In this chapter's first writing, I referred to my trek as an "odyssey." I think now this is more true than ever. If you don't mind, dear reader, I'm going to take a couple sidesteps here to backtrack paths familiar to me to further explain why I've come to feel this way.

My favorite book of all time is Bob Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Near book's end, the author flashes back to his studies in grad school in quest of true learning, rather than the mere Ph.D. in philosophy his classmates (and teachers) thought he was trying to attain. One of its passages has meant a great deal to me since the first time I read it (over fifteen years ago). The passage was not written by Pirsig, but attributed to another author I've never read. H. D. F. Kitto's The Greeks was one of the books Pirsig read trying to learn more about living a life filled with Quality, or what Kitto called Arete, the Greek word for Excellence.

Thus the hero of the Odyssey is a great fighter, a wily schemer, a man of stout heart and broad wisdom who knows that he must endure without too much complaining what the gods send; and he can both build and sail a boat, drive a furrow as straight as anyone, beat a young braggart at throwing the discus, challenge the Phaecian youth at boxing, wrestling or running; flay, skin, cut up and cook an ox, and be moved to tears by a song. He is in fact an excellent all-rounder; he has surpassing arete. Arete implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency-or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself.

Sidestep number two: In addition to Catherine's penchant for mysteries, she also has come to love mythology. Since all of her overnights with me over the past few years have involved a two-and-a-half to three hour ride in the car, we've had plenty of time for stories, and after telling each other about our goings-on when we first have seen one another, eventually the words, "Tell me a myth," have come from her mouth. Her favorites have tended to be my favorites... Perseus saving Andromeda... Theseus killing thieves and murderers on the road from Thrace to Athens... the sad life of Atalanta.... Over Thanksgiving weekend I told her of the Iliad, its stories of Priam and Hector, Paris and Helen, the Greek heroes Achilles, Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Odysseus, and the siege of Troy. It was Odysseus who ended the war, coming up with the idea of hiding the Achaean soldiers in a large, wooden horse, taken into the walls of Troy as a trophy of surrender.

Naturally, the story to follow that would be the Odyssey. When Cathy came to visit last night, waiting her for her was a video I'd picked up at the library of the miniseries that was on tv a few years ago.

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