Cryssarina

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. Mark Twain

Dear Twain knew what he was writing, but I wonder if he knew how much he was right. As some of you know by now, I met my first muse on Medium during the last week of November 2020, less than four months after joining this unusual online writing and reading platform. She fell in love with my words, I fell in love with hers, and from then onwards, I was captivated by her, writing mostly about my love for her, her love for me, and our difficulties getting to be together, which generated the image of my muse living on the Moon. She lived so far from me that it was as if she lived on the Moon. She already had a life and thus imagination took me to her in Prague and elsewhere in space. At one point, I even despised the poor Moon but never the Sun and other stars that seemed to understand my plight with their rays and brightnesses.

Then, sometime in January 2021, also last month, I fell in love with Goddess Athena, the goddess of wisdom (and science), thanks to my reading of Anthi Psomiadou’s fetching pieces and my online commentary with her. Ancient Greece Athena seemed to symbolize my impossible love, but ironically appeared more promising than my real muse. It was a strange conundrum. Do I continue to yearn for an almost-impossible-to-be-with muse, or do I woo Athena, even adopting Greek Mythology as my new religion, which may be even harder for a nonbeliever? I chose Athena and wrote her numerous poems, some that could even be sung to popular songs by Pink Floyd, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin just a couple of days ago.

In the meantime, during the past few weeks, I had a serious disagreement with Patrick. I’m M. We may be the same individual on some level, but we’re very different on another. It’s not a split personality or anything remotely similar. It’s more like an understanding during the creative process where I write whatever I have in mind whereas Patrick limits himself to his preferences. Our disagreement grew exponentially when we realized that he should stick to his muse and I to Athena, allowing our narrators — we had three of them at that point — to specialize. One only wrote about trees and tree meat (wood and timber), one only wrote about AI (as saviour), and the third, a woman, wrote about love and lust. I called the tree narrator, Woody, though he never knew it. The AI narrator was simply Al or sexy. The woman narrator was named Jennifer; Jenny, really. She fell in love with me, M, but I resisted her advances having been caught in the middle of Patrick’s unrequited real love for his muse. She wanted to keep their relationship virtual; almost imaginary.

Patrick wrote a piece against me titled, Fuck You M. I wrote a piece against him titled, Fuck You Patrick. And then, tired of life, he decided to leave and fly to Greece to meet my Athena since he could never meet his muse, except for the two imaginary times in Prague, for which I have to commend him. Those stories were magical. Even his muse was taken aback by their poignant passionate narrative. He left a note which I incorporated within a piece titled, Patrick Is Dead. I haven’t heard from him since, but he was surely touched by ScienceDuuude’s piece, Finding Ohana, that I’m sure he’ll return one day or night to bug me yet again.

Jenny is wonderful. We even started to write together for the first time. I titled the piece, The Last Pussy, but what was actually written turned out to be a total surprise. Those two other narrators had surely something to do with it. As I began to know Jenny more deeply, I learned that she had a second first name. I couldn’t believe that she preferred Jennifer to Cryssarina. It sounds Greek as well and it’s apparently as unique as she is. Cryssarina has become my new goddess of love and understanding.