A version of this article was originally posted on Thinking Man. You can read the original post here. (If I were you, I’d just read this one)

“Alright, Robert Jordan said to himself. Only I am not having any. I’ve known a lot of gypsies and they are strange enough. But so are we. The difference is we have to make an honest living. Nobody knows what tribes we came from nor what our tribal inheritance is nor what the mysteries were in the woods where the people lived that we came from. All we know is that we do not know. We know nothing about what happens to us in the nights…”

Up until six months ago, my entire life was spent in the New York City boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. I knew nothing else. Rewind two generations and all four of my grandparents were born in remote towns on an island called Sicily. Rewind further and further and the drastic differences between then and now are so far removed, it’s as if we have no relation at all to any of the people whose sperms and eggs contributed to who we are today.

I’m not saying this is a novel idea. It’s not. But the differences between generations has always fascinated me. Rather, how little time actually passes between each one, while so much changes. My grandfather was one of the most influential people in my life, but with a gun to my head I wouldn’t be able to pick his mother out of a three-woman lineup. If we go back further, to her mother, my great-great grandmother, a farmer’s wife in late-1800s Sicily, it gets muddier. My brain can’t even consider a connection to her, she’s too far back. Or is she?

Have you ever heard of morphic resonance? It’s a theory proposed by Rupert Sheldrake in his 1981 book, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance. According to Sheldrake’s website, morphic resonance is “the idea that memory is inherent in nature.” This could suggest that memories may be passed down through DNA, which in layman’s terms would mean that if my great-great-great-great grandfather was a huge asshole who derided his donkeys for sport, that could make me more likely to do the same thing to donkeys at petting zoos.

I’m not saying I believe this. However, I’ve noticed that I tend to have the same reactions to certain things that my dad and grandfather do. Is it morphic resonance? Or do we have similar traits because I’ve observed the way they act and act accordingly?

Morphic resonance is a fun and fascinating theory. Like all fun things, it must be destroyed! Sheldrake’s theory has been shat on by the scientific community since it first came out, even though it shares some similarities to Carl Jung’s theory of a collective unconscious. That’s an easy one to explain: Carl Jung is cool. Rupert Sheldrake is, evidently, not cool. Sorry, Big Rup.

Let’s get back on track here. Do you remember the quote from the beginning of the article? If not, go back, read it, and meet back here in five. Okay, cool, welcome back. Anyway. That quote was from Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

When I first read it, I thought of a woman that a friend of mine had met. In their conversation the woman explained that she was a witch, her magic having been passed down to her from a family tradition stretching thousands of years. There were several examples she shared which seemed believable, but I’m not getting into them here. I’m sure she’s a very nice woman, and if her ancestors have been practicing magic for thousands of years, according to the morphic resonance theory, some of that practice must be embedded into her DNA.

“Nobody knows what tribes we came from nor what our tribal inheritance is nor what the mysteries were in the woods where the people lived that we came from. All we know is that we do not know. We know nothing about what happens to us in the nights…”

This particular woman knew where her tribe came from. Most of us don’t. What if my “tribe” dabbled with something spiritual, something that led me to pick up on strange coincidences like that time Cormac McCarthy died. What if your ancestors were constantly running from Banshees in the countryside of Ireland, or hiding from the things better-not-mentioned running around the ranches of the American Southwest?

Like I said earlier, I grew up in New York City. In that city, most of us live in a cutthroat world where we wake up, work, stuff food and drink down our throats, and go to sleep—cursed to repeat that cycle during our time in this world.

In the city there are no woods, there is no magic. But what if there was magic in our blood at one point? What if the blood of your Scottish ancestors attracted the bean-nighe, who came for them in the moors of Scotland six thousand years ag? What if that same bean-nighe still wanted that sweet Scot blood coursing through your veins? Imagine one of the members of a long forgotten family had formed a blood pact with something, willing to sacrifice the generations to come—not caring about the future kin just as much as you didn’t care about those who came centuries before. Imagine that evil left those ancient woods of the old world and crossed the oceans with our ancestors, existing in our modern world.

Consider this: You’re on the train late one night. You look toward the window. For a moment, you think you see a face look back at you through the smudged glass. But there’s nothing there.

Off the train and into the crowded station, your heart beats just a little faster. A shadow spooks you, but you turn to see a mom and child where the shadow had been. A bony hand touches your own as you grab the railing that leads to the exit. The train screeches away and you see you’re all alone.

On your walk home you duck and dodge through the crowds, swearing you’re being followed. You see something guiding your eyes down a dark alley, but you pull away and quicken your pace.

Unlocking the door, you run into your apartment and slam the door shut just as a dark shape reaches for you. But you hadn’t noticed. Inside your apartment you see a cross. You do the sign, half believing in its power. By the time you’re on the couch watching TV with dinner and a drink, you’ve all but forgotten it. But whatever evil wanted you that night is still out there, willing to wait as long as it needs to before it gets you.

Crazy stuff. Maybe it’s real, and maybe it isn’t. Somehow, For Whom the Bell Tolls brought me here. I wonder if that’s what Hemingway would have wanted. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post and would like to support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

You can also buy me a coffee. Or a cross to hang above my bed to help me sleep tonight.

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Polyphemus must be the most misunderstood character in all of Homer’s Odyssey. The poor one-eyed fool was minding his own business, tending to his flock, eating people that had broken into his lair, when BAM! He gets a stake to the eye. His only eye! Suddenly, his life is turned upside down all thanks to Odysseus and his merry band of backstabbers.

I’m talking about godlike Odysseus’s showdown with the cyclops that takes place in Book 9 of the Odyssey. The first time I read that chapter was while sitting on a beach in Taormina, Sicily. I’ll never forget closing my Stanley Lombardo verse-translation of the book, sucking in the salty air, and heading back up the sun-soaked hill to Corso Umberto I. It was there on that street named after the second king of the Kingdom of Italy where I stumbled upon a car. I remember a chill running up my spine…

Unlike that moment, which we’ll get back to later, most chills in Sicily can be attributed to the Malocchio, or the evil eye. The Malocchio is so malicious, so dangerous, it’s said you can get it just by a look. It’s a curse that runs rampant in every town, every village, every corner of society. It’s every Italian’s worst fear realized.

The worst part is this: the curse of the Malocchio doesn’t begin with some sort of demonic possession or a supernatural trickster that decided you were the one that would get the evil eye put on you. No. It’s even worse. The power of the Malocchio can be harnessed by anyone—if they’re jealous enough.

The idea of good and bad energy isn’t some newfound concept that Pilates instructors use to gain new Instagram followers. It’s been around since antiquity. In the Malocchio, our ancestors believed anyone can put out bad energy and direct it right at you. If the eyes are the window to the soul, when someone bad opens their eyes, they might let that evil out.

“Don’t tell anyone!”

My grandmother shouts this out anytime she hears me mention good news. We’ll be sitting over espresso and cookies in her cramped basement, a smile across her pretty face.

“Nonna, don’t worry,” I try to explain.

“John, you never know what other people think.”

She came to New York when she was sixteen. Now over eighty, she still uses the ancient defense mechanisms to protect us from the guise of the Malocchio. It makes sense. That thing is real, and us simple humans need protecting. There’s gotta be something to it. Those ancient ways have stuck around much longer than any of us will.

Who knows why this stuff still exists, in a skyscraper-filled city so far away from the rocky island where it came from. Maybe there’s actually something to it. Maybe it’s more than a feeling. When bad things start happening to you, maybe it could be from the malocchio. That’s why it’s better to play it safe than sorry. It’s why whenever I get a funny feeling creep up my back, I make the sign of the horns with my pointer and pinky finger and jab it toward whichever direction feels right.

You know the sign, the one Ronnie James Dio made famous during his time in Black Sabbath and Dio. That indelible symbol of metal was popularized by Ronnie in the 80s and has since become a universal symbol for ROCK. Dio had stolen the sign from his own Sicilian grandmother, who used it to ward off the Malocchio on the streets of Cortland, New York when he was growing up.

The reason I’m talking about that wretched and accursed thing is because this: Malocchio was set to be the name of my new Substack publication, before I settled on Blown Off Course. There was a logo, it had branding. Polyphemus, the cyclops from the Odyssey, was set to be the mascot of the newsletter; his one eye would act as a representation of that evil eye. I thought it was brilliant.

But something strange happened. The night before the launch I woke up in a cold sweat after a bout of bad dreams. I had spent my entire life being warned to do whatever it took to ward off the evil eye. How could I possibly invite it into my own home, my own writing? I had to change the name. Plus, I couldn’t bear to think of the negative reactions my family would have when hearing the name. Malocchio was scrapped the next day.

Thus, Blown Off Course was born!

For those of you who have read my work on Thinking Man, I thank you. For those that haven’t read any of my stuff, this post touches on all the things I do (figuratively, not literally) in my writing. We have half-baked thoughts on all things from classic works of literature to heavy metal to (probably bad) humor to superstition to Italian heritage to book club ramblings to Stanley Lombardo sightings to familial complaints. If you like that kind of stuff, you’re in luck. Here’s a bonus Lombardo sighting (him reading from his translation of the Odyssey) if you’re hungry for one:

The only thing I haven’t mentioned is Melissa, who is awesome. And I’m not just saying that because she’s my wife and has a gun pointed to my head (we moved out of the city, they’re legal now). She’s officially taking back the helm of Thinking Man as it was originally intended to be: Thinking Man by a thinking woman. I’ll be back there for some guest posts, and Melissa will be featured here plenty, so if you only liked me because of her, please stick around because she’ll show up here, too. With me starting my MFA program, we thought it best to separate our work on here so that we can each point towards our own writing in one place. My posts from Thinking Man (the good ones anyway) will be republished here in their original formats. Melissa and I still work together and will look at the publications we run as a joint effort under one creative umbrella. If you liked the Thinking Man Book Club, it’s shifting to Blown Off Course as Polyphemus’s Book Club. So, unless you want to be cyclops food, I suggest you join in. That being said, I hope to see you again.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to finish the story that I started in the beginning.

The car I saw on Corso Umberto was painted on all sides with the scenes of Book 9 of the Odyssey. Polyphemus eating Odysseus’s crew, the stake to the eye, and the cyclops launching a boulder at their ship as it sailed away. I couldn’t believe the coincidence, spotting it moments after closing the book on that chapter. Later I’d sit down for drinks at Il Ciclope, a bar along the same street.

Since then, after reading the Odyssey in my ancestral homeland, I’ve felt a strange kinship to the wandering Odysseus. His mythical journey home, constantly getting blown off course again and again and again reminded me of my own hero’s journey. Writing feverishly from ten to seventeen, giving it up for six years, and attempting to come back to it ever since, while constantly getting blown of course again and again and again.

It was odd, I had been in Italy carrying the Odyssey for over a week but never got around to reading it until that morning on Sicily’s shore. In the myth, Polyphemus the cyclops was supposedly from the east side of Sicily, sitting at the base of the towering volcano, Mount Etna. Within the span of a few hours, I had read the epic chapter, stumbled upon the car painted in its honor, and gotten drinks at the bar named after the beast. Looking up at Etna, smoke billowing out of its giant top as I stood on the crowded stone street, I wondered if it had meant something more.

Creating my own Substack has been a long time coming. I’ve found it so hard to be true to myself, to really accept what I want out of my work. The journey back home has been a rewarding one, and I look forward to getting blown off course time and time again in a never ending search for answers. It always seemed easier to hide behind a different publication than to make my own. Finally making the jump has been something I’ve put off for so long. Now, I couldn’t be happier to call this place home. I’d be honored for you to stick with me as I continue to find my way.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

You can also buy me a coffee.

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