Christatos Aristad's Page

In life we are very rarely offered an opportunity to do things over. A second chance as it were. This summer I was given such an opportunity. No longer proffesionally occupied, and consumed once again by the fires of passion, I set out to find and make mine the woman who had once, many years ago, in a casino in the south of Spain, ignited my heart like a match to an effigy of Guy Fawkes. The woman was the Grey Fox, Her Majesty, the Contessa Elise St. Germiane. And success or failure, I would kno… Continue

Sometimes standing on a beach looking out into the ocean feels like standing on the edge of the world, as if behind is everything you know, everything that is, and in front of you is nothing. A flat plane of endings breaking against the slowly crumbling rocks and eroding sand of the real world. The bay of Bengal is especially helpful in creating this illusion in that it is especially beautiful, it is quiet, and it is not hard to find ruins along its edge. It was in the stony remains of what I li… Continue

When I put up the first post in this series, I hoped that more would come of all of this than has. But time, like all things made by chance, nature, and the ineffable hand of a possible creator, does not concern itself with the interests or desires of small men, and I am indeed a small man. I came here, to India, to find a man to inspire me, to find a home of courage and bravery. I have found an empty urn, a family in perpetual mourning for an irreplaceable figure, and a road that leads inexorab… Continue

Many years ago I spent some time in India with colleagues, in the aftermath of a particularly lucrative game in Bombay, now Mumbai. As the idle rich are wont to do, we spent our time, in what was to us a strange and foreign land, looking for "adventure" promised to all young Europeans by Bond novels, movies, and countless other tales of the mysteries of the Orient, to which India was the gateway. What we found in the Hunt was a journey into the wild that showed us the true nature of ourselves, o… Continue