Holiday Time

Everyone seems to think that saying Happy Holidays nullifies the occasion  of the celebration of the birth of Jesus. I don't think that it does at all.  After all holiday means Holy Day, and thus, it is the same as saying Merry Christmas.  Just my little insight into a too picayune generation.  (Guess what...my computer made a spelling change for me.)

I digress...what a shock to learn that.

Change of topic...this will be a lot of briefs all at once...I have not worked on my Alexander novel for a while...all kinds of excuses but the most important one occurred the other night...I do feel a need to travel to Greece soon and maybe to other places where Alexander journeyed.  But the real reason I have had to stop to even think about any of the  plots that I might devise is that I had one of those go back in time experiences where I saw him as a young boy and then another vision of an older, much more matured and harried adult male who was frightening as all get out to my eyes.

With visions comes inner perceptions that are quite amazing to me....as I had no idea that he had looked like either one of these images until now because they are certainly seldom depicted in any source I have read...but I believe in them nonetheless, and I gleaned some interesting facts that  did help me to understand today a whole lot better too.

One thing came clear to me and that is the depth of emotion and the amount of real labor that took place in this long arduous trek that Alexander made across the continent from Greece to India.  Since I have been pretty much emphasizing his childhood more than his later campaigns it hit me hard to realize the change within him. It made me also realize at how sad it is for really human campaigns to be reduced to sentences and paragraphs that are set in cold type.  This was a savage and cruel age for any who suffered it. And believe it or not, there was little then to enjoy.  How can one really enjoy long marches?  Enduring laborious and tiresome disciplinary exercises.  These were soldiers, men who had muscles developed from cutting and carrying tree limbs fashioned into towers and weapons. They were hardened, toughened, and blistered in a long, arduous walk from one country to another. Those who rode horseback had sore thighs, calves, and arms and shoulders from curbing and controlling horses in swift and speedy runs.  Weapons and armor were carried both by man and beast alike as they trekked the many miles it took from one battle to another.  How one could keep and maintain a positive spirit is difficult to comprehend.   Encountering savage and cruel opponents was expected.  Preparation was everything, and nothing was left to chance.

Well, you see, once I get going, I just have to state it as I see it.  I saw the look on Alexander's face, and I picked up the serious trauma that he had endured so that it made me rethink all this. I felt all his years of glory seeking which is way over played for in reality, the compulsion was not for glory so much as for conquest and achievement.  It is only today's historians who seem to believe so many of the writers who spoke of the journey who conjure up the idea that it was all for glory. Not so.  The glory is a secondary motive.   The real motive is to conquer and to rule.

More on this later...am making lunch and have to watch my macaroni now.