After conquering half of the western world, and half of the east... I gathered all the herbs and spices I had come across and stored samples of each in my libraries, libraries I had built in the cities I had built by my loyal men. Jacobinia, Jacobia, and so on. Each culture I came across, after decimating their armies, I respected. I collected philosophers and shaman from each culture as some men collect rings. I had the philosophers, experts in their respective cultures, write down the essence of their knowledge, had scribes make copies of their works, and stored them in my libraries as well. I made love to a woman from each culture, if they would have me, and they always wanted to have me. I didn't make them my wives however, as I like to travel light. I married them off to my friends. I took great joy, as awful as it is, in this carnal knowledge that I had these women before them. It was important to me to take my seat on the stone steps of the Parthenon where the other gods lounged, and for my friends to be mere mortal men, I was a spirit who had transcended the flesh, although earthly bound to it, I would float as I walked, whereas other men clunked around. Despite all my arrogance, I showered men and women alike with gifts... fine foods and wines, clothes and pillows, polished stones and exotic perfumes. Despite my playful jokes, they respected me, and if they wished to challenge me, which men are wont to do, they would back away after seeing me in battle, rushing first into battle, killing many men with nary a scratch laid upon myself.
"My friends, it is not I who guides my hands, my feet, my sword, my eyes, my horse! It is the gods!" I scarcely understood my power myself, but accepted it with gratitude, assuming I had good credit in the karmic moral bank of past lives. But it was my libraries I loved the most, filled with knowledge, and cultures, that would have been lost without me. People would simply not know answers that seem so obvious to us now. Arrogant as they are, they believe it is themselves that discovered fire! Lightning! Water! Earth! and how to harness their respective powers. No... if you set a man loose in the woods, he could scarcely make a competent spear let alone extract a metal or construct a canal. I could feel the jealousy of the gods building, as they saw my accomplishments mirroring theirs. They conspired to have me killed, not by a sword, not by a human enemy, but simply by my own strength, my own thirst, my own largess of spirit which could not be contained. It was this exuberance for life that freed me from my body. The earth, in all it's beauty, was simply a precursor for new earths! With new passions! New dimensions of spirit of essence of existence where I could experience new spices! New keys of music that my ears longed to hear. And so in the release of my spirit into the great ethereal, men and women alike wept, yet knew that it was strength, and exuberance, and the tasting of strange new wines that would be the best way to honor the spirit of whatever it was I was. Statues were placed in my libraries that looked vaguely like me. They were nice, and decorated in garlands. But over the centuries, men arrived, and in their jealousy and rage burned my libraries down, stabbing themselves in the foot by losing the remnants of the cultures I had conquered, cultures no-one would know again. It was their loss, and I had to laugh. A sense of pride permeated my being, knowing no one would taste those tastes again, smoke those herbs again, hear those songs again. And all the better! For no man's work stays forever in the libraries of earth, the endless river of time will wash all those trivialities away. It is in the moment when things are enjoyed, and all the rest Is nostalgia. That isn't to say that the past doesn't contain wisdom, it's to say that wisdom is to be forgotten eventually. Until then, I'll hold onto what I have... my memories with the gods, and a penchant for more!
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