A Different Kind of Sentinel by Sir E. J. Drury II
A review
Having survived the war in Vietnam, without physical injury to himself, the author “had nonetheless incurred the deeper wounds of a house divided against itself.” As a child, had not he experienced his real father’s schizophrenia and, later, his stepfather’s alcoholism as war related, he may very well have written a different kind of story than A Different Kind of Sentinel.
That the author takes memoir writing to a new and intriguing level is a gross understatement. For he gives to the imagination what Albert Einstein gave to the world, a reality “that is just as accessible to one’s faculties as the material world.”
“You speak of the imagination,” complained a cohort of his, “as if it were some place I could walk to, like the back of this plane.”
“Indeed I do,” proclaims he to whom the vastly rich experiences of the imaginal realm are just as real as those of the material world–a topic that, no doubt, will be hotly debated for years to come.
From the first page of this very well-written book to the last, does the author slip so seamlessly from one world to the next, as if there were truly no distinction between the two. While standing, for example, in front of a mirror, one day, he sees an image of his soul, a woman “standing opposite” him in the mirror. Alarmed at first, he steps “back from the mirror only to find himself being inexorably drawn back into her world through the smile on her face.” In the end, is he “left standing in front of the mirror, smiling at an image of himself dressed as a white knight.”
And therein lies the whole story in a nutshell. For this remarkable story is as much about the author as it is about the soul and their eventual reunion. While he fears the white knight, she loves the White Knight “above all else.” Where he longs to be free of his obsession with sex, she longs to be free of her imprisonment in nature, somewhere out there. “I am the way,” she boldly proclaims when he finally admits he is lost. And though the two suffer the same agonizing pain of separation from each other and their respective worlds, both seek the one person they are meant to become.
As a sailor then, in the service of the US Navy circa 1967, does he reluctantly set off, that spring, in search of she who must be obeyed if he is to overcome the beastly side of his nature and reunite himself with soul. “Whatever you do,” is he forewarned by a fellow shipmate, “don’t let them rob you of the most precious gift you have, your humanity, for the wraiths will claw away at it until all that remains is the shadow of what was once you.” And so must he, at all costs, resist the temptation of his fathers before him, “to live out the visions of others rather than the one with which he had been entrusted at birth,” a vision that eventually pits him against the Navy.
Loaded with many wonderful insights into the workings of the soul and the trinity, human sexuality and creativity, war and the beastly side of nature, this little gem of a book is sure to please the palate of those intrepid souls who venture to open its pages in search of what they know not. Having gone where no book has ever dared, this starkly honest book is truly “a work of art of indescribable beauty.”
