People often think of Tartarus. When you’re slipping your pants on after sleeping with your best friend’s wife the mind tends to turn to the thought of exactly what Alighierian torture awaits you on the other side of the death bed. When you see your best friend again that little bitter voice at the pit of your stomach stops trying to warn you of your own impending damnation and instead begins to take a perverse pleasure in reaching for the Dante and describing the special level of hell reserved for people just like yourself. Your kept awake at night with stories of being blown hither, thither, downward, upward and with no hope of rest. I know whenever I’m considering giving in to my immoral urges I always reach for my copy of the Inferno to check just which punishment Hell’s grim tyrant has in store for me.
People also have occasion to think of the Elysian fields, although not as often. I think that has more to do with the everyman being a miserable bastard than it does in being upright secularists. A land that’s fair and bright, where little streams of alcohol come trickling down the rocks, and where there’s a lake of stew, and of whiskey too and you paddle all around it in a big canoe. It’s a comforting image to call to mind when a childhood friend just a few years older than yourself suddenly goes tets up. Or when your father is rushed to the emergency room in an ambulance. No matter what Christopher Hitchens might say we all wish there was an eternal reward for doing good and trying our best.
And no matter how many books Richard Dawkins sells the cultural of the west is still inseparably tied to it’s christian heritage. We’ve all internalized the concepts of heaven and hell. We all want that superior sumbitch on the internet to be eternally tormented after his unrepentant death. We want that kind and generous wino to have his pain taken away. We want the universe to be a just place that rewards the righteous and punishes the guilty. But did you know that the greeks had a third destination? No, not a catholic purgatory where unbaptized babies and righteous pagans find themselves but something much more depressing.
The righteous find their reward in the Elysian Fields, the evil get tortured forever in Tartarus and those who perpetrated no great sins and lived lives of no great moral fortitude find themselves in a place called the Asphodel Meadows. Asphodel is a dull, grey flat expanse extending from horizon to horizon; like Indiana. And like Indiana it is filled with lower middle class white people who have left no evidence of their existence save for their social security number in the tax rolls. This is the place I fear worse than Tartarus.
I’m a loser, in as much as I’ve never been a winner. I’m not doing drugs on the street or knocking over liquor stores but I’m also not leaving a mark in anyone’s life save for my direct family. You could probably find me in a crowd but that’s due to my size. It’s like the Beatles said, he’s got to be good looking ’cause he’s so hard to see. Except swap good looking for rotund. I’m just a guy. I’m smarter than average but I’m no great intellect. I’m iconoclastic in all the cliche places. I’m a jack of many trades and renowned for none of them. I’ve loved, sure, but I’m not going to be the face that someone remembers on their deathbed or the fling that inspires the next great american novel. I’m average in all the ways that count. I’m not even unremarkable enough to be considered the very model of the post-modern male.
The patron saint of the post-modern man is Salieri and it is to him we pray for a chance to be just a little bit more interesting than the other guy. Not too much, not great, but better than that other guy. You know the one, same age as us, same field, same talents, and roughly the same skill. If we can just be better than him then we’ve achieved our great victory and can arrive at Asphodel as heroes. The heroes of the mediocre. It’s not being trapped in a flaming tomb that keeps me awake at night, nor being blown about by an incessant wind, being eternally drowned, or even freezing in a slush of black snow. What keeps me awake at night is the knowledge that up to this point my sins were no great things nor were my good deeds and that when I die I may wander forever in the grey fields of asphodel with nothing to do but eat flowers and ponder the meaninglessness of my life.
I wonder if there will be blogs.