The Atlantis, Chember of Myths

No one but the king of Atlantis lived there. The king ruled over the land of gods and muses. The residents of the land were fantasies and memories. The apparitions of them floated over the land. 

Two cities, Holy and  Wrath, were seen from the temples and palace of Atlantis. The hemisphere around the land was surrounded by the mystic lands of unknown existences. From Atlantis nothing but the soul sailed forth the cities of mysteries and myths. Each temple in Atlantis represented the mystic lands. Travelers were shown the Chambers by the king from where they witnessed the Might of the land. They stayed in the palace for nine days and left their bodies to the mystic abyss of Atlantis, while the soul sailed to their chosen destinies. Some of them made contracts in the temples of Atlantis with the rulers of mystic lands and they left the land for the fixed time. The king witnessed the choices and destinies of great souls. The great rulers of the mystic lands assigned him forever.

I lived in Atlantis, the City of Memories, and Fantasies. Everyone who traveled to Never Lands in search of freedom, memories, fantasies, and Muses passed through my land. Lazing in the waves of Atlantis, being with my soul, bowing to Ozymandias, king of kings….I lived everywhere. I blew with the wind, swayed with the waves.

I searched for the extensions of my existence. The memory and imagination lifted me up from the depths of the Demon of Reality. The offspring of the Demon, fear-pains, lust-desires, truth-facts, always tempted me successfully.

It was a man named Shelly, a poet and traveler, who told me the story of the King of kings. As I breathed, the words of the King drummed inside my thoughts-

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Ever since Shelly visited me and sang the song of Ozymandias my soul became like a bothersome child. I started to live in fear and pain. The monstrous incarnation of my non-being started pitying myself. The warning of the king haunted me like the Demon that tempted me with her children of inclinations. I fought well. Besides my eyes, there are no other two things paralyzed. My imagination and my memory. They were the only two ways I could escape from the monstrous haunting of the Demon that dragged me to the cell of fears for the future.

The Muses resided in the temples of Atlantis, the gateway of memories and Fantasies. The musing of travelers, poets, artisans, and soul hunters echoed the temples of Atlantis. They chanted the mantra of antique places, hymns of Hellenic Orders and the sounds of mystic lands as holy and enchanted.

Tell me the story

About how the sun

Loved the moon so much

He died every night

To let her breathe

I heard this song echoing in the temple of Venus. It was built upon the myths and sagas of love passing through the passages of time and space. Each day a new brick was added to the temple made of souls searching for romantic expedition and adventure. The temple grew and touched the firmament while the snowy clouds kissed the zeniths of Venus and sang the hymns of love. In the chariot of dreams, these souls came to the temple and made love as if they had not had to part each other. I saw a man and woman there making love.

He looked at her with all the left remnant pieces of his desires,

As the heavens witnessed the union of souls

Myths and sagas of love guarded the time,

Lest they might fall in love.

And their love was like the resurrection of a soul from the great dungeon of tragedy or death and meets its pair on the boughs of immortality. They fade into the memories of dreams like the great kings and warriors buried with the myths and legends of their own stories. Someday, someone will sing the story of his or her love because the heavens witnessed it. Above all, they were in the temple of Venus, in Atlantis.

I witnessed the greatest of all love sagas. Alcyone  and Ceyx, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pyramus and Thisbe and many. All of them were here in the dreams of their dreams and the fantasies of desires. But, the inevitability of the time, death, necessitated the history of their sagas. And, then, they lived in the temple of Myths looking at the new lovers coming to the temple of Venus.

There came my dear friend Shelly after his deep sleep in the Earth Valley. He was on his way to the antique place where he wanted to meet the king of kings. I wanted to join him in his search of antique, mystic lands and stories, but travelers to the Never Lands never ended up with Shelly. There were many, never-ending hunters of souls. They had to visit me and the temples of Atlantis. Therefore, I had to stay there for them.

The Never Lands never end,

As the souls become hunters of immortality

They set forth the sail.

Treading the mighty mountains,

Fighting with the hallucinations and

The creations of wild mysteries, some of them are lost,

Some of them will find the signs of their destinies,

Nymphs will meet them.

Dreams will take them to Zanadu,

And the king Kubla Khan will show them the “deep romantic chasm which slanted down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!”

The abyss of mystic echoes and apparitions will guide them to the waters of lilies.

Sailing through the great waters,

They will meet the mermaids,

Singing the glory of king Atlantis,

The hymns of fairies will lead them gateway of Never Lands.

They disembark the gateway of memories and fantasies.

Finally, they are here.

No one knows what awaits him or her.

Life or death,

They will hunt the soul of immortality.

I saw great kings who conquered seven seas and lands. They also passed this way. Alexander, Olympias, Ptolemy, Cleopatra, Augustus, Constantine, Narmer, Hetepsekhemwy, Teti, Rajaraja Chola and many. I recalled their words, deeds, and wondered if the Demon of Reality also tempted them successfully. I wondered how they conquered the lands and waters with their mighty imagination.

It was a man named Moore who came here in search of the land of Utopians. He sailed the waters of enchanting mermaids and fairies. He wanted to show his people the land of Utopia and the governance of power. I never saw him again. And I knew nothing about the things he saw there. While he was waving his memories for me, I heard his fantasies romanticizing the land of perfection.

Land of no walls,

Mind of freedom, people of harmony,

Spirits of existence,

Souls of eternity,

What are the horizons and

Lengths of light that would guide me there,

To meet the souls of eternal governance

And wisdom.

Yeats, the old man, sailed to the land Byzantium. “I was trying to write about the state of my soul, for it was right for an old man to make his soul…” He was singing the hymns of eternal souls, and in Byzantium, he dreamed of a life that would surpass the inevitabilities of time. He hoped the sages would appear in fire and take him away from his body into an existence outside time, where, like a great work of art, he could exist in “the artifice of eternity.” The fear of aging and fading into the mist of history along with his memories raged against his soul that he called a “paltry thing.” Byzantium, the city of immortal souls, wisdom, and eternal flames of everlasting beauty ravished the dying old man. I showed him the room of Time from where he could see the Holy City of Byzantium. It was far beyond the mighty waters of enchanting souls of fantasies. The domes of the city covered the mighty face of the sun. The waters of the city protected the secrets of life and death. No man but souls lived there. Far from the omnipotence of eternity, he saw the Holy city of Byzantium. At the sight of the Holy fire descending from the heavens and the sages standing beside the greatness of the Omnipotent one, his soul started fighting with his body and liberated itself from the clutches of his desires. He was a man, and he had to die. He saw the Holy city of Byzantium far from there. I heard the sound of his soul echoing the abyss of Atlantis.

“O sages standing in God’s holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing‐masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.”

Whoever sailed to Byzantium had to leave their bodies there. Like Yeats, many were there and they all left their body unto the abyss of Atlantis; from there no body, but soul sailed.

            Lingthorium, the City of Wraths, resided opposite of Byzantium. The Holy fire descending from the Heavens never heated the Holy City, but created an air of ineffable freshness and youthfulness. But on the other side, the fire ascending from Lingthorium burnt the Wrath City. I waited for a man named Doctor Faustus who had to sail this way, not to the Holy City, but to the City of Wraths. Once he got there, I showed him the room of souls. He saw both the cities, and he sailed to Lingthorium where he met Mephostophilis. The city of Wraths promised the luxuries and pleasures for a contract base. Faustus sold his soul for twenty-four years, and that day was the last day of his life. He was the only man who sold his soul for the powers of Lingthorium. The Demon of Reality also successfully tempted him. I remembered the story of his earthly life that he told me as he romanticized the fire of Lingthorium, “The lips of desires crippled the cigars. The leftover of dirty jokes and stimulus sounds lied on the floor of mind for their burial. The water of Oblivion mixed with the Spirit of fires in the half filled crystal glasses romanced the half-filled completion of ecstasy. Shadow of his self-drew a dirty picture of the sybaritic soul on the walls of a modern hut under the light of a 40-watt bulb.

Bohemian rhapsody played behind the tumultuous sensations of his unfinished night, the serenity incinerated into the core of his tumultuousness. The protest of his life compromised the music of melodies and rhapsodies of Bohemian sagas. He felt serene, for the sounds of revolutions and cry for freedom merged into the revolution and commotion within his soul.

            Desires had become like the filthy under wares. Though the exceeded music of desire overflew the sea of anticipation that he had been carrying since his puberty. He could have waited for her. Sleepless nights of the city life raged against the genitals and beat the drum for the beds and bars of the mind where he bedded with his lust and drank the waters of desires; his conscious had failed to dominate the inclination of inclinations and desires of flesh.

            He was fighting with the self and perceptions of conceptual ideologies, dogmas, creed, and self-designed philosophies of his life, he was selfish, and he failed to wipe out the tears of her desires and anticipations from her eyelids with his lips. he was dying in the infinite waters of lifeless routine of greetings, meetings, and confessions.

            ‘Useless’ semen ejaculated during the rages of youth and  the ‘sins’ of desires left a stain on the soul for a remembrance of eternal love and desire for life. He realized that they want to live and taste the nectar of life, desire, pleasure, lust, and love. They were humans, slaves of desires and Gods.” This was his story concisely. He didn’t tell me about “her” whom he mentioned in his absurdified story. What I found interesting about his story was the fusion of absurdity and beauty. Words confused me with their ambiguity and ambivalent nature. The beauty and desire of his life remained a mystery to the world. Then, I showed him off the City of Wrath and bid him farewell.

***

            Something beats  my eardrum. The visions of Atlantis, the gateway of memories and fantasies; Ozymandias, the king of kings; Zanadu, the land of Kubla Khan; Utopia, land of perfection; Byzantium, the Holy City; Lingthorium, the City of Wraths and the mighty sights of Never Lands fades away as the beats on eardrum wobble a wave into my head. I am awake now! What I see shock me. I see the books of Shelly, Coleridge, Marlowe, Moore, and Yeats. I am in my university library and slept on those books. And I had a dream, a nocturnal glory.

     I have to live out my boyhood fantasies, and my adult ambitions. Now I remember myself as I was. Handsome, glamorous, devilishly attractive. I’m like a lonely traveler who suddenly finds himself in a strange town, without knowing how he got there, which makes me think of those who lose their memory, and for a long time, aren’t themselves but someone else. Therefore, leaning over the bridge, I wait for the truth to go away and let me return to being fictitious and non-existent, intelligent and natural.