Intro & Preface & Contents
Previous: I. Time regained
I have been spending a week in Somerset. The right June weather put me in the mind for rambling, and my thoughts turned to the Severn Sea. I went to Glastonbury and Wells, and on to Cheddar, and so to the shore of the Channel at Clevedon, remembering my holiday of fifteen years ago, and too often losing myself in a contrast of the man I was then and what I am now. Beautiful beyond all words of description that nook of oldest England; but that I feared the moist and misty winter climate, I should have chosen some spot below the Mendips for my home and resting-place. Unspeakable the charm to my ear of those old names; exquisite the quiet of those little towns, lost amid tilth and pasture, untouched as yet by the fury of modern life, their ancient sanctuaries guarded, as it were, by noble trees and hedges overrun with flowers. In all England there is no sweeter and more varied prospect than that from the hill of the Holy Thorn at Glastonbury; in all England there is no lovelier musing place than the leafy walk beside the Palace Moat at Wells. As I think of the golden hours I spent there, a passion to which I can give no name takes hold upon me; my heart trembles with an indefinable ecstasy...
As a child I used to sleep in a room hung round with prints after English landscape painters -- those steel engravings so common half a century ago... Perhaps... that early memory explains why I love a good black-and-white print even more than a good painting. And -- to draw yet another inference -- here may be a reason for the fact that, through my youth and early manhood, I found more pleasure in nature represented by art than in nature herself... It is a passion [for nature] -- Heaven be thanked -- that grows with my advancing years. The last thought of my brain as I lie dying will be that of sunshine upon an English meadow.
Alpha.
I wonder if that really was his last thought. Doubtful, but who knows. I can think of worse last thoughts. In general, I’m opposed to an obsession with transcendence, with meditation to free oneself from this mundane reality. Here’s a quote from Waking Up by Sam Harris:
The feeling that we call “I” is an illusion. There is no discrete self or ego living like a Minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. And the feeling that there is—the sense of being perched somewhere behind your eyes, looking out at a world that is separate from yourself—can be altered or entirely extinguished. Although such experiences of “self-transcendence” are generally thought about in religious terms, there is nothing, in principle, irrational about them. From both a scientific and a philosophical point of view, they represent a clearer understanding of the way things are. Deepening that understanding, and repeatedly cutting through the illusion of the self, is what is meant by “spirituality” in the context of this book.
I give spiritual people credit for at least concerning themselves with profound rather than superficial thoughts, but this eagerness to transcend the self and to achieve a deeper experience of reality is also a slap in the face of life. Another quote from Sam Harris:
With practice, mindfulness becomes a well-formed habit of attention, and the difference between it and ordinary thinking will become increasingly clear. Eventually, it begins to seem as if you are repeatedly awakening from a dream to find yourself safely in bed. No matter how terrible the dream, the relief is instantaneous. And yet it is difficult to stay awake for more than a few seconds at a time.
My friend Joseph Goldstein, one of the finest vipassana teachers I know, likens this shift in awareness to the experience of being fully immersed in a film and then suddenly realizing that you are sitting in a theater watching a mere play of light on a wall. Your perception is unchanged, but the spell is broken. Most of us spend every waking moment lost in the movie of our lives.
Better to dream than to realize a perfect state of mindfulness -- though so many of the people I see or communicate with could benefit from a little more mindfulness. Mindfulness in moderation, perhaps.
But on my deathbed I suspect my concern will be less where I’ve been and more where I’m going. So here, at least, transcendence really ought to be the order of the day. Rather than your life flashing before your eyes, I would rather see my future. Perhaps some previous experience with meditation would make it easier for me to slip away when the time comes? Perhaps there is a sort of tantric meditation where you go through the motions, as it were, but not to transcendental orgasm. Until the very end. Now that would be a Happy Ending.
Beta.
One problem with being “retired,” or even semi-retired, is that it becomes difficult to escape your routine. How do you take a break from doing next to nothing? Today I rode the bus over the long bridge to California. By which I mean a nearby “city” that is more like the rest of California in being warmer and sunnier and where the built environment was designed with cars, not people, in mind. It also is the closest place with the kind of bookstore that has a massive magazine stand, where you can select a bunch of glossy design porn magazines and take them to the cafe to peruse at your leisure. And their snacks are not bad either.
Today their selection of architecture, design, and decorating magazines was pretty underwhelming... but good enough. No Habitus, for example (a stunning looking magazine from Australia that usually also features interesting houses.) Most of the magazines today were domestic, not my favorite Brit and Australian magazines. Not even any Italian magazines, though those are usually problematic anyway.
As much as I love looking at these periodicals, and the houses (and other projects) in them, I can’t imagine spending the money and time that these clients lavish on their houses. In a single magazine I might love three different houses or apartments that could not be more different. I always wonder what the clients think as they see their lovely new digs in this public way next to other stunning examples of design. Do any of them think, “Wow, look at what they did. I think I like that better.”
Before I catch the bus back I’m going to have dinner in the kind of restaurant I never frequent at home. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just the kind of chain place you can find all over Generica. It will be fine in an nondescript sort of way -- appropriate for my holiday.
Next: Summer III. Izaak Walton.
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