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.

living history, part 1

“The ancient language of faith can no longer be taken for granted.
Its terms must be re-examined, if their abiding significance
is to be understood.”

~ Evelyn Underhill, The Golden Sequence


With each day’s work, the unpredictable assortment of stories increases. And the queries, anecdotes, and observations come to me daily from the public I serve. Every person is welcomed, listen to, and helped according the information and research needed. Part of my role is to convert spectra of random queries into routes leading to sources of documentation. Conversational flows make these interactions smooth and efficient, and equally important to solving questions is speaking to patrons understandably and respectfully- whether they are 10 or 90, kindergarteners or thesis-writers, blurry or articulate in speech, news articles to manuscripts. Random as radio, I say, but occasionally during fresh-air breaks it is astonishing to notice unrelated yet common threads in the questions and stories I hear. Often the anecdotes are intense with irretrievable losses, wars, and missing relatives.

Everyone searches. Many ask for high school yearbooks, and it’s easy to guess the requested years correspond with their own times in high school. I witness how a soul can be swept into reverie by simply glancing at printed pages. “That’s where I lived,” say those who point to lines in an atlas, or a listing in a directory; and out pour the stories. It is a wonder to consider how written names and slivers of time in pictures and texts can animate thoughts. These are proofs of the realities we recall. Among the project-related researchers are numerous individuals looking for what their memories press upon them to retrace. Rolling through microfilm, most people seek obituaries to learn about their forebears. One man wanted to see what movies played in which theaters during a portion of his childhood. Another sought her grandmother’s beauty contest picture. One woman brought an envelope filled with tiny embrittled newsprint which, when assembled, amounted to a picture of a cabin- but without a date. I rebuilt the clipping on its verso side, and could discern a dateline on an article’s column- and found the full item in the corresponding films. Many people search for articles to be able to deal with the past. Some come looking for the car accidents and disasters they’d survived. Telling me he was finally ready to do this, a man sought out the name of a cyclist he’d accidentally fatally struck decades ago; he wept at the sight of the article.

There are also joyful discoveries among those who seek. And there are the rejuvenated artifacts: a woman brought in her great-grandfather’s diary which began its journey in Ireland, and I made a box especially for its preservation. A man brought in an old, tattered edition of “Uncle Wiggly,” and, like the woman with the diary, was elated with its repair. Another cherished story involved a Korean War veteran who brought me his memory book from the ship he served on. The book resembled a yearbook, and was filled with pictures, data, and the signatures of all his fellow sailors; it was also in very rough condition, and the binding was entirely broken. This man was en route to his reunion, and wanted to know who could fix the book. I told him to leave it with me and to come back the following day, because I took the book home and completely rebuilt it. The veteran’s reaction to the sight of the book on the next day was surely worth all the restorative work. I refused his offer to pay me, instead paying him his due respect. Well, a day later he returned once more with the gift of a new U.S.S. Maine crew cap for me. He was very grateful, and so was I. Witnessing the experiences of others, our own experience broadens. We can substantiate one another’s stories. The puzzle pieces become vital, but we must each determine those essential components that build bridges.

Though we naturally thirst for our origins, not everyone will make the effort. I get to help those who make the motion to discover. The desire to know, to find context, has driven many a pilgrimage. We want to make sense of our lives. Reckoning with the value and substance of personal history is a crossroads in itself. And though my place is not to judge, but to serve, there are overt differences between those who seek to find their roots and information to pass along- compared to those who use genealogies to prove various sorts of status. Lineage and nobility continue to captivate many. But indeed, no person can self-immortalize; identity is far more means than end. Embedded within our historic treasure are ways it can inform us. Reminders sensed in the present ignite distant memories. It is astonishing how the smallest and most obscure details hold their places through lives that intensify with complexity. We witness in one another a perpetual search for purpose to accompany remembrances and retained histories. Being our own archaeologists, care must be taken in excavating: how much of the present environment can stand to be disturbed, how much of what is past warrants our exploring, and which layers of substrata are best left buried? If it is in our nature to seek our sources, we are surely prone to do this selectively. Faithful historiography warns practitioners against revisionism, which is to say rewriting what had been with what hadn’t. My own fascination rotates between retained mysteries, lost chapters, and how the way forward is lit from the future while my steps are inspired from each of the eternities.

sparing

“Loneliness is bred of a mind that has grown earthbound.
For the spirit has its homeland,
which is the realm of the meaning of things.”

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, ch. 79.


Every once in a while, I drive along the street of my residence when I was eighteen. I’d rented a room in a small apartment house, after my freshman year in art college, and wound up staying in that living situation for a year- being nearly broke. Since that year, my home has been in the West End of downtown Portland. While parts of the city have gone through major changes, the Rosemont area remains very much as it looked in the 1980s. It was one of my life-crossroads, and those occasional traversals of Woodford Street rarely fail to bring back such references. We all have these: pivotal places as playing fields for pivotal times in a life that is far more complex than it is simple. Occasionally, my paths will glance alongside the campuses which had been forums for my learning, practica, and teaching. These places of development all remain quite recognizable, albeit immersed in time’s air currents, with corresponding successions of souls passing through.


Sites trigger thoughts, transporting our spirits through time, and for us the buildings and streets are suddenly repopulated. But the seeker is the only one that sees depth. And advancing away from reminiscence requires a collocation of meaning from beneath surface. Indeed, I’ve learned the necessity of setting aside habitations in which there is no recognizably relevant life. Sharpness of memory is a two-edged sword. Vivid accuracy can haunt. It begins with musing about personal progress and potential, then memory lanes wind into wondering about missed chances and wrong turns. Tree-lined streets and tidy buildings recede into dark woods as the mulling melts into grousing about unsuccessful efforts, missed opportunities, and bad decisions. Wasted time, unrequited relationships, misbegotten employment, and fears of being out of chances can cloud and divert reality. Am I just a low-rent version of my best aspirations? As with a fine instrument, the wielding of memory must be refined so that the historic positively informs lit paths. A sense of present context identifies the good that is. Turns taken are inevitably less tormenting than wrong ones- or better ones; these are the trails we chose at our crossroads. What might’ve been becomes what we’ve been spared.


From composing replays that could never be staged, my attention is distracted by the living, breathing immediate. The intact wonderer is the spared. I’ll trust that what should have been wasn’t so great after all. This follows some seeking of logic for why things are as present- the madness to the method, the reason for the rhyme. With Pascal, “I see no reason why I should be here and not there, now and not then,” yet have a sneaking conviction that I will yet see a grander and more purposeful view. Perhaps I’ve been spared of plans that fell through, and my absences and failures may have spared others of my self! Then there are the more tangible sparings. During one of many bicycled crossings of New York’s 59th Street Bridge, I had been so nearly grazed by a large truck that a sharp gust of air tilted my balance. When I got to my destination in Manhattan, I said that an angel must have flattened itself into a thin shield. There are countless near-miss experiences to recall from the distant and recent pasts alike. There are the instances in which we know we’ve been spared, but we’ll never know what unmanifested dangers hadn’t reached us.


Between why things hadn’t been and what did materialize, I must inevitably accept a large measure of unknowing. And such acceptance provides the place to set this bewilderment free. Mystery isn’t something to simply tolerate, one must thrive with its possession. “How is this so,” and “why is this so,” becomes this is so, and with that there is life to be tasted and seen. The urgency of the immediate upstages focusing upon what might have been. The latter, whether near or distant past, cannot be known. Questions about how and why must evolve into is statements. Rather than to discouragingly resign to not knowing inner workings, hoping to have altered paths long past, consider that a soul can flourish in accepting things that are, at least as a basis. Today would not be possible if not for what is, even after all the preceding wrong turns. What did not materialize is bygone and long since out of reach. Thus, what clearly is may truly be for some definitive purpose.

In his Enchiridion, Erasmus suggested that we make our present state our chief motivating factor. I can accept that I’ve been spared from circumstances of which I’ll never know. At the same time I must also be convinced of the prospect of being preserved for summits as yet unseen. There is little reason, however, to expect that my tendency will go away that coaxes what won’t sway to my persistence. Being informed and perceptive means identifying which doors to keep trying to open and which ones to simply appreciate from the outside. Human ambition desires the brass rings that will compensate for the missed attempts. From whence come obstacles that conceal our fortunes? Yet it is an unknown measure of good fortune- of providence- to accept having been spared. As this comes to mind, I think of being cared for in excess of my assumptions. An awareness of grace encourages me to look forward. Being attuned to promise awakens me to the immediate, effectively diverting any backward brooding.


This past weekend, I parked near some personal crossroads, deciding to do some walking instead of windshield-musing. A better idea. Just as thoughts can exhume and enshrine, conscious consideration can bury with full civilian honors. And even after the phantoms are ushered away, there remains a knowledge of meaning beneath the surfaces of streets, buildings, and establishments. Perception blended with remembrance does not torment, but is a dignifying blessing. All has purpose and potential to contribute depth to living. In The Wisdom of the Sands, Saint-Exupéry wrote, “Nothing have you to hope for if yours is the misfortune of being blind to that light which emanates not from things but from the meaning of things.” Indeed, it serves us well to make sense and peace with our days and adventures. We become our own discerning historians and archivists. Though we are our own best-qualified rememberers, some light treading is needed to keep things accurate and in context. Inevitably the immediate is sufficient. Of course there is plenty of room for improvement. But living implies an openness to people I will meet who will describe things as yet unknown to me- perhaps providing a key I would not have otherwise found. Such gains represent treasures along the way, advancing from thoughts of what I missed (or what may have missed me). So long as one lives, summations are incomplete at best; the reach of significance still incalculable.