Summer X. Pilgrimage

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Summer IX. Anabasis

I sometimes think I will go and spend the sunny half of a twelvemonth in wandering about the British Isles. There is so much of beauty and interest that I  have not seen, and I grudge to close my eyes on this beloved home of ours, leaving any corner of it unvisited. Often I wander in fancy over all the parts I know, and grow restless with desire at familiar names which bring no picture to memory. My array of country guide-books... sets me roaming; the only dull pages in them are those that treat of manufacturing towns. Yet I shall never start on that pilgrimage. I am too old, too fixed in habits. I dislike the railway; I dislike hotels. I should grow homesick for my library, my garden, the view from my windows. And then -- I have such a fear of dying anywhere but under my own roof.

As a rule, it is better to re-visit only in imagination the places which have greatly charmed us, or which, in the retrospect, seem to have done so. Seem to have charmed us, I say; for the memory we form, after a certain lapse of time, of places where we lingered, often bears but a faint resemblance to the impression received at the time; what in truth may have been very moderate enjoyment, or enjoyment greatly disturbed by inner or outer circumstances, shows in the distance as a keen delight, or as deep, still happiness. On the other hand, if memory creates no illusion, and the name of a certain place is associated with one of the golden moments of life, it were rash to hope that another visit would repeat the experience of a by-gone day. For it was not merely the sights that one beheld which were the cause of joy and peace; however lovely the spot, however gracious the sky, these things external would not have availed, but for contributory movements of mind and heart and blood, the essentials of the man as then he was.

... No, no; it is not the place that I remember; it is the time of life, the circumstances, the mood, which at that moment fell so happily together... The place no longer exists; it never existed save for me. For it is the mind which creates the world about us, and, even though we stand side by side in the same meadow, my eyes will never see what is beheld by yours, my heart will never stir to the emotions with which yours is touched.

Alpha.

I can’t help mentioning that I would kill to ride the railway he says he dislikes here.

Again he addresses the power -- but also the unreliability -- of memory. Again we consider the subjectivity of experience. The mysterious nature of our special moments and, for that matter, of our perception of the world. Not only does reality exist only in our consciousness of it, but our consciousness -- our state of mind -- shapes that reality. Both Gissing and Proust acknowledge our inability to really share a moment, or an experience of reality, with others. Without reference to Phenomenology or Quantum Idealism, they call into question the objective reality of the world about us. Not only does the past no longer exist, it only existed subjectively in the first place.

Decades ago a freak cold spell dropped a considerable amount of snow on the top of Mt. Diablo near here. A friend and I decided to check it out and we drove as far as was plowed and then climbed to the top on foot through the new fallen snow. While we walked up and then back, several thunderstorms raced north around us and one ran right over us with visibility dropping suddenly from a hundred miles to maybe ten yards as the snow fell out of the dark cloud around us. The observation tower at the summit was draped in ice and surrounded by mounds of snow that, in a very few places, hinted at the benches and other everyday artifacts that one would ordinarily find there. I had never been up there before and was so enchanted by the winter wonderland aspect, that I knew, even then, that I would never return, and I never have. Going back would be like seeing the pumpkin and mice the day after Cinderella’s ball... better to look at the photos and remember how it was that freakish day.  

Next: Summer XI. Break of day.