It is no secret that I am mindful of history. A young woman in San Francisco who for a time attempted to provide me spiritual advice once commented that there is much of the past in me. Not my own past, she pointed out, but the historical past. And the past is obsessed with immortality.

The word "triptych," in fact, in its antique meaning was not associated with the plastic arts as it is today. The original meaning was of three tablets, linked together, on which a story was inscribed.... Or perhaps facets of the very same story, viewed from different angles, so to speak.

Gilgamesh "Engraved all his hardships on a monument of stone;" a fitting choice for a figure concerned with immortality. Writing is about immortality, we now all acknowledge, as our monuments, institutions and great cities. Cities are but one of our many attempts at transcending time.

So across history, we listen to the voices of the great Sumerian legend cities, like Uruk, city of Gilgamesh, and though we can only wonder if this curious, indefatiqueable hero is the reflection of a real king, we cannot question the vitality of those cities which produced his legend.

If we look closely at our legends, they are songs of our great cities and the personalities which the songs of those cities produced. Our legends seek to provide answers to our unquenchable curiousity while also setting the stage upon which we play our dreams and aspirations and call them reality.

Somewhere in Gilgamesh's legend, as he matures, after the lost of his great friend Enkidu to the fate of all men, Gilgamesh learns that Knowledge itself is the higher goal, not eternal life, but knowledge of the self and universe.... Having life, the inner hunger is to know, to see...