tranquility

“St. Augustine’s language is rich and colorful,
but often lacking in precision. His was not a didactic mind,
and preoccupations of scientific methodology
were foreign to his outlook.
He wrote giving free reign to his thought.”

~ Maurice de Wulf, History of Medieval Philosophy, vol. 1, ch. 38

Maybe we have it in common that for a long time people have been telling you not to work too hard. Perhaps you’ve also regularly shrugged it off, when those around you tell you to get rest, slow down, and- perish the thought- “don’t worry so much.” And my habitual dismissiveness is automatic and reflexive, similar to waving off a gnat. But suddenly, between strings of tasks and obligations, fatigue brings all those friendly observations to mind. During those pauses, it becomes evident how slowing-down can be daunting. Striving and reaching for a day off, the result is a kind of reverse-inertia: instead of efforts to get moving, it takes focused intention to be able to stop. Within the pausing are detectable elements of fear, especially as the distractions are insistently pared away. Perhaps “don’t work too hard” can be recast as “make sure you listen to your thoughts.”

Even as we cordon off our privacies- and especially so- there remains a universal need for healthful silence. This is to say settling those thoughts, and doing so without things purporting to be “smart” devices. It can be disarming, but I’ve found it to be worthwhile. The observation of contrasts serves as a good teacher, and in this case the classroom is aboard public transit. I saw the positive side of things during subway rides on the day of a downtown festival. Boarding an early Red Line, as usual with a book, the size of the crowd was noticeable. What was even more striking to me were the sounds of jovial chatting and laughter on the trains. Instead of siloed phone-fiddling, most of the riders were animatedly facing one another, many using their phones to take pictures. I really enjoyed seeing this. At my own destination, atop the Boston Athenaeum, I savoured both the celebratory commotion I witnessed earlier, along with the quiet of wafting treetops at terrace level. Reading and writing material in front of me, I still know to look around and just listen to my thoughts.

Nobody will dare us to be idle; we have to be self-aware enough to find opportunities around the busyness for tranquility. Finding opportunities means somehow finding parcels of time and making space. All too rare! But, essentially, the proliferation of resorts and spas demonstrates how so many crave some sort of therapeutic downtime- albeit at high costs. Valuable as stillness is, there needn’t be great expense to pause and reflect.

Being able to unplug the stimuli and simply air my thoughts allows me to perceive with a wider perspective. Before the pandemic, for many years I regularly made pilgrimage retreats, often twice a year. With the combination of compounded work commitments, being on a diminished staff, and various communities’ lodging limitations, I’ve had to be especially resourceful- sometimes succeeding to briefly get away to peaceful and contemplative surroundings. For the most part, aside from a few hours on a weekend, time to simply abide (as differentiated from the more active aspects of journaling my thoughts) happens between lines of reflective reading during my workday commutes. As philosophical historians go, de Wulf (quoted above) was much less admiring of Saint Augustine than Copleston. Well, I prefer Copleston- both as writer and historian. Admittedly, my own thinking is also much more speculative and metaphysical, and less mathematical. And I’ve never found Augustine to be “lacking in precision.” But I’ve still enjoyed de Wulf’s works nonetheless, and really relished his criticism of the great North African philosopher saint: “He wrote giving free reign to his thought.” This is indeed as the motto posted at the Maine Turnpike entrance affirms, “The Way Life Should Be.” Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t bother writing if I couldn’t give free reign to my thoughts!

I like to remind my philosophy students that we converge at the meeting-point of the ideal and the visible world, which is to say the conceptual and the physical. But in philosophy the ideal is solid in its own right. Giving free reign to our thoughts allows for understanding to accompany our perceptions. Let ideals be practical, even if simply in our musings. There’s more than enough to limit our aspirations; it’s for the individual to choose contemplative ways. Release the margins, as possible, and muse. Simply being is not so simple, as our scattered thoughts can over-occupy us, and need to be somehow directed. In his Breviloquium, Bonaventure described human capacity as “born to magnificently grasp great and numerous ideas.” With inspiration, grasp means we can calm them, too. Healthful silence serves to nourish, but we must each know to make the kind of space which is both physical and metaphorical. The Psalmist articulated the wish for a fully renewed heart and spirit. And the heart, Saint Gregory observed in the Philokalia, is the “shrine and chief intellectual organ of the body.” Not only can learning can reach our depths, in contemplative stillness, but as well our yearnings become most evident to us. “Less is more” surely has a spiritual application- if anything, as time and space fillers get cleared away in favor of unstructured attentiveness.

collecting thoughts

“There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us:
observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation.

Observation collects facts; reflection combines them;
experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound,
and our experiments exact.
We rarely see these three means combined;
and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common”.

~ Denis Diderot, On the Interpretation of Nature, no. 15 (1753).


1

With year after year of completed projects under the bridge, with more in progress and up ahead, there remain personal goals yet unfulfilled. Amidst achievements and recognition thus far, I particularly cherish a remark in the Comments section on my 2nd grade report card, from Public School Number 13, in New York City. Rating 6-year-old me, Mrs. Berger wrote: “He daydreams too much in class.” I think that comment was meant as a scolding, and certainly my parents were not impressed. I remember feeling embarrassed, but characteristically undeterred by the reproach. Gazing through windows is something compellingly natural to me, and whatever was interesting below on 94th Street was surely upstaging whatever was being taught at the front of the classroom. I’m actually proud of that remark. And I’ve grown to appreciate that, perhaps inadvertently, Mrs. Berger implied that a bit of requisite daydreaming was permissible- but not too much. For artists and all other creative thinkers, musing is essential. Untethered contemplation is a surer way to make sense of life, than to swish away at a smartphone.

By observation, we can really grapple and reckon with insights, in order to advance to our subsequent steps. Too much precious energy and time get squandered in wheelspinning ruts. Peaceful and uncluttered headspace is neither freely given, nor valued, in this culture of competitive perpetual motion. But the daunting side of an intermission is in the awkwardness of decompressing- worthwhile as it is- to be better able to recollect. Significant respite time away from the job continues to be practically impossible, so I cobble what I can when it’s possible, noticing the difficulty of turning my off-duty thoughts away from the workplace. Decades of diligence and industriousness have kept me employed, but a compounded effort is needed to remain artistically and intellectually fit for creativity. Good thing for daydreaming too much in class. I recommend it.

aperch at the window, College Club of Boston

2

Hopeful and constructive dreaming goes a very long way in the direction of bringing goodness to fruition. If you needed yet another reason to write daily in a journal, now you have this. And write manually, keeping in mind the untethered and focused aspects of musing and aspiring! While in the liminality of overburdened undercapacity, I’m egging on those musing traits with writing, photography, and dreaming of better days. If anything, this helps my frame of mind, dealing with the here-and-now. All such pursuits are enveloped in the all-comprising everyday life of the spirit, which also includes contemplative reading.

Pursuing my studies in philosophy is replete with discoveries, and I’m further encouraged as I teach some of these topics to students. The readings for my personal explorations are selected with personal development in mind. In turn, because I’m often studying such rare materials, I produce my own annotated indexes. These are very useful as references which I later share, and the notebooks themselves are great for me to read. Indeed, and true to my profession, I also digitize my indexes and notebooks; these are my “preservation backups,” as well as searchable. These personal studies are entirely fueled by my own interests and discerned needs; philosophy consoles, as Boethius knew very well. In Love Enkindled, Saint Bonaventure wrote about how contemplation brings us to the spark of discernment, which he called synderesis scintilla. This comes to mind, when I’m conscious about redirecting my thoughts. Conscience is awakened, Bonaventure wrote, by moving from error to consideration of the human condition, to meditating upon what is good. Finding ways through hardships, I’ve kept to these studies, as well as spiritual health, staying intellectually active and away from burning out.

a floricultural cabinet

Among the many ways to identify my full-time work, I most often think of day-to-day torchbearing and pouring-out; preserving and explicating. Essentially, this is the joining of words with readers. Visitors, researchers, and classes think of archives as cabinets of curiosity. In this sense, cabinet as a synthesizing, thematic compendium. Perhaps they are, increasingly standing out in contrast to the electronics that promote content over substance. And this isn’t to denounce literacy’s numerous formats; I use and present them all. Indeed, my preference continues for the reflective surfaces of imprints and manuscripts. The physical items themselves have stories. As a conservator I’m acquainted with how they’re made, and as an archivist I’m making comparative references and metadata for all manner of seekers. My role also takes the form of inadvertent confessor: patrons from teenage to old age tell me about how they favor real books and want to handwrite. Well, go ahead. Don’t let me stop you. I’ll often ask, “Do you keep a journal?” Muse away and expand your mind. Be that person getting seated on a bus with a book or a journal, instead of catatonically fiddling with a phone. As you glance between daydreaming out the window toward the streets and reading, notice the gawking expressions as the entranced stare into their devices. The side of me that is still a skeptical little kid at P.S. 13 says, “I don’t want to be like that.” If your musing and observing is bold enough, you’ll be better able to make fun of your self.


3

aboard a trawler, in winter

Integral to doing everything I can manage in order to stay mentally healthy is perseverance in seeking and exploring ideas. Yes, there’s the musing I’ve mentioned here. Plants need water and natural light to keep growing. My observing intuitively turns to words and imagery. Often, both turn up during a good stroll. An expression of mine from my teen years, which I still use when taking up a camera on the way out the door, is “I’m going out to look for photographs.” There are few things more sensible to me. Noticing the trawlers docked along the Portland waterfront reminds me of how I wind up pulling ideas from the depths. The nets on those boats drag down deep and far enough to bring up all kinds of shellfish and groundfish. Maybe our minds have their own microscopic versions of trawling pulleys. Similarly, I trawl for ideas- unforced and all quite naturally. Something seems always to remind me of something else. Moving through the day are gleanings of thoughts. Bus and train rides, lunch breaks, and laundromats provide scenarios for the culling and recording of ideas. Part of that is my making sense of changes, disappointed expectations, hopes, and things I witness. And ironies. As I’ve done for many years, the idea jottings are in pencil, and the elaborated thoughts get their due in pen-and-ink. Navigating by instinct implies a certain amount of individual roadbuilding. The voyage is not an end, but surely a means. Creativity, learning, and helping others learn broadly serves as an itinerary.

trawlers and ideas

thought

“Toute notre dignité consiste donc en la pensée. C’est de là qu’il nous faut relever et non de l’espace et de la durée, que nous ne saurions remplir. Travaillons donc à bien penser: voilà le principe de la morale.”

(“All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavour, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality.”)

~ Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 347



provisioned and purposed

During these times of bunkering and hunkering, it seems many have been brought to consider the practical meaning of self-sufficiency. We need the comradeship of one another more than we may have previously realized. Many that have had to navigate this world in these recent months have seen how individuals’ safety precautions are mutually much broader safety precautions. My safety is equally your safety, too. Yet it may be instinctual for us to form ourselves and our lives toward goals of having everything we need. Is preparedness about survival, or is it more about fear of not having enough? And does the latter cause us to hoard more than is needed? Do we need to prove our self-sufficiency against a fragile security with abundance? All questions for an observer of a world of billions of little islands that long for connecting bridges. It has been crucial to find one’s own definition for preparedness. An expression like take care has derived a wishful connotation that has come to parallel the post-sneeze God bless you which originated during medieval plagues. Being prepared and provisioned is a motion toward continuity- toward survival and emergence.

As it has become vital to my own approach to survival, I’ll shift to a lighter musing- on this occasion, about provision. Since my childhood years, I’ve always been fascinated by intricately inclusive “kits” that provide all that is necessary to complete a task. By this, I mean a portable receptacle that can be taken to various locations so that you have what you need to accomplish a project. A first-aid kit wouldn’t quite fit my definition any more than a flatware drawer: these are gatherings of items to keep you going. I’m thinking much more along the lines of my tacklebox of archival conservation tools which I take with me to do fieldwork in libraries and museums. The box filled with tools I’ve gathered over the span of two decades contains what I need to solve just about any preservation problem. The spatulas, bone-folders, knives, tongs, cleaning instruments, gauges, among other tools are the “constants,” to which I’ll add rolls of various papers, board material, and even cameras- depending upon a specific project. It’s also at the heart of all my conservation workshop teaching. The box is always packed and at the ready, being a quintessential inclusive provisions kit.

Another everything-kit which I keep intact and at-the-ready is my larger tacklebox packed with all that is needed to do and to teach calligraphy. Many of my lettering projects are done on-location, including countless makerspaces I’ve led. It’s also easy for me to simply set the box near my desk, as everything’s gathered together and portable. The calligraphy box has many multiples of pen-holders, nibs, inkwells, and numerous related tools, so that I have what is needed just for myself- along with plenty of extras for others when I am teaching groups up to twenty people at a time. As with the book & paper conservation box, the calligraphy box has traveled many miles with me. On several occasions, I’ve journeyed with both kits to large teaching events at which I’ve taught both subjects. Indeed, there are more “free-standing” kits to mention, involving photography, writing, and sewing- as examples.

a thought kit

In ways that are similar to how we can outfit ourselves for purposes that are best accomplished with a supply kit, what about our thoughts? As we navigate life- especially amidst our respective isolated experiences- can a ready thought kit be appropriately stocked? We do, after all, carry our thoughts with us; consider how we naturally “collect our thoughts,” while trying to make sense of a situation. Recollection is one of my favorite words, particularly in the contemplative context of attention to the presence of the Divine within the soul. In addition to carrying our thoughts with us, we can also choose to “tap into” our thoughts, “calling to mind” impressions, memories, and ways of thinking. Very much as it is physically when assembling the essentials for a comprehensive tool kit, there are surely spiritual disciplines when deciding which thoughts are the best ones to keep in one’s conscientious stock. It also means making room by discarding and replacing various supplies that become outmoded and dulled.

There are certainly more “terrestrial” ways to curate knowledge to benefit our thinking processes and memories. Along with daily journaling, I’ve maintained a parallel run of chapbooks in which I jot down thoughts and found quotations. I’ve even digitally indexed a number of these chapbooks, to make things easier to find later. I transcribe my research gleanings from my travels, and back up the documents in ethereally-titled “cloud storage.” As well, two favorite pieces of digital technology are my portable netbook and a good spacious flash-drive. While I view these as tools themselves, and also as supply-kits, I’m well aware of the care needed to keep things intact and accessible. These are not necessarily thoughts, but surely aides-mémoires.

Among his many written thoughts, left to posterity on hundreds of small leaves of paper, the philosopher Blaise Pascal made thought a topic in itself. He affirmed how humans are capable of thinking at levels beyond all living beings. “Pensée fait la grandeur de l’homme,” which is to say “thought constitutes the greatness of humanity.” To think- to carefully and thoughtfully consider- is essential and is the means through which our greatness proceeds. Pascal elaborated that we humans are more than mere sentient creatures:

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him. The universe knows nothing of this.

Evidently there are reeds, thinking reeds, and minds like Pascal’s. Here he speaks about the paradox of our fragility and the enduring transcendence of our thoughts. In this transcendence, we do file our unique thoughts and accomplishments in the archives of our souls. Our most refined and substantial thoughts can be easily dissolved, but the spirit of our cultivation lives beyond finite days. We ponder fleetingly about eternity. The extent or the duration of thoughts cannot be known by an individual, yet so many of us, like Pascal, unhesitatingly make intellectual investments. It is undoubtedly worthwhile.


thoughtfully equipped

Being equipped with a multi-tiered kit of curated thoughts, the supplies are meant to be used. Theory meets practice when learning meets the road. Attentiveness to observation can be refined into applicable treasure. But it’s easier said than done, to be sure. During this protracted pandemic, that carefully constructed trove of thoughts is put intensely to the test. What are the recollections that right the ship? Deep into the wilderness of bad news, misery, and barricades- we must dwell upon things that console and help light the way. Although most of this past year has offered no opportunities to venture out as I’ve always liked to do, the venturing has had to be inward. New learning and new thoughts can certainly be pursued and noted; I’ve been doing that as much as possible with my existing resources. There remain thoughts to be held every day. I continue looking forward to the prospect of writing about these times in retrospect. Between my apartment, my workplace “bubble” (at which I spend 2 of my 5 workweek days), and my few and critical errands, I also make time to maintain letter correspondence with friends. We write to one another, each from our own circumstances of exile. Much like listening to a calming radio broadcast, the letters I receive are living messages from another world.

spare parts

Provisions of the spirit are not always necessarily major concepts or “large events” committed to memory. My own stock of inspiring impressions consists of what I call spare parts. Subtle enough to fit between events and complexities, spare-part thoughts can be equated with cooking spices at the ready as a pinch or a dash may be needed. They are in the forms of things said to me, words I’ve read and remembered (and very likely written down), as well as images engraved in my memory. One evening last week, I called in to my friend Jordan Rich’s radio programme, broadcast from Boston, when he brought up the topic of writing and correspondence; this was a way to chime in and cheer him on at the same time. A parallel thread about gratitude gave me a chance to speak to a cherished spare part. He asked about causes for thankfulness, “and not the big-ticket items, but things you might be taking for granted.” I spoke about literacy, being grateful to know how to read and write. That’s a source beneath the source-material. Subtle as it’s been through the years, literacy is a profound blessing during these times of isolation.

Various friends tell me about seeking calm by focusing their thoughts on the “happy places” of their memories. There’s a lot of good sense in this, and I do some of that in my journaling as I seek healthy distractions these days and nights. These are certainly occasions for reaching for both the big-ticket reminders, as well as the more covert spare parts. I appreciate reaching for the wise words of compassionate people I’ve known. Years ago, I worked at a college which had been founded by a women’s Catholic religious order. The campus ministry was led by the sage and elderly Sister Sylvia, a mentor who taught me something about mentoring: she would say, “I won’t tell you what to do, but I’ll walk alongside you.” Metaphorical as that was to say, she is one who likes to walk. I have a vivid memory of how she would walk across the green quads of the campus with her rosary. She called this prayer-walking. Contemplative and practical. And praying the rosary itself is a plunging into the depths of spiritual memory, using the increments to find context in the timeless. Like Sister Sylvia who encourages generations of listeners to “shine that light,” holy writ comes to thought from everlasting with “walk while you have the light.*” Between there and here are the words of Sant Joan de Déu (San Juan de Dios), of the 16th century, urging us to keep going and “do all the good works you can while you still have the time.” Even from places of isolation, and even when the machinery indefinitely needs all the spare parts in the kit.

_________________________
* John 12:35

selah

“Two o’clock p.m.
The clock has let me know
I owe it for last week.
I’ve been punching in and out so much
My card is losing its heartbeat...

I underestimate the freedom You have given
in the open bars.
For life and love to play its course
inside the measure
of Your breaking arms

and rest, two, three, four...”

~ Sarah Masen, Break Hard the Wishbone

(Below: my pencil points to the word, "selah," in the Psalms.)




(Can you see counterforms among the typographic forms below?)