A Christmas with Avery

By Josseph Rynear

On a snowy night during the Twelve Days of Christmas, Gael Kennett, a gentleman and a scholar, was in a deep depression brought on by alcohol, middle age and severe gambling losses suffered the previous summer. Gael departed from his favorite bar and staggered up the street on his way home. It was icy underfoot, so he stopped at a lamppost, closed his eyes and leaned his head against it. When he opened his eyes he discovered a huge black bear standing in front of him. Terrified, he squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head vigorously and slowly reopened them.But the bear was still there, dressed in evening clothes, with a tall black silk top-hat, a swallowtail coat, stovepipe trousers and a black cape. The bear speaks, apologizing for startling Gael and confesses that he too had thought to lean against the lamppost for a moment’s rest. Gael did not know it, but Avery Bear is a Pookah, a benevolent, well-educated, semi immortal animal spirit, who, like Gael, was a heavy drinker and loved to gamble.
Both their lives are about to change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Josseph Rynear
• Release date: Nov 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310150180

Josseph Rynear

Josseph Rynear -- Josseph the Star*Watcher37 years on the air at KXRT, KVNM and KTAO fm (KXRT evolved into KVNM, which evolved into KTAO)5-ish minute Astrological forecasts daily at 10:00 AM and 6:00 PMStudied History, Philosophy, German and German literature, and Modern European literature at Stanford University, California, 1954-1958, 1962-1963.Studied Russian at the Army Language School, Monterey, California, 1959.After a tour of duty in Germany returned to the San Francisco Bay Area for graduate work in American History at San Jose State University, 1963-1969Grand Magistrate of Tau Delta Phi academic honor society, 1966Faculty member of History Department, 1967,1968While there, perhaps surprisingly, also became an Astrologer. Behind the meta-physician is an academician and vice versa.Moved to Taos, New Mexico in 1970. Began esoteric studies:(Raja yoga, Buddhism, Hinduism, Qaballah, Numerology, Tarot et al.)Became a newspaper and radio astrologer in 1976Became a Freemason in 1976Master of the Lodge in 1981District Deputy Grand Master in 1982Eastern Star Worthy Patron 1982 - 1985Led Native American sweat lodges 1976 – 1996

Book preview

A CHRISTMAS WITH AVERY

A philosophical amusement/fantasy

Josseph Rynear

Copyright 2014 by Josseph Rynear

A Star*Watcher Publishing Book

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Star*Watcher Productions

PO Box 525

Taos, New Mexico 87571

Cover Art by

Gino Schiavone

The Schiavone Studio

1337 Gusdorf Road, Suite J

Taos, NM 87571

*****

Dedicated to my Mother

Nina Louise Cox Rynear

Prelude

Gael Kennett, tall, dark-haired, dark-bearded and middle-aged, lives in a little country town in the mountains of New Mexico. He is an erudite, intelligent man and has an unusual story to tell. But he will never tell it. So I, who am unknown, will!

It all began on a sultry summer’s evening several years ago in the town’s famous La Cocina Bar, where he was engaged in conversation with a graduate student traveling north from Las Cruces to Boulder to interview for an Instructorship at the college there.

Gael was an unemployed professor of Sociology at the time. Some people called him a ‘drop out.’ He and his wife lived off her stipend as an English teacher at the local high school. On this particular evening, low on cash and great of thirst, he had successfully cadged a bourbon and soda from the young Mathematics and Physics scholar, who was also a student of Zen Buddhism and who, very un-Zen-like, delighted in talking about it.

Gael, in turn, regaled the young fellow with his own philosophical researches, based on his need to discover his ‘reason for being.’ He told him that he was attempting to gain an understanding of life in general and of his own life in particular. He desired to know what its purpose was, what he was supposed to be doing with it, and why.

Hoping to impress the young scholar, he declared that he was an ‘Existentialist.’

The young man frowned and veered away from a discussion of Existentialism. He had studied its philosophy in college and found it abstruse and depressing. So he returned to his favorite subject, Zen, and suggested that what Gael was really seeking was a satori.

Of course Gael had no idea what a satori was, although he admitted that he had encountered the word during his undergraduate days at a California college several years earlier. He recalled an afternoon when he had taken a shortcut across the campus quad and walked by the Philosophy department. Just as he passed beneath the open window of a classroom , the word ‘Satori’ had been shouted out by a lecturing professor.

Several minutes later, on a coffee table in the lobby of the women’s dormitory, he saw the word ‘Satori’ on the cover of a book on Zen Buddhism. He realized it was the very word he had heard only moments before. The coincidence intrigued him.

An upperclassman sitting on the couch across from him snatched up the book and, in the tones of a worldly wise superior being, explained to his date, a pretty Freshman, that Zen