Colour in the Ephemeral Times

Living in the West, we have been taught that we have Oriental origins. However our time and how social life flows is very far from the East. It isn’t known if we forgot it guiltily and deliberately or if it is due to poor memory or whether it is a necessity. Maybe our lifestyle comes from the submission to new ideologies or from the creation of new myths and the adhesion to them. But this seems strange because with the East we still share ancient myths and beliefs. Despite the many centuries separating us from the origin we haven’t been able to cut the umbilical cord. The bond is too strong. The ambivalent and ambiguous way of life is marked by the mythology that we forgot, but we keep doing that way. We can find flashes of share in the story of Odysseus. Odysseus, whose deeds are described by Homer in the Odyssey, is a modern hero. He has three key features: cunning, falsehood and cowardice. To conquer the city of Troy he uses cunning to build a big wooden horse. He uses falsehood hiding his warriors inside. The horse appears naively as a gift for the gods, but in fact it is a war machine. Odysseus is also a coward. He faces a thousand vicissitudes dragging his closest friends in a venture that concerns him personally. He laid on the others his questionable choices. Odysseus represents the West.