Wander, and return

1 It's time I wrote about the young lovers, the worldly-wise mentor (perhaps), and the able servant. (Susannah, I wondered). The search was - remains - for a frame which will make sense of the single, life-changing day. A territory, wanderings, and return.

2 Beginnings and endings. The young people are paired. The young men declare that they are betrothed to virtuous young women; they are betrothed to exemplars of virtue. As we listen to young lovers, we smile. We wish them well. They have so much to learn. Still, with good fortune, they will learn together what has to be learned.

3 In the much-neglected opera the lovers are immediately put to the test. Cheerily and confidently, the young men agree to a test of their partners' love. And so each courts the other's lover. Ignorant of what is going on, the women are put to the test. And they fail. Meanwhile, the young men, so confident, put themselves to the test, all unwittingly. And they fail. The young love is not yet the hardened love which may be able to resist the charms of another.

4 All four, in their fresh pairs, have gone beyond the fence which separates the garden which is ordered, cultivated from the surrounding open land where one may walk where one will. In the open land, the rules are different. In the garden, a person will behave in a way suited to the garden, to the paths, to the crafted landscape. In the open, the same person, now unconstrained, may adopt a different guise, may appear altogether different. And the rules which govern the communion between people, being different, may lead to challenges, assaults, temptations which, in the garden, are held back.

5 And so what is to happen as young people return to the garden. Indeed, they must be brought back, if they tarry, lest promises which may have been given in the open land must be impossible to set aside in the garden. And, after all, it is in the garden where we expect to spend our time.

6 The young people resume their original pairs. They return. But they have been away, and what happened in the open country will remain in their recollections. Better, of course, not to talk about these things. Those recollections are reminders of frailty. They are also an enrichment. Each, everyone knows that the original innocence is not to be re-established. Each has learned. Each has developed. Each has a better understanding of themselves and of others. Each has seen in the long looking-glass a more profound image.


Don (Alfonso)