Mithridates

Mithridates Amy Benson (bio) I drank a lot of poison. A year ago. Some of it was bright red. They called it the KoolAid, as in Jonestown—no, I called it that and the chemo nurse laughed in such a way that I was afraid the word "depressed" or "nihilist" was going in my file. They called it the Red Devil. Is this better somehow? There's a trope in mythology and in cartoons (and in their amalgamation—superhero tales) where the hero must drink something awful to get to the stronger place. The cup that does not pass, not if one is to transcend. But superheros save a bunch of people along the way. I was just saving my own carcass. All that to save my own carcass, which was much, much more like a carcass after than before. I understand those who refuse treatment. Must I save my carcass? For what must I save it? Because after this—as I glimpse from my mid-life poisoning—there's just more awful to come. It's waiting at the end of the not-awful. Like the murky water at the bottom of a water park slide. That gray, bandaid, bathroom stuff, foot stuff water blowing up into your sinuses at high speed. Your carcass is always waiting to reveal itself as a carcass. I have been paused for the last year on this thought: that we cannot live happily if we are overly in-touch with our carcass selves. I felt as I imagine a person of extreme age and infirmity might feel for too many months to return to an uninitiated state. When I say "paused," I mean something like, I seem to be still alive but I'm not at all sure I want to be conscious. Perhaps if I were Buddhist… Then you're so in touch with your carcass that it becomes a beautiful turn into the crust of the earth. Like folding egg whites into the batter. It's okay; we become an earth soufflé. ________ When I looked up drinking poison (because I thought, well, what do I actually know about poison drinking in mythology?), Google led me straightaway to Mithridates VI of Pontus. (Whose name I do not know how to pronounce and about whom I previously knew nothing, just to dispel that feint—accidental or with purpose—that often propels writing and rewards writers: looking like you know more than you do. That you have an extraordinarily rich leaf mold pile, laid down over seasons of deep scholarship driven by pure curiosity, and any time a thought wanders in, it is bathed in the nutrients of historical and contemporary thought from at least 6 disciplines, the word "discipline" itself then analyzed (Latin: disciplina—instruction, knowledge; to [End Page 71] Middle English: discipline—mortification by scourging oneself; which combination/trajectory I can't read or type without laughing out loud (followed maybe by a tiny bit of weeping, because, my god, is this not the educational experience of most, and can we not have one without the other?)). I don't have that sort of leaf mold pile. Mine is built with a good number of Law&Order episodes, a willful trust in Wikipedia, news headlines consumed without the attached content, and some rusty plant physiology. This began as an aside but it is not. It is about seeing the carcass as a carcass. And not arming ourselves against it. From my single layer of leaves, I can tell you that Mithridates VI was a King of Pontus—for modern reference, the area around the Black Sea and, at times, stretching to Iran—and he was on guard nearly from birth. Historians agree that his mother poisoned his father, ascended the throne, and weighed which of her sons might later succeed her. When his brother emerged as the favorite, and after fending off a number of assassination attempts, Mithridates fled to the forest and devised a plan to immunize himself to a slate of poisons by ingesting them in small doses. A colorful anecdote suggests that he may have fed poison cocktails to ducks and then drunk the blood of those that...