almost real

“I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first,
I ask not: but unless God sends His hail
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, His good time, I shall arrive;
He guides me and the bird. In His good time!”

~ Robert Browning, Paracelsus.

almost

For personal causes of self-education, health, and post-work-week sanity, I made one of my usual monthly drives to Boston. There, I visit with friends, and enjoy a full day of study and writing at the Athenaeum. The drive from Portland divides in half: an hour to the Portsmouth area, followed by another hour which is mostly taken up with northeastern Massachusetts. As Interstate 95 merges with an infamous expressway known as 128, thoughtful drivers- including me- are brought to heighten all senses. I must defend against unpredictable right-side passers, tailgaters, and nonsignalers. At the Peabody split, I reflexively disengage cruise control. Committed to making the most of extremely valuable time off, I tune in to AM radio stations with road and traffic reports, ready to divert as needed so that I can get to Boston as efficiently as possible.

At the lower end of the kilohertz scale, my radio picked up one of those abundant money programmes on the airwaves. Another “financial expert,” from the syndicated world sounded very far away from New England, telling me about what I don’t have, and what I should do with that nonexistent pile of loot that I should have by now. Thanks a lot. After a short listen, I moved on to a station with a traffic update. My thoughts lingered a bit longer with the financial broadcaster’s words and yet another reason to acknowledge what has been unattainable. Surely, I know enough to look and listen askance at these market-driven programmes, aimed at a broad spectrum of potential buyers. Not all of us can buy. Notwithstanding, my thoughts accompanied me, beyond the Reading-Wakefield merge, onto I-93, and off through Medford Square. Dashes of autumn foliage helped to lighten my thoughts, diverting them away from my case of the almosts. I refer to my chronic recounting of how I nearly made better choices, and was almost hired for this-and-that job: Almost, but not quite catching the brass rings of my wishes. During a traffic light breather, I looked over at my typewriter on the back seat. Saturday, sunshine, library books, and Beacon Hill awaiting, surpassed my sighs.

temporal

Almosts have persistent ways of infiltrating streams of thought. Though I’m grateful for the gift of lucid, long-range memory, I’m also aware of the burden attached to razor-sharp recall. Remembering things I’ve almost accomplished, almost said, and ideas almost developed stirs my perspective into self-casting as a perennial underachiever. In a general sense, perhaps it is a human ache to desire to live up to one’s potential. In The Luminous Trail, Rufus Jones strikes a chord in his discourse about roads that evolve as we live:

“There is in most of us a vast acreage of our inner estate which has never been touched by the plow. It remains uncultivated. We are this; we have been this, but how much more we might be! Coming to ourself, our true self, and reaching out with divine help and the gift of Grace to win the whole of ourself is to be ‘spiritual-minded.’”

In that Grace is the ability to be unfettered by defeatism. In defeatism, I refer much more easily to unaccomplished ventures, than to vanquished waters long under the bridge. Navigating the turbidity of almost has the added afflication of the indefinite. This kind of wilderness has undefined limits; the traveller cannot see the end. The pilgrimage is accompanied by thirst, by longing for a satisfying stability and permanence. Living a long succession of almosts is wearying, as is the vigilance of keeping watch for an arrival into fulfillment. But even our most established days are temporal at best. Many of us know about fleeting moments in a theoretical sense, but very few apply that awareness as practical knowledge. How much sensible theory has become lived practice? Perhaps the core of each almost reveals the temporariness of what seems solid to our mortal senses.

holding pattern

An unending chain of almosts, combined with short-range visibility, makes for a provisional view of life in all its dimensions. Athletes experiencing their version of almosts are prone to exclaim “wait ‘til next year,” having the advantage of an off-season during which they can recondition before re-entering their respective arenas. That is surely not how most of us live. If “offseasons” are preparatory spans of time, the average working person must intertwine active, vigilant forays with short and intermittent respites. I’ve learned to do this with occasional retreats. Tirelessly working, while waiting for my fortunes to improve, seems like a life spent in preparation for tailwinds that do not manifest. With undetectable boundaries, the provisional is undefined.

Pursuing a preparatory path is safely familiar, and not altogether without achievement. My student days, primarily dedicated to postgraduate life and employment has continued on with scholarship as intense as my job adventures and related searches. Scholarly life is inherently preparatory. Studies and research anticipate application. Critical reads, note taking, and indexing bridge discovery with future reference. Looking forward through the temporal can lose the present, relegating life to a perpetual holding pattern.

Living in a constant state of preparation is its own form of almost. In a continuity of those turbulent and tentative student years, renting my home and keeping my living simple, makes it easier to uproot as opportunities arise. Parallel to that, I have not ceased in my quest for better and more stable work. Living portably awaits the fulfillment of the almosts. Putting away money for the future reflects thirst to bring the temporal into port.

“real”

The provisional should be just as it says, and not a permanent condition of unease. Over time, there develops a sense of the overdue, and at worst, the too-late. The latter becomes something to avoid and to be feared. Another pitfall to beware of is the notion of rehearsing for the real thing. Perceiving the present and continuing to do so, as treading water, devalues the voyage. Banking up energy, resources, and knowledge may be wise and prudent, but if it’s in anticipation of the real thing, there comes the question of whether there is a real and an almost real. Is the unsatisfactory ephemeral as real as any other circumstance? Perhaps it is more real, existing in the amenable present, and compared to the anticipated which does not exist yet. As unsuitable as it may be, present and temporal conditions are as real as foreshadows of hoped-for reality.

From this lookout, straining ahead for improved reality to materialize, and struggling with the ill-fitting aspects of the present, there remains a reckoning with the past. As in archival processing, there are arrangements and descriptions of life’s chapters, based upon their points of origin and provenance. Are the organized documents through time’s continuum informative artifacts, or evidentiary references for condemnation? Commenting on our developing understanding of history, the philosopher Ortega y Gasset observed that our changes in thinking do not negate timeless truths, but rather that we change as we see truths anew that we hadn’t previously seen. He wrote about a progress in modern historiography that departed from the 18th century penchant for “cataloguing failures.” Like Gasset, I’m less interested in a sense of exoneration, and more drawn to redeeming my remaining time. Assurance of heading in a worthy direction would inform me that I am not obstructing my own progress. As surely as I write these words, the story continues to be composed.

oxford postscriptum

“I am a wanderer:
I remember well one journey,
how I feared the track was missed,
So long the city I desired to reach lay hid;
when suddenly its spires afar
Flashed through the circling clouds;
you may conceive my transport.
Soon the vapors closed again,
But I had seen the city, and one such glance
No darkness could obscure.”

~ Robert Browning, Paracelsus Aspires, from Paracelsus.

places and artifacts

As the mild weather returns, drawing a long winter to its conclusion, I am drawing my afterthoughts together from my time at Oxford. This is my tenth theme essay in reflection of this profound life experience. Previous essays have described portions of my adventures as a C. S. Lewis Scholar-in-Residence, living at The Kilns, studying at the University, immersing in Lewis’ archives, and absorbing the ambience of the city. My steps covered many, many miles of streets, paths, steep tower stairs, tunnels, and alleys, meeting literary footprints from across centuries. In any place with a deep and ancient past, strata that meet the light of today are merely atop countless layers of the steps of others. This impression was especially felt as I traversed stone slab steps that sag at their centers. Such pavers, stairs, and cathedral aisles seemed weighted and rounded by the passages of time. Indeed I have made contributions of my own, especially across Radcliffe Square, the Bodleian Quad, and Saint Giles Street. But now, looking back, the time since has subsumed even the most sublime episodes into memory.

With Browning’s Paracelsus, I can say that I had seen the city, and one such glance no darkness could obscure. There is much to continue cherishing, having lived and studied in a place of such academic depth and historicity. The experience continues to live within; Oxford goes with me now. My recollections join my collected artifacts and pictures. Musing about places and material objects, as I revisit the many, many photographs I’ve made there, the locations and events become artifacts themselves. Photographs serve as a form of iconography. The libraries and museums, filled with brilliant and life-giving resources, are enshrined in my memory as composite treasures alongside the cafes, pubs, and streets.

Places are always inclusive of their contents and activities. My previous nine essays have described The Kilns, the University and its libraries, and some related landmarks in detail. But the in-between places are the passages that provide context and roots to the landmarks. My guess is that your favorite sites are treasured in your thoughts at least partly due to where they are. Places and their physical situations are inextricable: the monastery on the mountaintop, the café along the tiny cobbled street, the reading room in the elegant library, the seashore along the craggy coast, the plant within good soil, learning in harvests of ideas.

Above: Haydn's harpsichord.
Below: Einstein's blackboard

Oxford’s Bate Museum presents historic collections of musical instruments. Included in their interpretive displays are short recordings of the respective instruments’ sounds. The curator proudly described how the museum pieces are actually used in concert recitals. Playing the instruments is part of how they are preserved. The displays are configured to show the evolvement of such instruments as violins, flutes, clarinets, trumpets, pianos, among many others. The museum provides context for these musical artifacts. Because of my daily experience, and the environments through which I travelled, I saw a similar collocation of humanity in the cafés, shops, and reading rooms. Context can broadly encompass populations, structures, and regions- yet indeed context may also be intimately defined. Oxford preserves Albert Einstein’s blackboard, in the University’s science museum. An artifact, from one context to another. Much, much more humbly, yet still more intimately to me, I now treasure my used call slips from the inner sancta of the Bodleian Library, and among many other ephemeral things, my well-used pencil stubs from all my note-taking.

moments as places

Spans of time, at any length or brevity, also become treasured places. Both physical and spiritual landmarks are capable of recalling time. Therefore, moments join locations as our inner geographies deepen and increase. Of Oxford, I gratefully recall sun-filled courtyards, and the contrasts between the yellow-reddish stone and bright green lawns. A tea shop near the Bodleian quad has grape vines growing in its back garden; I enjoyed writing near these. On many early mornings, with long stretches of study ahead, I would stock up on chocolate bars, on my way to Radcliffe- either at the Covered Market or the Tuck Shop. The newsagents got used to me, with my expressions of gratitude in what must have seemed a funny overseas accent. At the Market, the man would say, “It’s a good day, and now you’re ready!”

I was recipient of many gifts in the shapes of moments provided by wonderful people. Between many generous conversations with the warden of The Kilns, the Bodleian staff, and a variety of professors and students, I had the honor of meeting Aidan Mackey. Mr. Mackey is a retired teacher and bookseller as well as the world’s foremost authority on the life and works of G. K. Chesterton. We enjoyed two evenings together, during which we exchanged ideas and observations about literature and the works of Lewis and Chesterton. On one of these occasions, Mackey read some of his own work, as well as Chesterton’s to me, in the parlor of The Kilns. What I remember best was his recitation of Chesterton’s mystical epic The Ballad of the White Horse- entirely by heart- pronouncing the words as though the unseen book was speaking through him. An enduring moment of a gift.

Above: Aidan Mackey reads G. K. Chesterton, in the parlor at The Kilns.
_________________________________________
"May Their Memory be Blessed."
Placing seashells from Maine on the memorial for the expulsion of the Jewish people from England, near Magdalen College, Oxford.

During one of many pleasant chats with the superintendent of the Special Collections reading room, I mentioned my ongoing project of studying Quaker journals and essays at the Boston Athenaeum. He encouraged me to explore Oxford’s collections on this topic, which are located in Duke Humfrey’s Reading Room. Through these additional studies, I opened a 300 year old volume with a sweet surprise staring up at me: the English Quaker Benjamin Holme’s An Epistle to Friends and Tender-minded People in America. The Quaker apostle addresses the Colonial Americans to “be encouraged, whoever you are,” and hold fast to faith that speaks of “God’s merciful Visitation, which is extended to your Souls.” And here I am, three centuries later, visiting his book with my new Oxford lapel pin, positioned next to the one I wore with me from the University of Southern Maine, marveling at how time can cross its own mysteriously meandering paths. Indeed, my mind’s “reading voice” is of this time, the same one that gleefully expressed gratitude for those Cadbury chocolate bars from across town.

Quaker Meeting House, Saint Giles Street, Oxford.




ideas and place

At last, we come to the setting-forth from this place and time of learning. I certainly hope to return before too long, but that will be yet another, different adventure. Here the postscript begins with the obvious, noticeable to those who have read all ten of these essays, and that is gratitude. Now in retrospect, I see the ideas gathered during my time at Oxford as an abiding postscriptum. Surely there are the material treasures and photo images that attest to the experience, and are held close. But equally tangible, standing alongside study notes, portions of discussions, and written observations in journals, are ideas. By ideas, in this sense, I refer to ways of perceiving. Firstly, there is there is the inspiring prospect that a willing learner will never run out of sources. Heartfelt seekers will find, and I am merely one example. Vastness may be viewed as intimidating, but when it comes to oceans of knowledge and insight there is assurance in knowing the elements are deep and wide and rich. Consider the last sentence in Saint John’s gospel, as he concluded his account of his life experience with Christ. Of all things, he wrote:

    “there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they could be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.” 

To which I am brought to add, not even all the Bodleian Libraries, plus everything in Boston combined! In this continuum of learning, as I begin to transcribe and index my reams of notes from these studies, I’ve also begun to notice changes in my perception. Beyond some techniques derived from the archives and conservation areas that I’ve brought to my work, there are subtleties yet to articulate. I already notice how reading and writing are accompanied by a much stronger awareness of place. The experience further encourages me to allow my thoughts and aspirations to expand. Potential is to be explored. What is possible and not possible cannot always be pre-determined. Perseverance is challenged by venturing out, while being reconciled with the unfathomable. Perseverance embraces learning in majestic surroundings and humble circumstances alike. Now I see gratitude at the foundation of perseverance and growth.

In my earlier essay, called "Scriptura et Scriptum," I wrote about the wonderful Oxford stationer Scriptum. Recently, I sent the photo (immediately below) to them, asking about the dip-pens (at the lower right corner), and with this photo as a guide, I purchased them, with a few more custom-made journals (second photo below).








Boarding the train at Oxford station, for the long travel to North Wales.