Then a miracle occurred in the form of a plate of sandwiches. Geryon took three and buried his mouth in a delicious block of white bread filled with tomatoes and butter and salt.
He thought about how delicious it was, how he liked slippery foods, how slipperiness can be of different kinds.
I am a philosopher of sandwiches, he decided. Things good on the inside.
Geryon’s ravenous appetite burdens him throughout the story, as he hungers for many things without ever being satisfied: food, companionship, understanding. Feelings of fullness and wholeness prove elusive for Geryon, but here the miracle of being able to satisfy his basic hunger makes the satisfaction of other appetites seem possible. A deeply introspective man, Geryon suffers from his monstrous appearance, and the continual failures of Herakles to understand him. A philosophy of “things good on the inside” is apt for Geryon, whose formidable appearance belies his gentle nature, and who wants to be properly seen and understood.
Little red dog did not see it he felt it All
Events carry but one
Here the little red dog of Stesichoros’ imagining dies upon impact with Herakles’ killing club. The line “All/Events carry but one” is a poignant way of expressing how every event in a person's life makes a mark upon the person, however intangible, informing who they are and become. Then death, the final event, puts an end to that carrying forwards. This fragment’s meaning is further expanded through fragment XVI, which reads: “The red world And corresponding red breezes/Went on Geryon did not.”
"How does distance look?" is a simple direct question. It extends from a spaceless
within to the edge
of what can be loved. It depends on light.
Distance is an idea that occupies Geryon’s mind throughout the story. It is distance between people that he wants so badly to surmount. Here, the “spaceless within” is something like the boundless core or essence of a person; it isn’t clear where that person ends and the rest of the world begins. The distance between people spans the gap between the core truth of a person and “the edge of what can be loved,” an ambiguous phrase that can be understood to mean either a superficial level of attraction, or the absolute closest someone can get to another. Geryon is trying to assess an intangible distance that defies a simple answer, though the question he’s asking may be simple. If the distance between people “depends on light,” then it depends on how much and how truly we can see each other. It fluctuates with the accuracy of our perception.
“Photography is disturbing, said Geryon.
Photography is a way of playing with perceptual relationships.
Well exactly.” (65)
Here, when Herakles asserts that photography plays with “perceptual relationships,” Geryon argues that that’s exactly why it’s disturbing to him. This quote illuminates the “why” of Geryon’s obsession with photography: he takes it seriously because of its capacity to add and subtract distance between objects, and to create new relationships between elements of the picture. The storytelling mechanism of photography is one of collage or pastiche, piecing together one picture, one narrative, out of disparate parts. For someone who is so concerned with the distance between people, and the difference between things, photography is disturbing and liberating for how it transforms distance. A supposedly “documentary” medium, photography still has the capacity to make fictions, transforming its “real” subject into something altogether different.
Herakles what are you doing? Herakles was hoisting the tiger from the floor. With a pocketknife he began cutting
at the thick leather reins which still bound the tiger to its circus habits.
This quote has greater resonance in the context of a previous passage on page 74, when Herakles calls Geryon to tell him that he had a “freedom dream” about Geryon where Geryon was a drowned yellow bird who came alive and flew away. He tells Geryon that “I want you to be free,” and Geryon thinks, “Don’t want to be free want to be with you.” Herakles’ obsession with setting others free, seen here in his attempt to liberate the carousel tiger, is often risky and misguided. Though Geryon is the one with wings, he isn’t the flighty one; likewise, a painted toy tiger doesn’t need its reins cut. Herakles is the one with the thirst for freedom and adventure, but he projects that desire for liberation upon others.
The photograph is titled “If He Sleep He Shall Do Well.”
It shows a fly floating in a pail of water—
Drowned but with a strange agitation of light around the wings. Geryon used
A fifteen-minute exposure.
When he first opened the shutter the fly seemed to be still alive.
Geryon is obsessed with time, and he works through that obsession in his photographic experiments. Later on he proclaims, “much truer/is the time that strays into photographs and stops” (93). The fifteen minutes of time in this photograph of the drowned fly compresses into one state the fly’s transition from life into death. The fly was alive and beating his wings at the beginning of the exposure; though by the end he was dead, the photograph preserves the “strange agitation of light” which was his labor to live. What is “truer” about the time that is stopped in this photograph? Perhaps that the photograph captures both life and death, wings flapping and being drowned, and the fleeting mess of that transition.
Even when they were lovers
He had never known what Herakles was thinking…
What Geryon was thinking Herakles never asked. In the space between them
Developed a dangerous cloud.
This quote very succinctly illustrates the incompatibility of young Geryon and Herakles. Geryon finds this clarity in hindsight, near the ending of the book. It is the kind of insight you glean about past relationships once there is enough distance to see things clearly. But while they’re in the midst of their relationship, the “dangerous cloud” between them both prevents them from seeing each other clearly and preserves an unhappy distance between them.
Do you see that, says Ancash.
Beautiful, Herakles breathes out. He is looking at the men.
I mean the fire, says Ancash.
Herakles grins in the dark. Ancash watches the flames.
We are amazing beings,
Geryon is thinking. We are neighbors of fire.
As the three men stand in front of the volcano, each looks at something different. Ancash looks only at the volcano; Herakles looks only at the men; Geryon looks between the volcano and the men. The revelation of Geryon’s perspective is that the beauty of each party illuminates the other. Saying that humans are “amazing” for being neighbors of fire is putting great stock in the relationships between things to imbue each with meaning. This is Geryon’s gift, perceiving the meaning in the spaces and relations between beings.
What about you Geryon what’s your favorite weapon?
Cage, said Geryon from behind his knees.
Cage? said his brother. You idiot a cage isn’t a weapon. It has to do something to be a weapon.
Has to destroy the enemy.
This snippet of dialogue is brilliantly evocative. First of all, there is the ominous association between the “cage” and the bedroom that Geryon is forced to share with his abusive brother, which makes his home life a nightmarish prison. Recognizing that a cage is an effective weapon shows Geryon’s maturity in understanding how psychologically damaging it can be to be deprived of one’s freedom.
On the other hand, in his romantic relationship with Herakles, when Herakles says that he wants Geryon to be free, Geryon thinks, “Don’t want to be free want to be with you” (74). Freedom is something that people can willingly relinquish for the safety of an enclosure, or an embrace. But when his love is unrequited, his heart and mind become cages, trapping Geryon in the pain of heartbreak. A cage—whether home or prison—can be desired or reviled, but most of all it is effective. What Geryon’s brother couldn’t or wouldn’t admit to seeing is that a cage does “do something”; it can “destroy the enemy.”
New Ending.
All over the world the beautiful red breezes went on blowing
hand in hand.
When Geryon as a child writes his autobiography, he writes of his own death at the hands of Herakles. The teacher is concerned by his violent imagination, and calls his mom into the classroom. Geryon decides to write a new, happier ending. But the ending he writes doesn’t erase or preclude his death—it just acknowledges that life continues on afterward. Even after Herakles kills Geryon and his dog, “the beautiful red breezes went on blowing.” This “new ending” is the product of a child’s startling wisdom.
