Posted by It all began in a stormy summer night. The year was 1856. One hunderd years after the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Salome Wheatblower had just escaped from her family’s summer Estate in Massachusetts, when she experienced the heavy showers of the storm by the lake nearby.
Isolde MacKenna, a close friend of the author of this totally unstructured report, had experienced a similar storm with white ducks in a lake some days ago in the year 2020.
It is quite obvious that I invented Salome in order to be able to talk about Isolde, who is of Irish decent and also has French Canadian blood in her.
Having weathered the storm, Salome was enjoying a retrospective vision of the ducks in the storm in the stormy date of her escape which was the result of her urge to join her best friend, Charlotte of Belgium (7 June 1840 – 19 January 1927, a Belgian princess who became Empress of Mexico), who was going to board a hot air balloon named “Argo”.
May I remind the reader that Jean-Pierre [François] Blanchard (4 July 1753 – 7 March 1809) was the French pioneer who conducted the first balloon flight in the Americas in January 1793. On 20 February 1808 Blanchard had a heart attack while in his balloon at the Hague. He fell from his balloon and died roughly a year later (7 March 1809) from his severe injuries.
Blessed are the ones who leave this world whilst enjoying their passion. This is my saying, and I challenge the reader to prove me wrong.
I invented Charlotte because I wanted to bring Argo into the picture, as well as one of my absolute favorite poets, Andreas Empeirikos. So, in effect, the Argo of Empeirikos happened before the Argo of Salome, eventhough in physical time 1856 precedes 1944.
“Argo” is the hot air balloon that became the topic of a novella by the Greek poet Andreas Empeirikos (1901 – 1975) some years later. The circumstances of the epiphany that led Empeirikos to write this novella are not known. But he loved ships and “Argo” was originally a ship that travelled far, and is the symbol of boundless, adventurous travel.
We know that the novella was completed in 1944, but was not published until 1965. Due to the very strict morals of the time, the poet had to remove some of the “hottest” words, using spaces. It was an erotic novella.
Empeirikos was influenced by ine of his favorite authors, Jules Verne, who in 1862 had written the novel “Five weeks in a balloon”, about three Englishmen exploring Africa with the help of a hydrogen filled balloon.
However, in “Argo” Empeirikos describes the sexual adventures of Charlotte, the daughter of university professor in Bogota, Colombia. There are no Englishmen on board. My Charlotte comes from Belgium, Empeirikos’ Charlotte comes from Columbia.
Below the explicit sexual layer of many of his works though, Empeirikos worked on another theme. That “eros” happens when we love without any specific reason.
Empeirikos had one great love in his life (may be more, but one for sure), the poet Matsi Hadjilazarou, who believed that in the heart of a woman in love there is a deeply rooted and inexplicable need to suffer.
Andreas and Matsi stayed together from 1940 to 1944.
Argo is about letting yourself enjoy eros, starting from the sexual level.
Eros is liberating, eros gave Salome and Charlotte the ability to see the world as boundless.
It is this excilarating sense of freedom that one feels when in love, floating and flying (“The fear of flying” by Erica Jong).
Welcome Isadora Zelda White Stollerman Wing, would you like to board “Argo”.
And, if having sex on the groung is nice, having sex on a ship is better, and having sex on a hot air baloon is even better.
Argo is ultimately a sex vessel, but it can become more. All you need to do, dear reader, is to explote the avenues that Argo can lead you to.