So here’s me, all wondering what I ought to think about the prospect of getting LASIK surgery, not knowing whether I should trust myself to these mysterious lasers and throwing away so much money all in one place. I do some divination, and I’m like, “Yo, deities. If this is a terrible idea or whatever, just go ahead and let me know. Don’t spare my feelings. My proposal’s to get LASIK, but if I ought to change my mind and endure having annoying glass-and-metal contraptions on my face forever, I’m open to that too.”
So then I cast my astragaloi (knuckle-bones, in my case of white-tailed deer), and decode the message, and lo and behold, it comes back as follows: “Of the martial Minerva (ΑΘΗΝΑΣ ΑΡΕΙΑΣ). If four Chians (i.e. ones) and one three are cast, the god signals: ‘By avoiding enmity and animosity, you will reach your prize; you will arrive and the blue-eyed goddess Minerva will save you. The activity that you have in mind will turn out as you wish it.”
I thought that was an awfully positive signal, and I was keenly grateful to enlist the support of Minerva, because, I mean, wisdom—strategems—foresight—courage, I can has?
I therefore gratefully dedicate to Minerva the following votive sonnet:
Unwoven threads, a jumble, tell no tale
and limn no image to delight the mind;
dissolved, the elements cannot but fail
to form a structure, or as one to bind—
but as the chaos ere the world was made,
without a plan or scheme must aimless flow,
dissolve, disperse, insensibly then fade,
and leave untried its chance to join and grow.
’Tis thine, Minerva, such parts to interweave—
to let thy matchless wisdom pick and shed
and batten beauty, tangled bedlam cleave,
and craft divine blessings widely spread.
Let all the elements know thy expert hand
and come together true at thy command.
