Multiplicity of the Self

Man is a jumble of contradictions, I know, a hard nut to crack! So unfathomable, so mysterious- at once a Satan and an angel. To the outer world I am someone. But in the well-guarded cellars of my privacy aren’t I different~ hiding my innards to light, as every other man? Am I not a masked player in life’s pantomime? At times, I feel so proud, excessively in love with my own image, like Narcissus, the poor hunter boy fated by gods to languish on the bank of a pond, over his own floating image! However, with all my strength within, do I not feel as helpless as Prometheus bound, waiting for a Hercules to come and save me from my plight. If Prometheus’ bondage was God willed, mine is self- willed…! Is the difference so very crucial? Sometimes I feel I am Janus, looking backward and forward into my past and my future, never living in the present. Or am I more a Sisyphus, eternally rolling a rock over to the cliff from where it keeps falling down? Sometimes I wonder, amid great splendor, do I not starve like Tantalus of Greece in the pool, beneath the tree, with the low- lying branches of fruits constantly eluding his grasp, and the water, ever receding before he could take a drink! As a poet, how I wish I could equate myself with Calliope, carving my mind on the wax tablet with stylus, my pen and coloring it with my fancy. Or Orpheus, so skilled in music that with my sad musings, I can make even Hades, weep and the rocks to fall in line! I shudder to be a Medusa, turning everyone to a stone with my sinister glance! Instead, I want to be one of the Graces and never one among the Gorgons. Pitched in this gallery of strange mythological entities, I wonder how I appear to others with all my multiplicities of character and identity!