The World is a Better Place than It was 2500 Years Ago

About 2500 years ago, there was this family. The House of Atreus.

I could insert a picture of the family tree here, but it all just gets too complicated and doesn't really convey the truly astonishing number of affairs and murders that occurred within the family itself. So you can go Google it yourself if you really need it.

Anyways. The whole shebang kind of started when these two brothers, Atreus and Thyestes, murdered their half brother and were exiled. And then Atreus' wife Aeropes had an affair with Thyestes, so Atreus killed Thyestes' kids and tricked him into eating his own kids. And so Thystes was banished (for cannibalism) and Atreus became king.

But that's not all.

Thyestes was pretty pissed about this, so he asked some trusty old oracle what to do and came away with the idea that he needed to have a kid by his own daughter, Pelopia. And so Aegisthus was born. Unfortunately, Pelopia was so ashamed of this that she gave Aegisthus away to some shepherd, who gave the baby to Atreus (Oedipus, anyone?). When Aegisthus found out about all this, he responded in the logical fashion by killing Atreus.

Atreus had two sons before he died, Menelaus (who married Helen, aka Helen of Troy) and Agamemnon, who married Clytemnestra, Helen's sister. Then Helen was "kidnapped" and the Trojan War happened, but there was no wind for Agamemnon to set sail for Troy, and some old dude told him that he'd pissed off Artemis and would have to sacrifice what he considered his most precious belonging to appease her. And so Agamemnon killed his oldest daughter, Iphigenia, which really pissed off his wife (understandably).

While Agamemnon was away at war, Clytemnestra hopped into bed with Aegisthus and decided to kill Agamemnon when he returned. And so they did.

But then Agamemnon's exiled son Orestes returned and killed both Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, his own mother. Orestes was cleared of the murder charge by a split vote among the Athenian elders in a court presided by Athena herself. And this was the origin of "innocent until proven guilty." Or something like that.

You see, the world is kind of becoming a better place. It's actually a pretty wonderful place if you take the story of the house of Atreus at face value. We're not chopping up people's kids and eating them. Or murdering our mothers. And we don't run to oracles for sage advice. Not really, at least.

There is hope.

Whose Eyes?

This evening, I was finalizing my chair application for BruinMUN next year when I decided to skim through my MUN Monday posts again to see if I'd forgotten anything.

I've forgotten a lot.

Man, why can't things be the way they used to be? Hotel rooms and airplane rides with a massive group people we called family. Now, I sit here, wracked with uncertainty and disappointment about what the future holds. I didn't understand reality then, and I'm sure that, when I look back on this in a few years, I'll wish I could afford to be so uncertain about little things like summer plans and internship applications. The world just keeps getting bigger, and I'm scared that it's all just going to pop one day and collapse like a punctured hot air balloon.

At that moment, then, I'll wonder what it is that I've actually done with my life. Stuff that wouldn't fit on a resume, stuff that doesn't go in the "Would you like to add anything else?" box at the end of online applications. Stuff that means something.

It's vague, uncertain, sure. In anyone's eyes but mine, these things mean nothing. But I am I and I am.

So I have this box. It's a sort of white-ish, green-ish color. Small-ish. Shiny. Ish. It was a gift from the mother of perhaps my oldest friend. It's got a lock on it, which made up for the swirly little butterflies engraved across the surface. I started putting stuff in there when I started middle school. Deflated balloons from a birthday. old movie tickets. A shotgun shell. Gradually, stuff began to pile up in the little box. A foam chili pepper. A tiny FM radio. A dried out strip of leather. A letter stained blue from riding around in the back pocket of my jeans. It was a mess, really. It is a mess. It's a terribly cluttered analogy for everything I've done, gaudy on the outside, but locked tight, jumbled on the inside.

This box is shoved deep into the bowels of my old desk at home, the one with the metal drawers that screech and groan. I still carry the key with me even though I once picked the lock with a bobby pin. Keys mean something, just as boxes do. Something. Some stuff.

Some time.