25 March 2004: Orphan

Lila, for reasons known to those who read her journal, has been quite prolific lately in her end of The Inanna Dialogue, our ongoing conversation about initiation. But it might be a while before I get around to formatting and posting what she’s sent me, or putting together any kind of reply. In fact, I think it may be several weeks, at least, before I post anything else of substance after this entry. I need a break from substance. It’s time to integrate and ground for a while. I’ll be devoting the next couple of months to sleeping, spending time with my friends, doing yoga, and keeping on top of my math homework.

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Finder's gift is on the desk in front of me, between the keyboard and the monitor. Every few minutes, I glance down and to my left, and look at it again. A miniature display case, approximately seven inches high by five inches wide by one inch deep. Dark brown laquer framing a six inch by four inch pane of glass. Behind the glass, mounted on black cardstock, are three tiny, tattered, black and white photographs. They look like they were taken in the early 1920s. They show a funeral procession - all three shots taken from the same vantage point, one after the other as the procession moved slowly past, so that each shows a different slow-moving horse-drawn coach with different mourners walking alongside. The three photographs are unevenly aligned with the left border of the display window; to their right is an inch-wide margin of scuffed black cardstock. This cardstock is probably the same backing to which these photos have been glued, perhaps in a photo album, for eighty-odd years. At the lower right corner, in cursive in white ink, is the word "Funera," which was probably "Funeral" before Finder cut it down to fit in the case.

Finder gave it to me last night at Sherpa's, where the cast of Orphans of Delirium were gathered to share a last supper (it did not escape my notice that the cast, plus Sherpa and Syrinx, made thirteen of us), and to watch some of the video footage of the performances.

At the end of that night, most of us didn't want to leave. The high had worn off, the last shreds of the characters had dropped away, and we were left with ourselves, with four months of initiatic work to process, and it was hard to part company with the only other people who understood just what we'd been through, what we'd done, and what we now carried away inside of us to integrate and grow into as best we could.

For an allegedly asocial project, I sure ended up making a lot of friends. I've learned new steps of the Dance, new nuances and vibrations of the Word, but ultimately it is the Clasp that has been the greatest reward of this long hard season of the work.

Sunday night, after the magical CELLspace performance that was the culmination of these past four months' work, a motley crew of cast members, friends, lovers, and kindred spirits ended up at Finder and Stray's place. Salamander brought a bottle of superb whisky, which we drank out of the battered metal cup that Abindigo had worn dangling from her waist as part of her costume in the performances. And Finder and Stray told me that I was the reason they signed on for the Initiations lab - that it was watching me, during that Paratheatrical Research lecture/demo at CELLspace back in mid-November, that sparked their excitement about this work.

I do believe that nothing else that anyone has ever told me has made me happier than that revelation did, in that moment.

As interesting as it was playing the Magus, it was ultimately as confining and alienating a role as any other I've played - Sensei in Tragos, Slippery in Crux, and all those others both inside and outside of paratheatrical projects - and it was a relief to drop it, to be done with it for good, and to sit among my new friends without the spectre of that character shrouding me. To be known by them for what I truly am, and what I always will be in my heart: just another ragged orphan.