On Yom Kippur it rained so hard that it was hard to go about making amends, though the next day sparkled so that it seemed the earth had been reborn and that we were, even though we’d not atoned, beginning afresh under a vast blue sky.
I still wonder what the fuss was about Adam and Eve, who hungered after knowledge. No harm in that per se, unless, of course, you want to use it to others’ detriment rather than to afford your soul a broader view. It’s narrow-mindedness, myopia that seems to afflict us, such as we’ve seen in the case of Putin’s bombing of civilians, in racism, in greed, in self-aggrandizement, and in spite and ignorance, which I think Socrates, who thought we were innately good, equated with evil.
So the day after Yom Kippur was that kind of day, a day in which you wanted to open up to the world. Sartre said that hell was other people, though our eldest daughter said when she was here over the summer, that, at least during the pandemic, heaven was other people, who in their selfless acts embodied to her mind, God.
In the end, we only have each other, and in the end, disembodied, it’s the extent to which we’ve nourished the creative spirit — of mankind, of our country, of our town, of our village — that lives on. I’m thinking in particular here of the late Loretta Orion, who was happy to know that in the constellation of her chosen surname was a nebula that was constantly making stars, and whose gardens at Home, Sweet Home were named forever for her the other day.
In talking with me once about Saint-Exupery’s “The Little Prince,” she said he knew what was important, that it wasn’t fancy clothes, big cars, or houses on the ocean. The sunsets that she and her husband, Hugh King, would stop to see each night were “spectacular, yet we grown-ups want other entertainment, like movies and cocktail parties and television.”
“Not everyone seems to get ‘The Little Prince,’ ” which she and Mr. King had adapted — “right away, but they are moved nonetheless,” she said. “One of the members of the cast still says that he doesn’t understand the play, but that he likes it. It’s like planting a seed.”