Point of View: Holey, Holey, Holey

Mary has a most marvelous moth-eaten gray sweater that she loves. I’ve felt it and I know why, the tatters be damned.

The paint stains speak to me of the universe, the tear, resembling a hara-kiri cut, of the vagaries of life — in short of wonder, joy, and woe.

I told her recently as she sat reading on the deck that I envied her that sweater. Mine by contrast are not nearly as fine. I have one that is in the running, a dark blue cashmere one with a collar that is worn through at the elbows. It’s my favorite.

Why is it, we wonder, that we prefer the down-at-the-heels look when we know perfectly well that we can afford to buy brand-new athletic socks, warm-up pants, and sweatshirts. Our parents, children of the Depression all, were frugal. That may be part of it. We go around in rags to honor them. Nothing too much, that kind of thing.

Mary, of course, is beautiful whether she’s wearing her ratty gray sweatshirt or pearls. And indeed she does dress up when she goes to work — it’s the law. No jeans. I always look like Mr. Burns, the nuclear power plant owner in “The Simpsons,” no matter what I wear, so why try?

Ah, that’s it. Why try? Why try to keep up appearances when all — well, most everything — is vanity. And if it’s not vanity, it’s inanity, or, as seems to be ever more painfully evident these days, insanity.

That’s humanity: vanity, inanity, insanity. Pretty much sums it up. You might as well dress comfortably then. Unless you’re going to a wedding or a funeral, and even then I reserve the right to wear New Balance 991s. In appropriate black and gray of course.

The Star, as far as I know, doesn’t have a dress code, and so I’ve never felt sartorially constrained in any way. As a way of giving thanks perhaps my prose has always been neater than I am, though with distinctive quirks, I hope, like a comfortable ratty sweatshirt or holey cashmere sweater that you’ll never throw out, but will keep on wearing until the end of time.