Travels with Epicurus by Daniel Klein

Dimitri’s terrace, Tasso is now telling the story of the first day he saw Sophia, his wife of forty-two years and the mother of his three children. He says the sunlight followed her like a spotlight as she strolled by him on Konstantinoupoleos Avenue just as he was leaving his office. He tells his friends that often when he looks at Sophia at breakfast in the morning, he sees that beautiful young woman strolling down Konstantinoupoleos Avenue.
    Sing it, Frankie!

He who says either that the time for philosophy has not yet come or that it has passed is like someone who says that the time for happiness has not yet come or that it has passed.
    â€”EPICURUS

Chapter Five
    The Tintinnabulation of Sheep Bells
    ON MELLOWING TO METAPHYSICS
    W ith a bag of books slung over my shoulder, I am walking the ancient mountainside road to the tiny village of Vlihos, a few miles west of Kamini, where I am lodging. During my first long stay on the island, in my twenties, this was a fifteen-minute stroll; now, factoring in my rest stops, it takes close to an hour. I imagine that the brisk stride of my youth felt more invigorating than my current puttering pace. There was a sense of urgency to everything I did as a young man—the general urgency of youth. I can imagine a forever youngster jogging past me in collegiate shorts and T-shirt, full of youthful, or at least
youthlike
, vigor. He would definitely get to Vlihos before me. But I am not in a hurry today. I am a contentedly dawdling old man.
    For the second respite on my walk, I perch on a granite slab that offers a panoramic view of a grassy valley where sheep are safely grazing. I now become conscious of the faint tintinnabulation of the sheeps’ bells, a plainsong from another era. A few moments pass and another sound joins the bells, scattered bursts, sharper, higher up on the treble scale, like a flute capriccio in a Vaughan Williams pastorale; it is the insistent call of a migrant babbler bird. A dog barks from somewhere down in Kamini and is quickly answered by a donkey’s bray in the mountain above me—the horn section. I set down my bag, light up a cigarette, and listen.
    Yes, I smoke—shamelessly. Back home in America, I have to endure insulting looks and comments—often from perfect strangers—when I light up. It is more than the scourge of secondhand smoke that offends these people; it is what they see as my perverse self-destructiveness. They are right, of course; tobacco is undoubtedly bad for my health and will probably shorten my life. As a defensive response to their comments, I often say, “Hey, I’m too old to die young.”
    Not exactly brilliant repartee, but it does make some personal sense to me. Like many men at my stage of life, I routinely scan the obituary page to find the age at which people are dying these days. Most often, it is in their seventies and eighties, the latter usually after a “long illness.” If a person dies in his fifties or younger, this is sometimes labeled an “untimely death,” and if I am in a Kierkegaardian frame of mind, I grimace at that description:
all
deaths are untimely compared to immortality; the exact age of a death is just a quibble.
    Nonetheless, when I was younger, say in my fifties, I would shudder at the obits’ reminder that in all probability I only had twenty-odd years left. And, because obituaries are usually devoted to people of noteworthy accomplishment, I would go into a panic—I only had twenty-odd years left to make something of myself!
    But much to my surprise, when I, at the age of seventy-three, read the obituary of a man who passed away at the age of, say, seventy-five, I actually find it consoling. I have lived to a respectable old age. I have enjoyed the privilege of a complete life, partaking in all its stages (except, of course,
old
old age, which I would not mind skipping). When I read the obits now, Epicurus’s dictum that the