those old dead Greek guys

All those old dead Greek guys -- they must have been smoking something powerful while they lounged on marble steps. 

The ideas emerging from their heads were preposterous and shockingly brilliant, like bolts of lightning into a darkened sea.

The word "epiphany" is too soft sounding. Some other word is required, something fractal and jagged and language-exploding. 

Since then, it's been mere elaboration, billions of words lacking the luster and sizzle of that originary voltage. 

All those old dead Greeks guys -- wow! And that briefly extended moment of the truly extraordinary! The move from here-we-are to what-the-hell seems like trespass across a hidden and illicit threshold. Some drunken god must have been dozing, had let down his guard.

What it must have seemed like to them is beyond my imagination. To have first glimpsed or brushed up against the possibility of the real. The quality and texture of that first trespass or immersion as a never-to-be-repeated experience.  

I'm less concerned with the substance of their thought than with the poetry of those brilliant arching moments. To have moved from the Greek into the Freak. Yes, moments like bolts of lightning that shattered the surface of a dreaming sea of consciousness. 

Surely, Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides went on to write some weird, surreal poems that haven't been recovered.

Yes, the Axial Age also saw Indians and Chinese being profound and stuff. But for me, they weren't as intriguingly odd as those Greeks.

Those old dead Greek guys -- what can I say?