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This is deep. Insightful. Very Good. By way of introduction, I am Rebecca’s cousin, Jared Meacham. David is my uncle. I hope all is well with you. I hope you do not mind a family member reading your blog. Anyway …

I happen to be an aspiring writer. I authored a short story about Theseus 24 years ago (back in 2000) as my senior thesis for my BA in English / Creative Writing. I titled it “The Child of the Wineskin Foot.” My creative writing professor hated it so much he died of a stroke reading it. (No cap, as the kids say these days, he really did die!)

Professor Chandra was from India, was quite the highbrow and hated everything that had a touch of fantasy in it. He would spend entire class periods on my work, ripping my stories to pieces. The other students' faces grew red with embarrassment as Professor Chandra expressed his distaste for my work. He really did die when I handed in my take on Theseus. I really did kill him. After he died, they handed my senior thesis over to a professor of Greek literature. He gave me an A for it. I still graduated.

So, what was my story like? There are conflicting opinions on it. The title of my story is about the circumstances of Theseus’s birth. You see, in Plutarch's Lives it was stated that that King Aegeas was cursed – “to loose not the wineskin foot lest Athens is to rise.” And the dilemma was, "whatever does that mean?”

Afraid to return to Athens after visiting the Oracle, he heads north to a tiny town where Theseus would later be born. He meets a woman. She was the princess of that land. With her encouragement, he decides to share the contents of the wineskin. (Thereby “loosening” the “foot” of the wineskin to pour out the wine.) In their drunkenness, they have coitus. He leaves the next day. Theseus is born 9 months thereafter.

In giving his connubial origins the status of title to the story, I mark Theseus with the immaturity of his conception. It serves as a blind spot or shadow obscuring his capacity for insight or growth.

As a character sketch, I based both Theseus and Aegeas on US Marines that I knew. I served eight years in the USMC as a sergeant. I schemed up the idea of focusing on the sexuality of Aegeas after a Marine friend of mine came up to me and showed me pictures of his newborn daughter, then bragged about the woman that slept with that he met in a bar while his wife was still in the hospital. I turned him into the robustly sexual King Aegeas.

I portray Theseus as a drunken kid, like a drunken Marine, seeking heroic escapades. The want of experience driving him to be a killer.

I’d love to show you fragments of “Child of the Wineskin Foot.” (The complete story did not survive the 24 years…) Be careful, it is actually so good in can make a man die from a stroke! It is that good.

Anyway, I hope we are “well met” now. Your cousin, Jared.

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I mean "Work so Good it Can Kill" is a pretty good selling point! (And nice to meet you as well; I appreciate anyone taking the time to read anything I've written.) I really do get the appeal of Theseus as a story--I actually bought a couple of books on mazes/labyrinths and their symbolism that I need to get to (I'm teaching a class right now, and that pushes all my "pleasure reading" to the background.)

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This is such a thoughtful, beautifully written piece. Thanks, Chuck.

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Thanks so much—means a lot coming from you!

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Good post. Tragically, we're reaping seeds sown decades ago when we forsook education rich in critical thinking and mind-broadening art. Exactly as you say, we also forsake the past and indulge in a constant soapbox broadcast of 'this is how it is'. Trite but true: those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. The problem for some is that, if they did heed the lessons of history, they'd have to reform their behavior.

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I couldn't agree more. We just seem unmoored from any sense of history and the value of institutions.

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Love this. Thank you.

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Very much appreciated. We’ll never, as Americans, be truly American again until both sides learn to see and acknowledge the virtue in the other, and remember all that we share, and possibly even, hold sacred. Stories help me find my way, too.

Thanks.

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Thank you, Chuck. I appreciate your words.

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