it's 5:45 am, on May 30, 2002 - the Mysteries.
~
Wake up to find -- it's four thirty and no, your sister isn't dead somewhere on Alaska Airlines flight 1645.
For the last week or so I haven't managed to sleep more than three or four hours in a row while it was still actually dark outside. Often less. And during the day I get maybe five or six. It's seven AM Eastern Standard Time so I bet someone's up to distract me from this fact. --and look, yes, there is.
I wrote an email to Al and explained about the Eleusinian mysteries, and how people said that you came out of the initiation changed, somehow. That people who had been initiated were better off in this life, and the next. One writer, I do believe it was Cicero, who was a boring and mostly unpoetic man on his good days, said "those who lay their eyes on the Mysteries can never truely be unhappy in their life."
That is a horribly butchered quote, but I think the 'lay their eyes on' is accurate. At least, I want to say it is, because I laid my eyes on the Celebrity 2002 tour three times, and was initiated into *nsync.
Demeter is less, commercial than this, surely, because it was free to all Greek speaking people, men, women, children, and slave, and we didn't fast before the show or wash ourselves in the sea. As I told Al. And yet in some strange way, we did fast, forgetting to go get anything to eat, and then partaking of the sacred food they have at the venue. --Well, I don't know as pretzels are sacred but they are certainly concert food.
So we're ushered into a hallway, and have to stand in line until doors open, a processional into the venue. We sit. We're fed a slowly crescendoing type of entertainment: one crappy opening band after another, until finally they come out.
Here, the Mysteries themselves are very, very unclear. The only thing, so says my prof, that we know about them for sure is the initiates: a. were shown something, b. did something and/or had something done to them and c. were told something.
We were shown two hours of glory; we were told about the House of Blues in New Orleans, and we participated. Boy did we participate. We clapped our hands, we sang along, we watched for them to acknowledge us, the crowd, as a part of them.
We were initiated into *nsync.
Sophocles says, about the Mysteries, something along the lines of: "there is nothing to understand". The Mysteries were something to experience, to feel, to *be*, rather than to watch or to understand. Anyone who has seen JC on stage singing, anyone who's watched Justin dance, knows what that is.
It's not an intellectual experience. It's a miraculous one. It's initiation into something so deinos that your whole life, now and after, is changed and better for it.
*
All of this stems, still, from Al's belief that *nsync is a cult. Because of course, of course they are. I don't like to borrow everything I know from her, but it seems I do anyway.
Onto other things.
River and I discussed some things the other night. And then I read claire's account of how she didn't want extremes; she wanted middle ground, because it's where life really happens. And that's why I want to choose not to feel loss, and I believe that we don't have to feel loss -- because things that are extremes, highs and lows, burn themselves out, but real life happens in between. And I think, I think, I never wanted the two of us to be an extreme.
Regardless, this is not my call. That's why true love is self destructive. It's a high.
Which reminds me: I can't remember why I was thinking about it, but the other day I was thinking about how love is selfish, even if it's not returned. Maybe it was the Chris and JC story, because I can't, no matter what, seem to explain the Chris POV for it. Anyway. What I was thinking is this: loving someone, if they don't feel the same, is just as selfish as being friends with someone, say, that's in love with you. I take Carolina as example. How I felt about her was a selfish act, because I made her deal with it -- and by caring for her I bettered my own emotional state.
And Chris would hate this, especially when he just started feeling like JC wasn't like that. --if you're in love, both of you, it's the same. Love is inherently selfish. Not that there is any kind of selfless emotion. Maybe the word is self-involved. In relationships -- in anything -- people are inherently self-involved.
Not that that's news.
*
I have to tape season 4 of OZ for a friend in the next two months -- not to mention for me, who doesn't have a copy on tape. This means I'm probably going to have to watch, for better or worse, the best and worst of Chris and Toby over again. I have no idea what this is going to do to my emotions. I don't think it can be good.
Five in the morning. I'm not going to go and make sure my sister is actually in her bed, rather than lost in-transit, because it feels very, very foolish to do so. Have the urge, regardless.
OZ. I don't, I don't know if I can watch it. May have to just let the tape record without me. There are so many entries in this journal dedicated to that Chris, that --
oh, oh wow. I just realized. We have been deifying people and I didn't even realise it. Chris keller. Chris Kirkpatrick. It's the words that matter, the names given to the different aspects of the world. Oh my. Oh my. Justin Timberlake. Justin and Brian. Remy and Toby, who I believe are two aspects of the same theoi. Love gods. War gods.
Oh. I need to reconsider this tattoo idea. something needs to say all of this. there has to be something that says this. Though I guess people spend their whole lives writing, fiction and non-fiction and essays and treatises and theories on the human mind, spirit and soul and never find the words.
Chris.
Maybe I should get that in orange. apparently Saint Christopher was the patron saint of travellers.
Justin. There is a St. Justin, who was plagued by questions about what was god, and was finally led there through Christianity. Jesus. Also a saint Joshua, several St. James's, and obviously several Josephs.
Apparently St. Justin is the patron saint of "apologists"; James "dying", as well as laborers, and several countries. --the patron saint of astronauts is St. Joseph of Cupertino. Hah. Don't we know it.
~*~
"Joey--"
"Shut up, Lance." Joey held up the necklace. "They tell me he's the patron saint of astronauts. Well, pilots, but close enough."
"Joey--"
Joey put his fingers to Lance's lips, pressing against his mouth softly. Lance could feel his warm fingertips, and Joey kept his hand there for a few moments, until he was sure that Lance wouldn't say anything. Joey kissed the little Saints' medallion, and then put it around Lance's neck, tucking it under Lance's shirt. Lance allowed him, quietly.
Joey said, "Thank you." Lance leaned his forehead against Joey's, and took a shaky breath.
*
~
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