Moby and the Minoans
Does anyone remember Moby? I saw him in concert once in London at Scala; he wasn't very good or interesting. Moby was popular for a time and I owned some of his cd's but he's not timeless; it's only been a few years but already upon hearing him again randomly the sound conjures up the same feelings I have when I hear Ace of Base.
Still though, I owned his CD, that popular one. Called "Play" I think.
I can't remember where I was this weekend when I heard that CD in the background. I think I was at this sleazy gay bar near my apartment and someone had put it on the juke box.
In any case, it brought back a memory.
D and I traveled to Crete and spent a week on the island. We stayed in a small little village on the north coast between Hania and Rethimno.
I was 21 and he was 39.
As in most of our travels, it was a mixture of eight parts effortless magic and two parts of fruitless binding, as he tried to knit me into him or fuck me into him or grind us both into sand or something; he was going gray and I wasn't going to be sticking around and I think we both knew that.
That's why we drove around Crete with the windows wide open--the rush of the wind drowned all that out.
I remember it was dusk and we were traveling north from the interior toward the coastal highway that would bring us back to Kalives.
Down out of the mountains and the scrubby heather to gentler hills of cultivated olive groves.
On the map we discovered that a Minoan cemetery was only a short jaunt off the beaten path.
The sun was setting quickly, everything was golden and hot, Moby was playing on the radio and it was quite fitting.
We got to the Minoan cemetery too late, however...it had shut for the night. We sat in the car in the dusty, empty parking lot before a big chain link fence listening to the hot car click itself cool.
Just some goats walking around.
Then D did that crazy thing I loved him most for, executing his spontaneity like he was trying to prove something to me, like he could be young just like me, or younger even...
Before I knew it, he had jumped the fence by climbing up on top of a garbage can. He cajoled me into joining him, and we spent a lurking dusk in an ancient cemetery.
The Minoans were a strange and sophisticated civilization that inhabited Crete around 1700 B.C. Highly evolved in art and culture, neither European nor African nor Asian, there is no evidence that they were militarized but rather devoted their energies to commerce and art.
And they buried their dead in long, deep wombs.
The cemeteries were scattered among olive trees, deep slashes in the ground lined with stone; it was unmistakable to me that they were vaginas, a symbolic circle from life to death. They were wide at the opening, and then sloped gradually down and down, narrowing until you were about ten feet below the surface of the earth and at an small and narrow entrance which led into the burial chamber, a small stone room.
We spent hours wandering around these empty Minoan tombs. The people had been scraped from them long ago, had barely mattered then and mattered even less now.
People are just little temporary fingers, tendrils of the earth, emerging to push the dirt around a little bit before subsuming back into the ground. Perhaps four thousand years ago we did the earth's bidding more or less to its liking.
Still though, I owned his CD, that popular one. Called "Play" I think.
I can't remember where I was this weekend when I heard that CD in the background. I think I was at this sleazy gay bar near my apartment and someone had put it on the juke box.
In any case, it brought back a memory.
D and I traveled to Crete and spent a week on the island. We stayed in a small little village on the north coast between Hania and Rethimno.
I was 21 and he was 39.
As in most of our travels, it was a mixture of eight parts effortless magic and two parts of fruitless binding, as he tried to knit me into him or fuck me into him or grind us both into sand or something; he was going gray and I wasn't going to be sticking around and I think we both knew that.
That's why we drove around Crete with the windows wide open--the rush of the wind drowned all that out.
I remember it was dusk and we were traveling north from the interior toward the coastal highway that would bring us back to Kalives.
Down out of the mountains and the scrubby heather to gentler hills of cultivated olive groves.
On the map we discovered that a Minoan cemetery was only a short jaunt off the beaten path.
The sun was setting quickly, everything was golden and hot, Moby was playing on the radio and it was quite fitting.
We got to the Minoan cemetery too late, however...it had shut for the night. We sat in the car in the dusty, empty parking lot before a big chain link fence listening to the hot car click itself cool.
Just some goats walking around.
Then D did that crazy thing I loved him most for, executing his spontaneity like he was trying to prove something to me, like he could be young just like me, or younger even...
Before I knew it, he had jumped the fence by climbing up on top of a garbage can. He cajoled me into joining him, and we spent a lurking dusk in an ancient cemetery.
The Minoans were a strange and sophisticated civilization that inhabited Crete around 1700 B.C. Highly evolved in art and culture, neither European nor African nor Asian, there is no evidence that they were militarized but rather devoted their energies to commerce and art.
And they buried their dead in long, deep wombs.
The cemeteries were scattered among olive trees, deep slashes in the ground lined with stone; it was unmistakable to me that they were vaginas, a symbolic circle from life to death. They were wide at the opening, and then sloped gradually down and down, narrowing until you were about ten feet below the surface of the earth and at an small and narrow entrance which led into the burial chamber, a small stone room.
We spent hours wandering around these empty Minoan tombs. The people had been scraped from them long ago, had barely mattered then and mattered even less now.
People are just little temporary fingers, tendrils of the earth, emerging to push the dirt around a little bit before subsuming back into the ground. Perhaps four thousand years ago we did the earth's bidding more or less to its liking.
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