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Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 / 10:57 p.m. ~Greek Fest~ I walk toward the sanctuary, want to purchase a candle, light a candle, and I'm thinking of everyone who's died, and life's suffering and life's beauty, but there is no one selling them and I won't simply take one, as some are doing, I can't light a candle I stole. I walk in and look up at the dome, the Jesus there made of tiles, tiny mosaic tiles, hundreds of thousands of them, if not millions, and I sit on a pew, sit and feel the hush, see the looks on the faces, and watch people point and look up and look around, and I feel the calmest calm, and I think of everyone who's died, and I think of history, and the history of us, all of us, and Jesus, and I look back up at his shoes, and realize they're not Birkenstocks after all, and then there are little children, and even the infant looks up at the dome too, as it's lighted, it draws your attention. Byzantine chants are playing softly in the background, and I want to live in that room, I want to make that sanctuary my home. I want to stretch out on a pew, I want to make love on a pew, I want to take my meals there, and read there, and sit for hours there, meditate there, and photograph every inch of every mosaic on every wall, and there is one wall, as it is circular. Then I look back up at the dome. Then I look at the people again, gays and lesbians I notice, and an interracial couple, he's black, she looks Indian, and elderly people, an old woman with died purplish gray hair and a cane and a stooped back, and people speaking foreign languages, and more black people than usual, and we're all strangers to this room, but we all feel exactly the same, every one who enters the Greek Orthodox sanctuary feels the same, you can see it in their eyes, you can see it in their open mouths, the way their heads tilt up to see Jesus in the dome, then they scan the walls, the other mosaics, the altar, and they gasp and they point and they turn and turn to see more, and they stay awhile and they leave. But I want to find god there, I want to believe Jesus is watching over me, and I want to believe there is a purpose, and I want to believe what the people who commissioned and created that room believed, that it all happened and it happened for us and if we live as we are instructed we can live well and die well and be happy in eternity, and I want to cry as I sit there, and I feel I could cry at any moment and I want absolution and forgiveness and I want to be redeemed and I want religion, but I don't believe in any of it. I believe in nothing but what I know has been and what is now. And yet in that sanctuary I am at peace. It's one of my favorite places on the planet, as sacred as Sacre Coeur or Notre Dame in Paris, or the Sistine Chapel in Rome. I've sat in all four. I've stood and looked in awe, and maybe it's that I've sat in the sanctuary here more than the others, maybe it's the familiarity, that I'll go back again, and I'll always go, and I've always been, and I continue to buy iconography in the gift shop, I bought another magnet, of Jesus, we think, the man who sold it to me, and I, and a laminated card, a Byzantine image of Mary and Jesus, and a prayer to Mary on the back in print, and I want to carry it with me. I'm agnostic. I don't believe in god, I don't believe it's possible, but I hear that Jesus was real and so was Mary and Joseph, and it's fun if you say them in a row, like you're Irish Catholic or something, but the Greeks, they have something special. And if you sit in the sanctuary you can feel it. You can feeeeeellllllll it. It's right there. There was an amazing guitarist too, playing outside on the stage, one who shook his hips and picked at lightning speed, and so I bought one of his CDs, and shook his hand when he came off the stage all sweaty in his black shirt and pants, and he was short and beautiful and I told him he was amazing and his music was beautiful and he looked me right in the eye and seemed very sincere when he touched his heart and thanked me, thanked me again and signed for me the CD booklet. I ate lamb, and potatoes and plenty of tsatziki and I have no idea how to spell it still, but it was garlicky and incredibly good and I dipped my potatoes in it, and I was stuffed and kept eating. And I drank two Retsinas and bought a box of pastries, and now I'm going to collapse in a prone position, in bed, and dream of tiny tiles in the shape of holy people, and wish I had faith in something. (Photos are from my trip to the fest last year, with JimmyUsual) Cost of the War in Iraq
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