Socrates' Hemlock in American Backyards (Draft)
For Pontiff, it was a sign for things to come: "Will truth again be put on trial? Maybe it is already on trial?"
A Morning Walk
It was a regular walk, and Pontiff loved the smattering of plants with white flowers on both sides of the trail. The green canopy had turned the trail darker, and it felt as if it was not six but five in the morning. Sirichai was lost in his thoughts after reading Carson’s Silent Spring and felt that Americans were paying for their bad karma for what was done to Vietnamese with water, air, and land here, all polluted by pesticides and whatnot.
Pontiff saw something and turned to Sirichai and asked him to take her picture with tiny white flowers.
“Keep yourself at a distance; those are some of the most potent poisonous plants around. I don’t remember the name, but I was told about those plants during my agriculture workdays in Europe.” Pontiff moved away from the plants quickly and looked at those deceptive-looking plants with an acute sense of distaste.
She returned with Sirichai, and when she opened her iPad on the patio, the same flowers were on her blue screen.
The excitement that she felt when she saw the connection between a news item and the last moments of her hero was outlandishly beautiful.
She reread the news: “Toxic invasive poison hemlock is spreading into US parks and backyard gardens.”
“Sirichai, this is a sign.”
“What is the sign?” Sirichai knowing her passion for seeking unexpected connections among things, responded cautiously.
“Will truth again be put on trial? Maybe it is already on trial?” she sighed and thought about the current state of affairs globally. She continued absented-mindedly, “Nature, it seemed, finally had placed a potential cup of hemlock on the doorstep of each one of us!”
That’s what she had been calling “experiencing knowledge,” and those around her could not grasp what she actually meant. “The serendipitous connection, the kind of high that one can get, is mind-blowing,” she told Sirichai, her partner when he was getting ready to leave.
After reading the news, Pontiff, for the first time, was able to recreate the last moments before Socrates’s death. Earlier, her imaginations had taken her only until the moments when Crito had agreed to sacrifice a cockerel.
“Crito, we owe a cockerel to Aesculapius. But pay the debt, don’t forget it.” These last words of Socrates before his death have been debated over hundreds of years!
“Let all the future generations wonder why Socrates did what he did,” Pontip imagined Socrates having added this sentence to his rich friend, Crito.
After reading about how Hemlock poison kills, the way it works, Pontip could feel the pain of her hero. As her imagination went in overdrive, she felt the dread at the news.1
She read the news and went online to check if it was the same poison given to Socrates. It indeed was. Hemlock.
And it was just a few days before that the writer who had introduced her to Socrates died at the age of 80, Robert Calasso. After reading his books, she had a newfound respect for the culture and all the rites and rituals that she grew up with. One day, after reading Calasso, she went online and ordered the latest translation of the Ramayana with the best ratings from the readers, she read a few pages, and then life came rushing in.
Political Activism
Before she moved to America, Pontiff was called Bangok’s Gadfly by her activist friends. When there was a college election, Pontiff contested the election, much to the irritation of the college administration to oppose the idea of a unanimous election that was the norm at her college.
It was when she publicly started to criticize the King that her troubles began. Twenty years removed, all those days of activism would give her goosebumps. “How idealist and stupid I was,” she thought to herself.
Hemlock Poison
The plant used to kill the wisest man of the West was everywhere and around everyone now. She found the news deeply depressing. Pontiff felt a sudden pain in the chest area as if someone had just punched her.
Sirichai was already struggling running his grocery store with farm-produces not drenched with invisible chemicals destroying American bodies—both of Whites and Non-Whites.
Pontiff told Siri, “Hemlock never belonged to this land, her new home. America. It was brought to America from Europe. And the seeds are the most dangerous ones from this weak-looking plant.”
Siri responded nonchalantly, “Where and who else could have done that? At times, I feel as if Europeans were the providential agents to spread plants and seeds from one part of the world to another. While they killed by their policies, can you imagine the number of people in the old world saved because of all the plants and seeds that they carried with them from the New World?”
Pontiff felt nice when Siri told her that, she once again felt lucky to have a partner like Siri, and thought to herself, “He is a nice really person, He finds ways to see positives in the most horrible part of the history.”
After a long struggle, she had finally put her roots down in her adopted land. She was doing much better than she had expected when she ran away from Bangkok to Singapore, avoiding arrest for her political activities.
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The Birthday Party
Out of habit, she lifted her glass of wine between her eyes and the light on the ceiling, checked it, and gulped it all down at one go. She was already a tad bit late in leaving the house. She had to pick up Sirichai from the grocery store and then drive for an hour to attend an early evening birthday party.
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Not that she wanted to come and see the old folks, she came out of her sense of Asian duty—it was a matter of gratitude. The old man had financed her college education in the US; though she had paid him back, she still felt she owed him something.
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Much later, Pontiff would learn that her guardian had spent a significant chunk of time in East Asia during the Vietnam War. She always wondered if it was some guilt that motivated him to help her.
The Outings
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Kids with Hemlock
At the party, she saw her guardians’ grandkids walk far away in the backyard. When she saw one of them reaching out to the hemlock flowers, she felt like walking away.
Forgiveness
Sirichai was nowhere around when she needed him the most. His absence was making it difficult for her to reign in her darker side! She started to feel deeply annoyed.
Pontiff’s mind wafted to the absence of Plato when Socrates was dying, which made her question if there really was a real person called Socrates or Plato. Her friends were even talking about Euclid not being a real person. There was one mathematician in India who had placed a reward for anyone who could furnish credible proof of the existence of Euclid. And no one has claimed that reward yet!
Activities of kids pulled her attention away from her thoughts, she watched from a distance when kids plucked all the seeds from the hemlock plants, and they came and placed them in the cup that belonged to their grandpa.
“Grandpa…he eats these. I have seen it,” two of them were talking with childish excitement. The hemlock poison seeds looked like anise seeds that the old man was in the habit of chewing.
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[…TO BE CONTINUED]
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Disclaimer:
Nothing I have written here is set in stone. I am putting these ideas to start a conversation, to bring people to talk, discuss, and debate the issues captured here. Give me feedback, and it will help me learn, and I will keep updating this article.
Poison hemlock belongs to the parsley and carrot family. Its leaves have an uncanny resemblance to parsley; its seeds look similar to anise, and its roots can be mistaken for the ones of parsnip roots.