Achilles had no friends.

Achilles had no friends; he was the greatest warrior that history -- real or imagined -- has ever known. he killed not only Trojans, with whom he was at war, in the thousands -- but Greeks as well...the guys on his own team, the people of whom he was a leader. the Iliad is a poem about the 'wrath of Achilles;' it was unquenchable, unstoppable...inhuman. Achilles' anger and his sheer lust for glory made him an implacable force on the battlefield. he cut through men like a flaming sword, like a heavenly fire. he was a saint of blood, he was born to kill. by the end of the poem, he has no friends -- he offends his king, alienates his fellow warriors, and his only friend in the story, Patroclus, is slaughtered. he is a brooding, vengeful bastard.

in fact, Achilles is ensconced, encapsulated in the pruned, autumnal garden of his selfish desire -- he has chosen death and glory as the way of his life, and it has isolated him. Bernard Knox, who writes the introduction to the Fagles translation of the Iliad, asserts that it is Achilles' solopsism that grants him godlikeness; his singularity of purpose, his singularity of being, its arrogance, its refusal to join the rest of mankind in a common concession to humanity. Achilles is a man (granted, a demi-god); he is mortal, and lives among mortals, yet throughout the story he makes no connection, cannot join himself in any social bonds with mortal men. he aspires to greatness, to glory and even godhood in some sense, and leaves mankind behind him as something to be stepped over, cut through; until, Knox argues, Priam, king of Troy, comes to supplicate Achilles for the body of his son, Hector. here, Achilles ceases to be a god, ceases to be simply a force of personality, and becomes human........the eloquence and the love of Priam for his son has touched him. Achilles falls into this human reality: he too, has a father; he too, will wound him with his own impending death. he is able to feel something different than his bellicose single-mindedness; Priam anoints him with human compassion.

Achilles is doomed; he does not die at the end of the poem, but we know his life is sealed, bound to the death of Hector (whom he kills, knowing this full well). but he is pulled within the human realm before he dies, joins the race of mortal beings. he too will meet death, like the all the rest; he is as good as human. why not join them in life? according to Knox, the Iliad is the tragedy of Achilles; perhaps he learns too late, but it is never too little to learn how to become a part of this race.

reason not to have a girlfriend #6

(today is 1/23/07. this is a retroposted draft i had, lingering around, unpublished. why? it wasn't for any special lack of quality...so, who knows. here it is, restored to my lovely little weblog.)

i am going to make a general statement here, and it won't be pretty:

girls are needy.

ok, before half of you get started, give me a chance to say this: of course not all girls are needy. of course there are exceptions, and no i shouldn't be so enslaved to gender stereotyping, and i don't know what i could possibly be thinking by making such a statement except...

girls are needy.
i'm not saying men aren't needy in equally annoying ways. i'm not saying girls aren't deservedly needy. i'm not saying that anyone wouldn't be needy when you enter into the pact that is a relationship. in fact, that demand on your time and attention is justified when you've made that agreement with someone, when you've taken that step. things in your life change, and necessarily so.

i have always been drawn to women who were strong, independant, even stubborn, i think as a guard against that intense demand upon my time.

and the girls i have been drawn to, they will either have nothing to do with me, or they become every other girl i have ever dated. they become 'girlfriend,' and they lose all their own interests and replace them with me. i turn them to mush, for whatever reason. they lose the distinction of character that drew me to them in the first place.

they begin to latch on to me, to get upset when i spend too long in the computer lab, or want to go out with the boys, or spend time wandering my own thoughts. they get upset when i do things that don't include them, or me thinking about them.

like posting on a weblog.
and there this girl, a girl i am not (yet?) dating for whom i must cut this post short.

and she is not my girlfriend.
she is still just a girl.

and reason not to have a girlfriend #6 is:
girls are needy