These thirty years, and more, that I've spent among exotic, barbaric, indomitable gods and goddesses, nourished on myths, obsessed by symbols, nursed… - Mircea Eliade

And I realize how useless wails are and how gratuitous melancholy is.

The perspective changes completely when the sense of the religiousness of the Cosmos becomes lost. This is what occurs when, in certain more highly evolved societies, the intellectual élites progressively detach themselves from the patterns of the traditional religion. Periodical sanctification of cosmic time then proves useless and without meaning. The gods are no longer accessible through the cosmic rhythms. The religious meaning of the repetition of paradigmatic gestures is forgotten. But repetition emptied of its religious content necessarily leads to a pessimistic vision of existence. When it is no longer a vehicle for reintegrating a primordial situation, and hence for recovering the mysterious presence of the gods, that is, when it is desacralized, cyclic time becomes terrifying; it is seen as a circle forever turning on itself, repeating itself to infinity.

Sunt uneori stări care parcă îşi pierd durata. Nu ştii - sau nu-ţi aduci aminte - când au început, ce le-a dezlănţuit, cum se transformă. Şi totuşi, din beatitudinea aceea turbure se desprinde uneori un cuvânt, un strigăt, o melodie sau măcar o singură notă muzicală, care îţi rămâne necontenit prezentă, fără să te mire precaritatea sau chiar nesemnificaţia ei.