is a morality, a warning, a reminder. Encoded deep into our DNA, Atlantis is the tale told over and over again. It s myth, yes, but all of us who are alive today, not a single one of us, is free from the archetype of the Atlantean tragedy. Even if we are not going through it, and let's face it, it is very unusual for ANYONE to have never seen war or been touched by its cruelty and chaos, we are survivors of people who have been through that. Many of us have grandparents who have, as children, shivered in fright and fear. They have wondered where the next meal was arriving as they ate what they could around us. Everyone of us have the fight or flight instinct coded into us, not because our ancestors were cavemen, but because we have waged perpetual war against each other. For some unknown reason humanity will happily pay over the odds to kills each other rather than to help each other survive. The few that do often do so on a shoestring, they take things which are old and plaster it over the things which are broken, they carry around a cart and wear rags and they just get on with it because they know that they must not draw too much attention to themselves by calling out the bastards who have put us in this position to begin with.

If you want to know how the Roman Empire ended, how the Majapahit Empire crumbled, if you want to know how the Egyptian Kingdom came to an end, if you want to know how Atlantis fell, we need not look to fiction. They trajectory, the players, the horrors inflicted, the limits overreached, they are all the same. The only thing that has changed is nothing. We breathe the fall of Atlantis everyday, even as our breaths flow in and out, as our lungs expand and contract, as we gaze into the eyes of the lovers we betray and the sweethearts left behind. Atlantis is very much still with us, like a mirror shatters by a spike, scattered into a dozen different slices, each bearing a slightly different version of the same image, yet all still the same. This is Atlantis, we are all Atlantis. 

So this story must begin, with a mirror.

A magical mirror, a mirror of glass, for even when Atlantis existed, when the world was young, that young, this object lived. A magical mirror of glass in which the initiated could see time, like a veiled dancer, reveal glimpses of itself. Into this mirror scryed the priestess who had given herself to the Lords of Time, the Gods and Goddesses who moved beyond the realms of the possible, their thoughts able to comb through the invisible strings which threaded existence. Into its misty surface the priestess told.

The sacrifice for the gift was her silence. She was unable to speak. Born without the ability to utter or hear a single sound, her deaf and dumbness was taken as a sign that she was to serve in the Temple of Time. Here she would be taught the arts and sciences. She would learn to not just read, but also foretell. Her task was not to warn nor alter things, but to record them. In the glowing libraries of the proud citadel of the magnificent civilisation of what would become known as Atlantis, she would write of the what would be. 

All those who could tell of the future were bound to silence. Given up at birth and forbidden to marriage and parenthood, they had no families. The only loyalty they bore was to the unending spooling of the magical thread that was recorded in the sanctified archives that no one else could read.

In her library of Light, Sangita worked dutifully, daily to record what she saw. she had been taught over several years how to take the threads of illumination and record them onto glowing spindles. Each spindle was a sliver in time, but not time as our history books now record it, one event trudging after the other, but by grasping the spindle, the Initiate, the Spinsters as they were called, would be able to glimpse everything which happened in that single moment. 

It was highly specialised and very skilled work and Sangita was one of the adept of them all. Her abilities for Yarning, as they were known as, were recognised when she was a child. Her glimpses were the most accurate and detailed, and she worked fast, with no mistakes. 

Theirs was a secret world, the world of the Spinsters. Few were admitted and they were visited by the Most High and Good Leaders of Atlantis. The value of the archives were such that everyone venerated the work which was carried out there. The Spinsters were as respected and beloved as the Priests who looked after the Temples and made sure that all the bounty of Atlantis was shared with its prosperous inhabitants. 

To be a citizen of Atlantis was to know eternal good fortune.