Let us start with Icarus and his father, Daedalus the architect, who longed to escape the treacherous Minos, king of Crete. Stuck in that tower, months on end, if not years by now, having their spirits frozen in the cold darkness of those lifeless walls. And in his father’s eyes, bearing a parents least favorite thing to witness was the fate that would visit his son.
He’s still young, thought the greying architect. There’s still much we can do, achieve, and attain.
Daedalus heard the sea, the force of the waves that crashed and pinned them into this prison. Are they ever going to escape? Yet in spite of the conditions, he is after all a thinking man, a skillful man, and a craftsman favoured by the gods. And it is in such moments that Daedalus would conjure up his best ideas, ideas that not only challenged but confronted the very limitations that were coded into the natural working of things.
You’re flying out of here, he told the young Icarus, who was curled up into a corner like a babe torn from the womb.
How? asked Icarus.
You will take flight like a bird.
Daedalus was driven. New life had brewed, allowing him to escape his version of terror, the mundane. He worked away, enthusiastically, not out of fear but pure excitement. Herein lied a new adventure, a new challenge for this ante-nascent scientific mind.
The plucking began. Feathers everywhere. Sneezing. Coughing. Grunting then spitting. And the blood of birds, bodies that were now flightless, had watered the stone surface, the red-colored waste that fueled this dream. Strings were meshed together, ragged cloths were used to bind up straw, and beeswax, (beeswax, really? Yes, as ridiculous as that sounds…) – lots and lots of beeswax being the main ingredient bonding this fracture.
Is this even going to work father?
The lad was ignored. Is he even seen, understood, or felt? The eyes of his father tell a different sort of feel.
Try it on, said Daedalus.
Timidly, Icarus lifted the wings. It hung over him like a burden. The proportions, the weight of it all, off measure, like it had somebody else in mind, perhaps its intended designer.
It doesn’t fit right.
Of course it does! You’re carrying it wrong, that’s all. You need to understand the mechanics of the machine. Give it a test, right here, around the room.
Icarus could barely move. Months of not eating. Lean to the bone with no energy to spare, nothing. He remained, fixed to the spot, buried under the weight of his father’s inventions, feeling at one with a certain Titan, cursed to bear the weight of this world.
I am like a god, said Daedalus, a maker of things. I am the architect, I shaped the Labyrinth, and I made you.
The boy shivered in those loose feathers, the badly stitched wax clung to his skin, his soft white delicate skin, not prone to conditions such as these.
Now move! commanded Daedalus, as if speaking life into an inanimate object, a Pinocchio for heaven's sake!... tjoh?
Icarus took a step forward, lifted his arms, distributed the weight evenly, and slowly felt power rise in him again. His staggered steps soon turned into jogs. Within moments he paced around the room. He did eventually look like a bird, but more like those goofy creatures that remain flightless, flapping about without lift, how unfortunate – eish!...
Stop, said Daedalus, stop right there. A smile crept, curving the corner of his mouth weirdly. He knew what had been missing.
Wind, my son… wind! that is the thing that will promote us.
He looked around the dark interior, a room starved of light. There’s no wind here, he thought, there’s barely enough air to breathe.
Daedalus went up to an opening on the wall that was meant for a window. He climbed up and looked out. Below him was the roaring sea, tumultuous and tempered, with waves smashing one into the other violently. And at the top rested the radiating heat of the sun, burning since forever. He held Icarus by the shoulder and pointed to what he saw.
Fly too low, Poseidon will have you. And fly too high, Helios will scorch you. Stay right in the middle.
Young Icarus did not understand the words that came from his father’s mouth. How could he? A mentally unstable, malnourished youth seeking affection in this dying light, but only given instructions. He noticed that look again, one he had seen many times before but never really understood its meaning, a look cradled into the soul of his father’s eyes, eyes that put more faith in things than in humans.
Icarus squeezed himself through the narrow opening, not saying a word. His father still settled on the wings, obsessing over them, without a care concerning the state of his son.
Icarus received the wings. Careful now, squeaked the old man, you should treat them with care.
He placed each wing on both sides of his arms. Got a feel of the wind that rushed into his lungs. To the sun, he felt a warmth that hugged his being, welcoming an embrace almost dead to time. He gave thanks. And to the moon that hung low, hidden in the blue east, he longed for her calm spirit. He sprang out of the opening and leapt into the wind… into the silence…
Icarus flew, not towards the sun – for that would have been impossible – and not down towards the sea either. But it was his spirit that flew that day. It went somewhere beyond this realm of pain.
And what of Daedalus, what did his father see? Perhaps the marvel of his own creation come to life, even if it was only momentary, en passant towards some finish line, a sacrificial pawn used as an investment towards items of promotion. Or, once witnessing the failure to launch, he was quick to quell the embarrassment and in so doing fabricated a fable that would rescue his tarnished reputation, telling his peers in Athens that Icarus sought to fly too close to the sun.
But maybe, just maybe, it was the image of his son’s broken body, that never flew but fell straight to the ground, that splintered into various pieces of flesh splattered against black ocean rocks, painting them red, like an angel on fire, a bleeding seraph, in the end amounting to nothing more than a flightless bird, that had branded his ambition with such trepidation it left an indelible mark, albeit an invisible one, on the history of humanity.
Yours to glean, another’s to suppress, but always a story to be told.
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