Struggle and Doubt

GRACES:
Mother of Aeneas, darling of gods and men,
Venus our nurse, below the wheeling
Stars of heaven you fill ship-bearing
Sea and fruitful lands with life. Through you
All manner of things alive first are
Conceived and then emerge and see the light
Of day.









APHRODITE PIPES IN:

"Oh, yeah. That was Lucretius. Confused the hades out of the scholars afterward; he was a scientist, you know, explaining the universe to the Romans, and, of all things, he pleads with Venus to help. Why does a guy trying to displace the gods ask one to assist him?

Lucretius was mortal. He had love in him. And, he was a suicide, died after drinking....an aphrodisiac.

Poor Empedokles almost had it. You know, he threw himself into Mt. Etna when his own philosphy left him...or found him. Or he just couldn't get a date. Or all three.

He figured that in nature the prime forces were Love and Strife. Well. I guess he'd had a live-in, huh?

So Empedokles believed that love joined opposites; Strife divided their union, and created new opposites that could unite later. On and on. Life and love. Heraclitus the Grouch believed that struggle was the father of all things.

How about the motherfather?
You better watch it if you slip in the pronounciation, huh?
The Great Motherfather.
Ah--or, what's the term: The Handmaiden. Hah. Struggle is the handmaiden of all things.'
Well you know. It can make you sweaty. 'Specially if its good.
What you do when you're confirming the ritual of love and life-making--
Hands grip hands and wrists and loving can sound like a struggle.
Sometimes even look like it, right?
Love-making. Think about that. To make anything, two aspects must come together.
Well. It's true; even if you're by yourself.
Birth? Screaming, blood, cursing. Yuh. And each month when you don’t give birth--Uh,
huh. Struggle; without a doubt.

At one time in life's season of flowers does
Love bring together the limbs that belong
To the body--
--c'mon, pick it up--"