S

My fond regards to little Eldridge and your mother. Tell Shirlee my hair is stiff and brittle as burnt toast here in this climate and that I have given up Clairol so the gray strands are poking through, and I cut it short in a kind of scruffy mid-neck flip just to get it out of my mind and concentrate on higher things, but for all that there are still some here who find me an attractive brunette.

Your friend,

Sarah Worth

Dear Mother-

Just the briefest note, to check in. They've given me more responsibilities here, and I'm up to my ears in legal and financial details. Of course I'm horrified to hear that you have cashed in all your CDs, even paying the fines to do so, and have sold those blocks of Daddy's lovely old IBM and AT &T, and put everything into the stock of this cosmetic company your admiral friend has heard is going to be taken over by Revlon. His grandson's being an investment banker doesn't mean a thing; or, rather, it does mean, if this is real insider information, that you and the boy and old Granddaddy will all go to jail. I recently received a letter from a man in jail and he says it's no fun-the toilet is in the middle of the cell and the white guards let the black prisoners rule by survival of the fittest and there's a two-yean wait for the course in computer science. If on the other hand it's not real insider information, then you're holding a big chunk of some stagnant company (Visage, Inc.-what kind of name is that, and who put on that absurd incorrect accent?) from Arkansas (Arkansas, Mother!) that will pay peanuts-not even that, peanut shells-for dividends and slowly sink into the swamp of what's left of Reaganomics. The CDs were safe, sure, and smart, as I told you before. You've obviously written me off as an adviser and probably even heir, but think of your own grandchild, pretty Pearl who adores you and who has let herself fall into the clutches of some loathsome Dutch pseudo-plutocrats because, no doubt, of financial insecurity. If she didn't have a grandmother who was squandering her eventual inheritance she might have the self-respect and self-confidence to stick with her education and independent development. She's even threatening not to return to Yale this fall! Isn't that incredibly self-destructive? Do phone her and tell her so, instead of commiserating with her over what a rotter I am and what a saint Charles is-she didn't exactly quote you to that effect but I can read between the lines. Your involvement with this alleged admiral I find, of course, alarming. He sounds like a typical male exploiter, hunting for a cook and a nurse to see him into the grave. Don't be co

But do sell that preposterous Visage and put everything into a 6% savings account. Even under your mattress would be better. Don't discuss money with this ancient mariner. Or if you do, ask about his money-find out if he has enough of his own so that he isn't after yours. Do take your vitamins, especially A to combat aging and brain-cell loss. Niacin can be very effective in reversing delusional thinking. A lot of Alzheimer's, they think now, is caused by aluminum salts in the blood. Aluminum turns out to be in everything-toothpaste, aspirin, water. And of course you cook with pots of it. I forgot-you don't cook any more, you and the Admiral eat out, champagne and oysters and chocolate cake every night. I told the Arhat what you were up to, and he laughed and laughed and said, "Women are the gods!" He joins me in sending you strivyatireka (love).

Sare

Dearest Alinga-

Tena tyaktena bhunjithah. I fear, my darling, we have reached our quota. These months living with you have been the happiest of my life, as far as cohabitation goes-the most harmonious, as if we were two upright notes, one blond and one dark, forming a single chord. No pulling and hauling, no serving and being served-or, rather, both, so carelessly and lightly blended that there was no knowing where the serving left off and the being served began. Our time together has in my mind a precious fine fragility, a crackled gold-rimmed right-ness, that makes me hold my breath as I try to set it down.

This break with you is, as I conceive it, a delicate one, scarcely perceptible but to us. We will still share the ashram, and our love of the Arhat, and our work in the Uma Room, and why not then some hours of private talk and even rasa as before? Do please keep thinking of me as your lover-your dark and stormy prince,-you once called me.

But I must feel free, to continue what let's call my ascent toward the unconditioned. I do not want to make you my prison warder as I did Charles-the guardian of habit, of limits, the enforcer, albeit for my good and out of affection-he was affectionate, I can admit that now-of a system in which my function is simply to bold still, to be the'same day after day. Durga's madness and the siege from outside have thi

Now I fear I have set down the gold-rimmed vase with a crash. But honestly, didn't it ever feel to you as though I was nothing but a strangely weak man? Of course we must honor those who stand aside-the sexual saints, the little roundish men who would rather collect books or jade elephants, and the handsome Hepburnesque women not meant to be mothers-many of whom, so unfortunately (I think of my serenely selfish own), become mothers anyway. Actually, this ego-splitting I seem to extol doubles rather than halves our natural selfishness and selfish frenzy. Without a child, women are free to mother others-you, for instance, mothered me. And what a child I seem to be!-willful, needy, exhibitionistic, compliment-seeking, petty, jealous. Jealous, as we have discussed, of you and Durga in the time before I came here, when she was to you something of what you have been to me-an initiator, an apsaras, an avatar of Shakti. Even now as she in her drug-riddled fury brings down the paradise that the Arhat's beautiful energy crystallized, I feel in you a certain lackadaisical fondness for our Celtic destroyer, a passive willingness to "let it all go" as one more meaningless ripple of maya. Your energy exchange with Durga, in other words, still proceeds, though you find yourselves in opposite camps during all this scheming, feuding, poisoning, and mutual manipulation as the implacable outer world closes in.