somethings and the muffler is doomed but can be replaced too and—well, was a person not like that, something useful then, and now not so, but a person was not like a car, a car aged naturally but a person walked through the wrong door: grow old or not! When Mrs. Sweet was young, the not was beyond assuming, like drinking water and not cyanide, and Mrs. Sweet had no true understanding of Now and Now again, and then was in the lower regions of holy grammar. And her youth, before she knew the Tudor-sized prince, Mr. Sweet, was a carnival of sexual activity: all the men on one side, all the women on the other side, dressed in clothes made from the skin of an animal—domesticated or not—or wearing nothing at all, only swirling around to the sound of music coming from a special source or the sound of music which was made up inside their head; and all her youth was a giant atmosphere of sensation, sensation, and sensation again, and her Now (which becomes Then, as is all Now, eventually), she is the mother of the well-hidden Persephone and the young Heracles and even before that, the wife of Mr. Sweet, a master player of the lyre, is not then known to her; her Now is the scrupulous Mr. Sweet, a man (Tudor prince in size) who understood Wittgenstein and Einstein and all such persons. All such persons!
But Then: in those days when Mrs. Sweet was young and beautiful to him, he then wore shirts and trousers and a navy-blue corduroy jacket, and in the pocket of the navy-blue corduroy jacket was the note from his father, the note that told him how to lead his life: two households, two wives, two sofas, two knives; but he had not found it yet. He then played the pianoforte in a room all by himself, and there was a small audience, then Mr. Sweet, in his full Tudor Princely–ness, would sit down and play some music written by Ferdinand Morton and Omer Simeon and Baby Dodds and Wolfgang Mozart, and if compelled to he would play the music written by his overwhelming favorite, Igor Stravinsky. His mother, a Mrs. Sweet in her own right, was as dutiful and misinformed as Mrs. Sweet—the now Mrs. Sweet, mother to the well-hidden from her Persephone and the young Heracles—adored his performance and led the applause of family and assorted friends, and everyone bowed before him, curtsied, and some of them kissed the ground. Mr. Sweet was then ten years old and for the rest of his life he would be so, ten years old, always in that now moment—that room of playing the music of Ferdinand Morton and sometime the much beloved W. A. Mozart, but how was Mrs. Sweet to know that when she fell in love with the young man who bore himself as if he was a young Tudor prince, how was she to know that at thirty years of age, forty years of age, fifty years of age, sixty years of age, seventy years of age, Methuselah’s age now, he lived in the world as it was then, when he was ten?
Mrs. Sweet took a deep breath, then and now, and plunged ahead in the dark—for to live in any Now and any Then (they are always the same) is to do just that, plunge ahead in the dark, placing one foot in front of the other—and hoped that there would be some solid, not to mention fruitful, ground to meet her feet, really or metaphorically. As a young woman she had been like a flower found in the deep jungles of the new Americas: a black dahlia, a brown marigold, a sea-green zinnia; when she was a young woman, the world was not her oyster, did not harbor her like its oyster, providing a sweet space in which she became a pearl; when she was a young woman, younger than the young Heracles, it was her fear of death that kept her alive.
* * *
Plunge ahead or buck up—so Mrs. Sweet’s mother would say to her when she was a child, a tall thin girl all bones covered with skin, and she was afraid of the larger girls and the larger than anything boys, and would be so afraid of them that just to walk past them on the street was impossible; and earlier than that, when she
But Then: in those days when Mrs. Sweet was young and beautiful to him, he then wore shirts and trousers and a navy-blue corduroy jacket, and in the pocket of the navy-blue corduroy jacket was the note from his father, the note that told him how to lead his life: two households, two wives, two sofas, two knives; but he had not found it yet. He then played the pianoforte in a room all by himself, and there was a small audience, then Mr. Sweet, in his full Tudor Princely–ness, would sit down and play some music written by Ferdinand Morton and Omer Simeon and Baby Dodds and Wolfgang Mozart, and if compelled to he would play the music written by his overwhelming favorite, Igor Stravinsky. His mother, a Mrs. Sweet in her own right, was as dutiful and misinformed as Mrs. Sweet—the now Mrs. Sweet, mother to the well-hidden from her Persephone and the young Heracles—adored his performance and led the applause of family and assorted friends, and everyone bowed before him, curtsied, and some of them kissed the ground. Mr. Sweet was then ten years old and for the rest of his life he would be so, ten years old, always in that now moment—that room of playing the music of Ferdinand Morton and sometime the much beloved W. A. Mozart, but how was Mrs. Sweet to know that when she fell in love with the young man who bore himself as if he was a young Tudor prince, how was she to know that at thirty years of age, forty years of age, fifty years of age, sixty years of age, seventy years of age, Methuselah’s age now, he lived in the world as it was then, when he was ten?
Mrs. Sweet took a deep breath, then and now, and plunged ahead in the dark—for to live in any Now and any Then (they are always the same) is to do just that, plunge ahead in the dark, placing one foot in front of the other—and hoped that there would be some solid, not to mention fruitful, ground to meet her feet, really or metaphorically. As a young woman she had been like a flower found in the deep jungles of the new Americas: a black dahlia, a brown marigold, a sea-green zinnia; when she was a young woman, the world was not her oyster, did not harbor her like its oyster, providing a sweet space in which she became a pearl; when she was a young woman, younger than the young Heracles, it was her fear of death that kept her alive.
* * *
Plunge ahead or buck up—so Mrs. Sweet’s mother would say to her when she was a child, a tall thin girl all bones covered with skin, and she was afraid of the larger girls and the larger than anything boys, and would be so afraid of them that just to walk past them on the street was impossible; and earlier than that, when she
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