The Drinking Stones of the Peucetii

After the defeat by Jason and the Argonauts, the Symplegades, also known as the Cyanean or Clashing Rocks, retreated into a state of hibernation. I use the word "hibernation" cautiously. What I mean, both literally and figuratively ("litfigative" is the Joycean contraction), is that the rocks were exposed to the simpatico omnicorpus egoterrum, or "emasculation of the anthropomorphic geologic-ego" by Jason and his Argonauts. (This is the once theorized but now experimentally proved fact that all geologic formations can be anthropomorphized just by rendering vital human energy to the concept. A good example of this concept rests in the tragic events of the Titanic, from which a rendition of the vital human energy leaked into the surrounding sea by the aristocratic but pessimistic gentry, thus resulting in the "tip of the iceberg" cliche. The true events are recounted in this anecdote: At a party in the main ballroom of the RMS Titanic, a man noticed that a sandwich, which was made at the time with fresh salmon paste, mayonnaise, and lettuce, was made sloppily by the evidently inebriated server. When he complained to his wife about the unsightly look of the lettuce, which had been protruding from the sides of the bread, curling over the side of the crust, she replied, "Arthur, don't be finicky-it's just the tip of the iceberg.)

According to Strabo, the Peucetii, the ancient peoples of Latin Barium (now Bari, Italy), were visited by Daedelus, the father of Icarus. The story goes that Daedelus, locked in a tower, held, not only the secret of the Labyrinth, for which, historians and scholars know, he was interred in a tower, but the secret of the emasculation of the Symplegades, which, having been emasculated, shrunk to the size of walnuts and sunk to the bottom of the sea. Daedelus, in a dream similar to mine, was visited by a spirit of the Adriatic, which guided him to the Strait of Messina, in Sicily, where he fashioned the protean version of the snorkle device and found the rocks without rigor. When he escaped the tower with his overzealous son, Icarus, the rocks began to grow in size, to about the circumference of oranges, and emanating from them was the positive ego-growing force which irradiated Icarus and proved the force of his folly. He eventually landed in a painting by Brueghel and vanished from historical records. Daedelus eventually escaped (first) to the land of the Peucetii, where he put his secret into the hands of its leaders.

The whereabouts of these rocks was soon lost in the conflicting histories of the Magna Grecia region. But my grandfather, Giovanni Fortezza, on his deathbed, revealed to me the secret of the wandering rocks, which, over time, became the Drinking Stones of Palo del Colle, where my family marks its origins. What he revealed was telling: the fall of the Roman Empire in the west coincided with the retreat of the simpatico omnicorpus egoterrum from the earth. This, he remarked, was evidence of the evolutionary versatility of the force: instead of absorbing the life-force from the surrounding human environment, sucking the psychic energy from human beings, it became "smarter," and its design was radically changed, enhanced, by "knowing" it would be more economical to absorb the sustaining life-force of the the life-force itself: water. This, in part, can be evidenced by the slowly diminishing amount of drinkable water on the planet earth.

My grandfather also revealed, in detail, a picture, or diagram, with which I could summon the Drinking Stones, which, in part due to their intelligent design, I could reproduce simply by drawing a series of three shapes in the ground with chalk or in the dirt: a half circle-half square, a half square-half equilateral triangle, and half equilateral triangle-half circle, one atop the other, in close proximity and in any size.

What follows is the account of the Drinking Stones, as they formed in our backyard in Woodberry, Baltimore, several weeks after I was visited by the spirit of the Adriatic. In as close detail as possible, I try to document, via audio, text and film, my experience with the Drinking Stones.