After Word

A Sibling Confession

 

I wondered at Justine’s defection and whether it indicated that her dedication to conscientious perversity was perhaps superficial. Once she found ‘the man’ - just like any other woman - she converted to monogamy. What became of her dedicated immersion into sexuality and multiple partners, her affirmed intention to change the concept of feminine sexuality and expand the role of women to include all that the liberal man had been privileged to initiate?
 

Justine lived and reported her great experiment and kept her head throughout. At times, she may have sacrificed her humanity but she didn’t pass away. I’m pleased that my sister is back in the realm of the reasonable. She has always been happy. She used to say that the ‘truth test’, for her, was measured by her own conscience - her gauge of contentment. But she had a sexual hunger that seemed insatiable, coupled with a philosophical curiosity. The limits of love and knowledge must have been clearly defined for her to cross over.

 

Her philosophical conversion references her goal. This is why Justine was able to make the call. It is always about the work. The work is fed by the practice. When Justine was a libertine, it was her practice to experience many different sexual avenues and then map her journey. That map was her work. It was a truth map. Justine is able to go further with Pascal than without him. It is better for her practice. She can rely on his protection to traverse into riskier areas. He showed her this with Boy’s Town. She had asked for confirmation of his worth and he had delivered. He had demonstrated his like mindedness. It is better for her work that they continue together. This is a new sacrifice, another human sacrifice, for it is Justine’s sacrifice of a more superficial variety of sensual experience in favor of a depth that plumbs the truth.

There is no Catholic confessional at the limits. Justine doesn’t feel that she has ever sinned. She’s not able to sin for, within the broader context of the work, there is a code of ethics and morality that resides in the phenomenal object - the written and visual product that makes up the art.
 

Justine is an evangelist, a cocky woman and a stubborn visionary. She is my sister.