✨ICARUS & ME✨

I don't think it's delightful to fall for something fleeting… even if it was to feel the sun and yet….

Icarus, is that you?

Your withered wings glinting,

The wax on your back melting,

Is it your laughter I hear,

Echo across the vast sky?

Icarus you are falling,

Almost as one in love,

Laughing at the terror,

Of being struck from high above,

Of the madness you've become.

Oh love must be so fierce,

To deny you even oarage,

And oh the sun must delight,

For its light alone you have fallen,

Tell me, was it worth it?

Did you drown in regret

As you did in the sea?

Did you feel your life begin

Only for it to dim?

Prithee fearless mortal , Tell us!

For as much as we want to fly,

We fear the fall,

Shall we turn to our desires and confess

“ I am no Icarus”

~Aroché ☀️🪽

ICARUS ! Son of Daedalus, the boy who dared to fly so close to the sun , the boy who died trying.

I love greek mythology, I love the stories, the attempts to make sense of humanity . The beginning of its desire, cruelty and behaviour in general. Pandoras box , Medusa , Orpheus and Eurydice, Oedipus, Achilles … the list is as long as it is interesting. As much as I am intrigued by all of them , none has dug it's claws as deep in my psyche as the Greek legend of Icarus. A story of ambition, hubris , youthful arrogance and recklessnes. Of course I ,unfortunately, couldn't help but see the unsettling resemblance in our appetites. Like reading a book and feeling it slowly turn into a mirror of your surroundings, of yourself. What I am about to write , the thoughts I share whilst staring back at this reflection is sort of an admission to this reality but a denial and attempted escape to its fate.

“Never forget thy fall,

O Icarus of the fearless flight,

For the greatest tragedy of them all

Is to never have felt the burning light.”

~ Oscar Wilde

Of course Wilde ,as many poets have before ,had his take on this Hellenic myth. Here's mine ; I don't think it's delightful to fall for something fleeting…even if it was to feel the sun...and yet. There are safer ways to feel the burning light, for example, from a distance.

We'll deal with the “ and yet” part later. My major focus is the first part of my declaration. Imprisoned in an island tower by King Minos for helping his enemy, the impeccable craftsman Daedalus creates wings using wax and feathers for himself and his son. Giving warning before their attempt at defying gravity.

“Let me warn you, Icarus, take the middle way, because the moisture will weigh down your wings, if you fly too low. But if you go too high, the sun will scorch them. Travel between the extremes and take the course I'll show you!”

So Icarus after hearing this, after donning the wings and as they make their great escape from the chains that have held them so long gets caught up in the feeling of flying, of living . Like he is tasting freedom for the first time in a very long time and he cannot get enough of it. Enjoying the flight granted by temporary craftsmanship, temporary gifts and a little majesty, forgetting how prone they are to failing. How easily they can soon to lead to his demise. How the warning , the singular law , was really the gift hidden beneath all those white flamboyant feathers and feel. How the only thing that could keep him alive was to heed. Not to taste the freaking sun, not to try and outshine it by rising to it's level, not to forget his place . He is a mortal and he is just learning to fly. So deciding to put more faith in his counterfeit wings than his father's words… is suicide. It's not ambition , it's not admirable , it is death clad in one of its many garments. In this way I am Icarus.

“How you are fallen from heaven,

O Lucifer, son of the morning!

How you are cut down to the ground,

You who weakened the nations!

For you have said in your heart:

‘I will ascend into heaven,

I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;

I will also sit on the mount of the congregation

On the farthest sides of the north;

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,

I will be like the Most High.’Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,

To the lowest depths of the Pit.

~ Isaiah 14 ; 12-15

I couldn't help but notice the striking relation between these two sons. How they exchanged what was a delightful experience, for descent. How I mimick their foolish decisions in my day to day life. I fall , like Icarus , like Lucifer , feeling the growing distance between myself and what I could've been grow as I plummet in agony and Ire. The dry , hollow and manic laughter that echoes in the sky comes from pits of despair and the darkness that consumes you as you fall further from the light that was once your only ambition, your sole devotion.

Oh to understand that the careless flight is only temporary as glorious as it may seem !

It is not worth the fall. There are kinder ways to meet the sea.

We crash into the unforgiving waters as mightily as it's waves, lost to its depths , drowned in misery with only the memories of what it felt like to fly . And when a sense of anything that proves to be permanent, an everlasting source of comfort and love is laid out in front of you .You become skeptical , you flee ashamed because you know it's not temporary. At least not as temporary as yourself and your commitments have turned out to be. You cover yourself with the torn remainders of your wings, you sow your dress of fig leaves.

And yet…( despite it all) To fly is still noble.

Only do not lose yourself in it. Take from it but do not be taken away by it. For to have wings and never to use them is injustice in itself. I must trust the ones who made them just as much as he trusted me enough to lend them. It is how we use our wings that dooms us, not the fact that we have them. In this way I know.. believe ... I am no Icarus.

Somehow , someway , someday , I will mount up with wings like an eagle , I will run and not grow weary I will walk and not faint. I will try and listen, so that these wings will lead me home as they were meant to be.

The lowest depths of the pit are not meant for me, the seabed is not my watery grave. That is what it means to fly Icarus, to soar. It means to be able to land safely and live to fly another day. Countless days.

Am I still a long way? Will I arrive today? Are my steps still beneath my feet waiting to be released along the paths of my destiny? Am I ready?

“I battered the cordons around me ,

And cradled my wings on the breeze,

Then soared to the uttermost reaches,

With rupture, with power, with ease.”

~Georgia Douglas Johnson