The Naked Minotaur Trilogy Book 2

This trilogy is a memoir about real events and real characters with fictitious names to protect the guilty. When I first wrote Book 1: The Odyssey, it became apparent that the reader would not understand the back-story that lead to Michael's odyssey, after the sad dissolution of his marriage of thirty years, so I wrote a prequel called Book 2: The Ivory Tower, which detailed the ongoing events at Charity University during the Odyssey. The Dean looked straight into my eyes and nodded his head for emphasis. "We need you to whip our physics program into shape." By the end of the week, my two classes of introductory physics had been lulled into comas. Where was my inspired vision of exciting the students into a feeding frenzy to learn physics, the most wonderful subject in the curriculum?I sat on a bench at the waterfront on the island of Kea and ate breakfast, while I studied the text book and wrote lecture notes for my optics course. Then on to the island of Naxos, where quantum particles spun around me like a Greek chorus, chanting and singing about forbidden spin states of the wave functions. Stars rain-ed down through the huge, marble portico of Apollo's temple that framed the sky and transformed into silver minnows-flying fish plopping like shooting stars down onto the wet rocks at my feet.I watched his fingers lift imperceptibly; and then fall back, lifeless against the deathbed. "Good-bye Dad, I'm gonna miss you." My hoarse voice spoke quietly to myself. I turned and walked out of the room without looking back-wet tears were streaming from my eyes. Then, my Mom died-the damn pulmonary fibrosis had struck again.Laurel had been beside me all along, right under my arm, and I hadn't seen her. I pulled her body against mine-this wonderful woman was destined to be with me for the rest of my life.I wrote a letter to the hiring committee, resigning from the University-they couldn't fire someone who had already quit. Now what am I gonna do?Maybe the Minotaur was just a misunderstood victim of the judgment of mythology. What if his mask were removed and his true desires and loves were laid naked? This is my story.