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While we were all making long speeches, I noticed that Tony was squirming in his seat. He seemed to be annoyed at us. Eventually he stood up and left, and walked towards the beach. I felt the urge to go after him. As he disappeared behind the bushes, I decided to do that, to run after him. I caught up with him a long way down the beach. He was definitely a stronger jogger than I. Exhausted, we both sat down in the sand.
"How are we going to survive four weeks like that?" said Tony in a frustrated tone of voice. "The four weeks we had in Caracas were a blast. There were always thousands of people around. Things were moving everywhere. Remember Alberto's pub? Every night when we stopped there after the meetings, we were in the middle of a parade of beautiful people, beautiful women of all ages, excitingly dressed, exciting to look at; a parade from heaven! There is absolutely nothing here to look at but fish, sand, and some trees."
"And birds," I added.
"That's right, Pete. This place is for the birds," he added and laughed. "So, how are we going to survive for four weeks in this dessert? I don't think we'll even mention the word sex for as long as we are here. Your Mary never used the word sex in all of her writings, didn't she? Ross told me so. It looks to me like we are going to live on a diet of Marynated Plato for four weeks, with fried Pythagoras served on marriage hash. I can't think of anything more boring than being here, can you?"
"Yes I can," I said.
"What is that, Pete?"
"Can't you remember the day, way back in the President's office, when he talked to us about horse racing?"
"Sure Pete, but that lasted only for ten minutes, not four weeks."
"Actually Tony, I think you are wrong. If we are going to achieve what we must achieve, those four weeks will appear very short in retrospect."
"Sure they will, like a lifetime compared to eternity," he said softly and kicked up a bloom of sand.
I pointed to the rocky hilltop of our island. "Assume, Tony, the hilltop represents sex. How would you get to it, Tony?"
"Through the jungle, of course," he replied.
"Oh, through the jungle," I repeated. "How boring!"
"I see your point, Pete, but don't expect me to sit around for four weeks."
I just laughed. "Fred didn't bring you here to sit around. He expects you to be right up there, on the hilltop. Of course, there is that little matter of the jungle, isn't there?"
We walked far down the beach. Eventually I found what I was looking for, a nicely pointed stick for drawing in the sand. "Let me make your project interesting," I said to him.
I asked him to follow me to where the surf had smoothed the sand. I found a smooth patch that hadn't been scratched up with all those countless footprints of the sea birds that seemed to be everywhere. I drew Mary's four-column matrix into the sand for him. "Let me present you with a puzzle," I said when I was finished.
"There are four columns here," I said. "Each represents a specific development stream in consciousness. Two of these development streams, our friend Mary had associated with sex. Not just one, Tony, but two. Also, she has associated none of these two with marriage. Her reference to marriage is found in a column all by itself. That means, that in Mary's global context, sex and marriage are totally separate issues. They are not intermingled. Doesn't that have a bearing on the way one needs to consider sex?"
"I am an expert in 'considering' sex," said Tony and laughed. He emphasized, considering.
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