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Show 12 Neither Nell nor Rose had great beauty. Animated^graceful, yes, and their swimsuits curbed them cleverly. The moonlight glorified them. But there was, of course, something more significant. As they walked lightly along that white bleak mound lying like a corpse, they symbolized life, and life to come. Death was commoner to me than life. Death was the word that was written again and again on every page of my life, death in the hundreds of rabbits, rodents, coyotes and other animals I killed, in the flock of sheep a freight train mangled in the night, in the innumerable plants that shriveled after they struggled up from seeds we sowed. Death was in the mirages of morning hope that dissolved in our bitter sun and blasting winds. I could not help but feel the gay defiance the girls tossed at the grinning skull of death. Beyond the might of the dynamo as inhuman energy, they radiated the valor of human life, and life to come. The coach who told me he scorned women's "beauty of form" as cushioned ugliness-only male athletes are beautiful-was limited to the only use that counted for him, counted as dollars represented in the winning male competitor. He was wrong. Adams was right- "Neither art nor beauty was needed neither Diana of the Ephesians nor any of the Oriental goddesses was worshipped for her beauty. She was goddess because of her force; she was the animated dynamo; she was reproduction-the greatest and most mysterious of all energies; all she needed was to be fecund." My intuition was right, my towering awe. In their young but full maturity as women, they stepped lightly upon lost ages, upon |