Chapter 11

The reasons for the specific elements of a myth (the cryptic reason why a given culture might have chosen a serpent god or the son of god over the sun god) are ineffable, and all attempted explanations of a myth are mythical. Scholars of myths compare religions to find that spiritual element that links and validates the human search (that search to find that which is everlasting within the brevity of a human's lifespan); and historians of recorded cultures thread together implication, meaning, and motive from a few tangible and often random happenings.

The myth of Aten came from the Eighteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt. For over 1500 years Ancient Egypt practiced polytheism with each town having its own god. Usually such gods were animal gods as was the case with the cat-goddess, Bast of Bubastis, but many of the towns found that once they attached the word "Re," the commonest name for the sun god, it enhanced the denotation so that local gods became more ubiquitous and more deserving of reverence. In the case of the falcon god, Re-Harakhti, a name change was given to It (the great It) that contained more overt connotations. Not only was the word, "Re" put before the regular name of the falcon-god, but engravings depicted It with the sun god above It's head.

The pharaoh, Akhenaten, in his quest for the one sun god, Aten, disliked focusing all of his energies toward military ventures that would have decimated the bellicose Nubian-like creatures and stray Hittites that fell onto his shores like waves. He knew that he could decimate them if continual efforts were applied the way one wipes away a group of ants again and again. He hadn't even considered that it would wipe out his nation's treasury not to mention his own personal coffers. He didn't want to give himself to anti-terrorist strategies and 24 hour a day campaigns that would have sustained his empire but buried him in lonely problematic calculations, hypotheses about the thinking of some elusive enemy, and general logic (not that the President Bushes used any of the above). He was reluctant to part from continual dreaminess and to end the world of the child that saw magic in a waving leaf on a branch of a tree. He didn't want tedium that was as long as the sentences of this prose. The only military ventures he envisioned for himself were preemptive and bloody executions of the more vocally intransigent non-believers who would diminish the ubiquitousness of his own god and challenge his animistic thinking of nature as being linked to man by their harping on animal gods. For his eternal link to the sun was more essential and part of himself than any of his arms or legs. And so, reluctant to part from dreaminess, he built a new capital city for Egypt that he devoted to the worship of Aten. The city, Amarna, was created to be Aten's sacrosanct home. As for the crusades to extirpate all memory of any gods other than Aten through the destruction of temples and relieves (particularly the temples and reliefs of gods that had a "Re" attached to their names), none of it would have been so bloody had the believers allowed him to clean away their chiseled nonsense the way one would the crayon happy markings of children on the walls of the family home.

Gabriele's motives for creating a non-melodic lullaby about a god that had been extinct for thousands of years were even a little unclear unto her. Perhaps the reasons for the avant-garde lullaby could have come from that one afternoon when she was four. On that day she had become less interested in nursing a wounded bird and so began to play with her tiny plastic toy soldiers beside her mother who was clipping wet shirts and military trousers on the clothesline.

The noon sun was slapping both their faces the way the heat from an oven evaporates the grease put on two baked potatoes. Gabriele, bothered by the heat, turned away from the soldiers and then took a glance at the sun. She turned toward her mother and mentioned some eagerness for Christmas. Her mother turned toward Gabriele with stoic facial expressions and then crassly spoke in German that Gabriele should stop thinking about Christmas since it was a long way off. The mother snapped the clothes on the line with more forceful pinches and then asked her daughter if she didn't think she was a bit old to pursue such nonsense as Christmas. Gabriele said that she didn't understand and so her mother unhesitatingly told her that there was no such thing as Santa Claus. Gabriele saw her mother smile sadly. She sensed a kindness in this smashing of ignorance and innocence the way she had seen Aunt Peggy smash a horse fly on one of her uncle's stallions.

"In a way, I am glad you brought this up," continued Gabriele's mother in German. "There are some things that will be changing soon." A cloud ran by the sun and in its shadow Gabriele glanced up at a frothy blob that looked like the form of an old man in ancient garb. At the age of four she could not recognize the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus sculpted into the cloud or a cloud shaped or sculpted into Heraclitus. "There is some early news I should tell you. I really should but it is a little hard to get it out. You are such a baby, you are, but now you are a bit wiser, eh? You know the situation with Santa. Life is going to be full of sobering face slappings like that .I am very glad that you are clogging your tears like a good girl. I'm proud of that fact. I was a little worried that you would be bawling like stupid little thing. Crying about such things like this would be bad, bad behavior when there are so many bigger things one shouldn't cry about either." The girl couldn't help having watery eyes even though she did not release the tears and soon mucus began to run from her nostrils. She wiped it onto the back of her hand. "Heavens, Gabriele, that's nasty. Remember to not get into the cookie jar without scrubbing those hands of yours thoroughly. Well…now, you are wiser for knowing the situation with Santa so I can tell you things, eh? You have a wiser and smarter brain than any other 4 year old who has ever walked the planet, don't you think so? Now I can tell you things because there won't be any damage, eh? Oh, why won't my mouth work right at getting this out? " Gabriele stood stiff. Questions were piercing into her as if she were target practice but she stood stiffly not feeling a thing accept the demise of Santa Claus. "Christmas is so lovely with everyone being together, don't you think so? Still that doesn't always happen, eh? When this doesn't happen there is no weeping. In this case, there will just be smiles on the kitten's face, eh? I'm sorry but we will not all be together this Christmas. We are parting our ways. Your father and I will be experiencing something new and you will be experiencing a different thing that is something new. In experiencing something new, you've got to be bold and take one's stance with a smile on the kitten's face. Some things are the way they are. No wishing will bring Santa Claus into existence and wishing won't stop new things from happening. You will soon go live with your Aunt Peggy. Your father and I are going back to Germany. He is going to be stationed there again. Your father is a great American patriot and has been asked to return to our motherland of Germany on important duties. You like your father's sister so much. Am I right? Your aunt Peggy: we are lucky to have her. Really, we are. Strange lady though; but with all those horses, maybe she'll take you for a ride sometime. Horses have ponies. They could give you one. You never know. She will have a tutor to help you to read and do math and will let you play sports in her yard under the supervision of an athletic trainer. The yard is large and fenced in nice. You know that. You will be happy there. The house is near a Catholic school. You will go there each day with those monkeys of hers. Much better than being here and there with us; and with this plan, you get two mommies instead of just one. That makes you better than the stupid little rascals your age."

If the little girl within Gabriele had been born a boy and that boy hadn't slipped away from the influence of the mother toward a male role model, she would have been branded a homosexual by one impact of the brain onto another. It would have been a gradual but ineluctable branding within a few critical years. But these few minutes of a girl's life at the clothesline with her mother made her into a misogynist, a stoic and an atheist. From this time at the clothesline she learned that everything was a myth or prevarication and the only kind of reality that existed was her own self and the natural forces that beamed onto her. Romanticizing the sun that burnt her face and could end up giving her skin cancer was better than the self-defeating flames of hate that might have been a force inside her consuming what could have been her. This silly, and barely believed myth gave grace to her infrequent social interactions and regulated her sleep patterns.