As we slide into the World Series season, this delightfully poetic
bit of creative writing,
the very words of which seem blown by the winds of the Greek gods,
should serve to set that scene and bring back a few memories for some
of us, as well
as lighten our hearts a bit from the focus of the terrible events of
this week.
"Potpourri" Editor - September 2001
HOLY WINDS
By Jerry Vilhotti
Situated near a bay, across from an island where the
souls of prisoners like the "BirdMan" once howled, beneath steep hills
that plunged toward waters that were to become grave fields
for seals and dolphins, in a deep depression that daily wrestled
with air currents of great magnitudes of velocity - stood
a ballpark where the game of baseball was played, by a team that left
The Big Apple for the lure of more money on the west coast, from April to
sometimes October.
During home stands the park was almost always filled to
capacity by fanatics - despite threats of earthquakes - who watched
the doings with children-like wonderment; never
once realizing the stadium was home to the Greek god Aeolus, who was
surrounded by lesser gods holding candle sticks up to his
greatness, who delighted in making this "pastime" so anxious for
many ballplayers and their watchers.
When he decided, he could make a pop up hover over
second base for a couple of seconds before propelling the little white
sphere against a fence to
ricochet into an unsuspecting uniformed person's neck who was minding the
pastures.
"I bet twenty drachmas this one will be caught by the short stopper mortal,"
said Hermes.
"And I'll wager it won't even be caught!" Zeus said.
"I say the protector of the first sack will!" screamed Athena.
"You're
both on!" Hermes said putting down the gold as he looked down intently from
their mountain perch.
They were entitled to have
their fun for weren't they - the Greeks - the first to begin endowing humanity
with dignity?
At the very beginning of the sound of the ball hitting
a part of a fashioned tree trunk called a "bat" the thing appeared to be
going out of the park so high and far it was smashed but
then it began to come down to the protector of the second sack who
had returned from a long journey to mid right field pasture and
situated himself near the bag where he suspected the ball
would
land and just as he was about to pluck the ball out
of Aeolus' mouth, it took another vehement bounce in the winds to
elude
the "big hand" completely and fall gently onto a patch of brown earth.
While all the Greek gods continued to watch
this thing they discovered some time ago and delighted in manipulating the
mortals below - paying them back for having the Dark
Ages with all its ignorance eat away at their proud souls casting giant
shadows upon it ignoring what the Greeks and Romans had
worked so hard to sculpt - like having the blue-uniformed mortal
behind the pentagon forget where the "steek" or "baw" zones were
and all the other tics inherent in the actions, Aeolus kept
on
blowing out his lungs giving all the movements
even more dimensions than the anonymous inventor of the game ever
imagined.
"This is even better than watching little league home runs going over the
green monster!" shouted Zeus.
After a half hour of this amusement, the gods began to watch
the fans in the stands who kept blinking rapidly while shivering
realizing that this was just the start of the first half of the first inning
of the big inning ....
AEOLUS
Custodian of the four winds. A minor deity, he is
the son of a king called
Hippotes, and lived on one of the rocky Lipara islands,
close to Sicily. In the
caves on this island were imprisoned the winds, and Aeolos,
directed by the
higher gods, let out these winds as soft breezes, gales,
or whatever the higher
gods wished. Being visited by the Greek hero Odysseus,
Aeolos received him
favorably, and on the hero's departure presented Odysseus
with a bag containing
all the adverse winds, so that his friend might reach Ithaca
with a fair wind.
Odysseus did as Aeolos bid, but in sight of his homeland,
having been
untroubled by foul weather, he fell asleep and his men,
curious, opened the bag,
thus releasing all the fierce winds, which blew their ship
far off course (Odyssey
X, 2; Vigil I, 52).
AEOLUS
Copyright 2001 by Jerry Vilhotti. All rights reserved.
A special thanks to Editor Jim Kittelberger and
his fine Zine "The Public Reader" for kindly sharing Jerry Vilhotti's writing
with us.