Yes, happiness, believe it or not,
that most mysterious because most
evanescent of conditions.. The hap-
piness I speak of has nothing to do
with nature's fang and claw, but is
exclusive to humankind, a by-product
of evolution, a consolation prize for
us poor winded runners in the human
race. It is a force whose action is
so delicate and so fleeting we hard-
ly feel it operating in us before it
has become a thing of the past. Yet
it burns in us, and we burn in it,
unconsumed. I cannot be now as I was
then - I may recall but not experi-
ence again the bliss of those days -
yet I must not be led by embarrass-
ment and sorrow and pain to deny what
I felt then, no matter how shaming or
deluded it may seem to me now. I held
her to me, this suddenly familiar
stranger, and felt her heart beating
and listened to the rustle of her
breathing and thought I had come at
last to my true place, the place
where, still and at the same time
profoundly stirred, feverish yet
preternaturally calm, I would at last
be who I was.
be who I was.
Here she is, the moving mirror in
which I surprised myself, poor gog-
gle-eyed Actaeon, my traitorous
hounds already sniffing suspiciously
at my heels.. She is the goddess of
movement and transformations. And I,
I am bowed down before her, abject
and entranced, my forehead pressed
to the cold stone of the temple floor.
John Banville
Athena
A Novel
Alfred A. Knopf, 1995©
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