Point of View: Follow His Lead
I’ve been reading in comparative mythology recently, about ritual regicide, virgin births, thefts of fire, trees of life and of death, resurrections . . . that kind of thing, and apparently, at least according to Joseph Campbell, it’s all one — more or less the same stories and symbols from Day One aimed at reconciling earth with the heavens.
“Ad astrum per aspera,” I said to O’en this morning as we headed, with hope, for The Star. And no sooner had I sat down than the phone rang. A call from the West Coast, from my erstwhile doubles partner, Gary Bowen, with whom I’ve won East Hampton Indoor tournaments in successive summers.
He hesitated at first when I answered. “Do I sound like Mary?” I asked.
Well, yes, as a matter of fact, he said, I did.
“We’re becoming one!” I said. “Like the myths — the earth goddess entwined double helix-like with the slayer of aging doubles teams.”
We talked about meeting up around February (when our ninth grandchild is to be born out there) and were commiserating about the winter and the election and about how we yearned to scrap the rurally biased Electoral College when he had to sign off to go do battle.
I shall gird my loins tomorrow, at high noon, and it is in this wise that we agile-for-our-age septuagenarians, not unmindful of our blessings, aim for the stars — engraved plaques at least.
The Independent today quoted Einstein to the effect that to some nothing in life is miraculous and to some everything is. I would definitely put O’en, our 5-month-old white golden, in the latter camp.
“We think nothing of walking around the block, but can you imagine what it’s like to walk around the block for him?!” I asked Mary. A garden of delights — the effluvia ever new all the time. Transcendence in the temporal. Beset by fear and desire we cling — that’s our “leash.” He is not so constrained — he just is.
We agreed that we should follow his lead. And in fact that is, when we are out on our walks, what we usually do