seas.
My response to the story of Cyrus was always different. Even as a kid I thought Cyrus was ignorant and stupid. A river canât murder someone, let alone be malicious; a river is just a river. It was stupid to jeopardize his campaign on a whim, making his men run the risk of injuring themselves as they dug the trenches, reducing their effectiveness with their bows and arrows and their swords. The story doesnât say as much, but some of the soldiers must have died duringthe digging, making his revenge all the more costly. No horse would ever receive a more bizarre tribute.
Over the years, my view of Cyrus ceased to be quite so black and white. At first Cyrus was an exotic prince, with braids in his beard, who spoke a barbaric language and whose decisions could be understood only in the context of the Olympian logic of great kings and warriors. Then time passed (there are rivers that even Cyrus could not stop) and when I went back and read the story of Cyrus again, he didnât feel alien or unfathomable. He seemed like a lot of people I knew, people with whom I shared a human frailty: the tendency to accumulate power without wondering why or how to use it. People who have Cyrusâs power (military, political, economic) always forget that with power come responsibilities, they prefer to believe that evil exists only in other people. Diverting a river is easier than facing the truth; Cyrus did not want to acknowledge the fact that his horse would not have drowned if he had not forced it to try and cross the river.
Iâve known a lot of Cyruses in my life. Some of them now only appear in books nobody ever reads. Others walk the same streets, breathe the same air as we do. And though they now live in palaces and people pay them tribute, time will do to them what it did to Cyrus. Men who accumulate power and misuse it are like coins with only one face, they have no currency in any market.
I was thinking about the story of Cyrus as we worked on the reverse diving board. The fact that there was no obvious connection between the two ends of the plank did not mean no connection existed; we donât see the network of roots that keeps the tree anchored in the ground, but itâs there just the same.
But I admit, I came to no conclusions. I like to think that the way in which others had forcibly diverted the course of my life back then had conferred on me a compassion beyond my years. I like to think that I was better than Cyrus, that I assumed responsibility for thedeath of the toads and respected the existence of the river. I like to think I was trying to act according to the wisdom of nature, doing no more than nature might have done in toppling a tree whose branches might dip into the swimming pool. At the time I thought none of these things, preoccupied as I was by
The Invaders
and Houdini, but that does not mean these things did not contribute to my actions. If I have learned anything in life, it is that we do not think only with our brains. We think with our bodies too, with our emotions; we think with our concept of time.
On the face of it, the fact that, a few pages later, Cyrus dies and has his head cut off and plunged into a bath of blood has no connection with the story of the river Gyndes. And yet something tells me that the truth is not so simple.
We see with more than our eyes; we think with more than our brain.
33
WHAT THEY KNEW
I knew we were in some kind of danger. I knew that the military
junta
was hunting down all those who opposed it, in particular self-confessed Peronists and/or those who held left-wing views â a broad category that included papá, mamá and the âunclesâ. I knew that if mamá and papá were caught, theyâd be arrested, just as papáâs partner had been arrested. And I knew that there was a risk of lethal force. The bullets that killed Tio Rodolfo had not come from his own gun, if in fact he had actually been carrying one when he
My response to the story of Cyrus was always different. Even as a kid I thought Cyrus was ignorant and stupid. A river canât murder someone, let alone be malicious; a river is just a river. It was stupid to jeopardize his campaign on a whim, making his men run the risk of injuring themselves as they dug the trenches, reducing their effectiveness with their bows and arrows and their swords. The story doesnât say as much, but some of the soldiers must have died duringthe digging, making his revenge all the more costly. No horse would ever receive a more bizarre tribute.
Over the years, my view of Cyrus ceased to be quite so black and white. At first Cyrus was an exotic prince, with braids in his beard, who spoke a barbaric language and whose decisions could be understood only in the context of the Olympian logic of great kings and warriors. Then time passed (there are rivers that even Cyrus could not stop) and when I went back and read the story of Cyrus again, he didnât feel alien or unfathomable. He seemed like a lot of people I knew, people with whom I shared a human frailty: the tendency to accumulate power without wondering why or how to use it. People who have Cyrusâs power (military, political, economic) always forget that with power come responsibilities, they prefer to believe that evil exists only in other people. Diverting a river is easier than facing the truth; Cyrus did not want to acknowledge the fact that his horse would not have drowned if he had not forced it to try and cross the river.
Iâve known a lot of Cyruses in my life. Some of them now only appear in books nobody ever reads. Others walk the same streets, breathe the same air as we do. And though they now live in palaces and people pay them tribute, time will do to them what it did to Cyrus. Men who accumulate power and misuse it are like coins with only one face, they have no currency in any market.
I was thinking about the story of Cyrus as we worked on the reverse diving board. The fact that there was no obvious connection between the two ends of the plank did not mean no connection existed; we donât see the network of roots that keeps the tree anchored in the ground, but itâs there just the same.
But I admit, I came to no conclusions. I like to think that the way in which others had forcibly diverted the course of my life back then had conferred on me a compassion beyond my years. I like to think that I was better than Cyrus, that I assumed responsibility for thedeath of the toads and respected the existence of the river. I like to think I was trying to act according to the wisdom of nature, doing no more than nature might have done in toppling a tree whose branches might dip into the swimming pool. At the time I thought none of these things, preoccupied as I was by
The Invaders
and Houdini, but that does not mean these things did not contribute to my actions. If I have learned anything in life, it is that we do not think only with our brains. We think with our bodies too, with our emotions; we think with our concept of time.
On the face of it, the fact that, a few pages later, Cyrus dies and has his head cut off and plunged into a bath of blood has no connection with the story of the river Gyndes. And yet something tells me that the truth is not so simple.
We see with more than our eyes; we think with more than our brain.
33
WHAT THEY KNEW
I knew we were in some kind of danger. I knew that the military
junta
was hunting down all those who opposed it, in particular self-confessed Peronists and/or those who held left-wing views â a broad category that included papá, mamá and the âunclesâ. I knew that if mamá and papá were caught, theyâd be arrested, just as papáâs partner had been arrested. And I knew that there was a risk of lethal force. The bullets that killed Tio Rodolfo had not come from his own gun, if in fact he had actually been carrying one when he
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