Imagine having one hundred eyes...

Darling readers (especially Shane and Sofie), here comes a post from a ghost. Ha ha, that was a completely spontaneous rhyme, which made a lot of sense in this context. I have been a blog ghost and for that I am sorry. I’m not going to make promises of writing every week from now on etc., but I WILL try to be a better blogger now that summer is gone and everyday life is back, which tends to include more internet time. Shanes’ philosophizing in the facebook-video made me realize and re-remember how inspiring and perspective-enhancing our communication from our different parts of the world is, and that I don’t want to be the blog-pooper (?).

Perspective heaven, it’s time to talk about Argus: my favourite Greek mythology character (credits to the Norwegian wikipedia site).

Argus Panoptes was a huge monster, with one hundred eyes covering his entire body (pan=many, optes=eyes). As we all probably know, Zeus – the king of the greek gods and the god of heaven and thunder – was a god with numerous feminine sexual acquaintances. One time Hera, who was Zeus’ very jealous wife, made Argus guard one of Zeus lovers. Zeus did of course not approve of this and Asked Hermes (the messenger of the gods and the god of trade and music) for help. Argus always used to let some eyes sleep while keeping some awake. In this way he could see all day and all night, letting nothing come past his vision. Hermes however had his silver flute, which had the power of putting things asleep instantly. He played his flute in front of Argus, and Argus’ hundred eyes fell asleep all at the same time (some versions say that Hermes put Argus to sleep with boring talk). This gave Hermes the opportunity to cut off the poor monsters' head, so that Zeus could have access to his mistress.

Later, Hera took all of Argus eyes and put them on the feathers of the peacock.

This story explains the expression “argus eyes” and well as why peacocks’ feathers have eyes on them.