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.

Summer I. Time regained

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Spring XXV. The end of spring

To-day, as I was reading in the garden, a waft of summer perfume -- some hidden link of association in what I read -- I know not what it may have been -- took me back to school-boy holidays: I recovered with strange intensity that lightsome mood of long release from tasks, of going away to the seaside, which is one of childhood’s blessings. I was in the train; no rushing express, such as bears you great distances; the sober train which goes to no place of importance, which lets you see the white steam of the engine float and fall upon a meadow ere you pass. Thanks to a good and wise father, we youngsters saw nothing of seaside places where crowds assemble; I am speaking; too, of a time more than forty years ago, when it was still possible to find on the coasts of northern England, east or west, spots known only to those who loved the shore for its beauty and its solitude. At every station the train stopped; little stations, decked with beds of flowers, smelling warm in the sunshine where country-folk got in with baskets, and talked in an unfamiliar dialect, an English which to us sounded almost like a foreign tongue. Then the first glimpse of the sea; the excitement of noting whether the tide was high or low -- stretches of sand and weedy pools, or halcyon wavelets frothing at their furthest reach, under the sea-banks starred with convolvulus. Of a sudden, our station!

Ah, that taste of the brine on a child’s lips! Nowadays, I can take holiday when I will, and go whithersoever it please me; but that salt kiss of the sea air I shall never know again. My senses are dulled; I cannot get so near to nature; I have a sorry dread of her clouds, her wind, and must walk with tedious circumspection where once I ran and leapt exultingly... I can but look at what I once enjoyed.

Alpha.

Swann’s Way, the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time was published (at the author’s expense) in 1913. Both Gissing, in Ryecroft, and Proust played repeatedly with this idea of the past being brought to mind by one thing or another. Proust was more determined in hunting down and articulating the triggers and process of this phenomenon. The mechanism is perhaps not so important as the result -- but I think Proust is right in emphasizing taste and smell as having the most profound affect on reviving our memories.

Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of many years and experiences. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once, A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

-Diane Ackerman A Natural History of the Senses

I spent my earliest childhood years in the hot and humid heart of America, in a region defined by great rivers. Ever since, I have lived in the arid to Mediterranean West. On the rare occasions when some meteorological anomaly gives us a hot and humid day -- with perhaps a rain shower falling on steaming asphalt -- I am transported back in time to my childhood in a most powerful way. Not only do I remember the street and the houses, but also a hint of the feeling of being the child I was then, when this block of an old, but ordinary, suburban street was my whole world. I wonder then what’s become of the girl who was my best friend then -- who, I’m sad to say, I never think of otherwise.

In all of these instances, I think we recall ourselves, not a child we once were. It is Proust burying his face in his aunt’s quilt, Gissing (I’m guessing) recalling the sea air, and me wondering about my friend and hoping the gas station on the corner still has an Orange Crush in the old coffin-style soft drink dispensing machine.

Beta.

I finally gave up on my old cell phone today and bought its replacement. With these phones you usually have the option of saving your address book to the SIM card. I imagined that you could then transfer your information to a new phone along with the SIM card -- and perhaps, if the new phone is identical with the old, that does work. But it didn’t in my case. So all my information needs to be re-entered. And the phone’s interface seems to have been designed to punish you for buying an amazingly cheap device. Fair enough, I suppose -- though I hardly use the thing so I feel no urge to spend more than $17.

As always with these modern marvels, the manual describes a plethora of features I will never use. You’d think they might punish you for being thrifty by only giving you a few, easy to use features. But apparently not. Still, the tiny thing is an awkward calculator, a dubious alarm clock and timer, a tedious calendar, and a memo pad of doubtful value, in addition to its voice and text communication capabilities. I can remember when I would have paid much more for a device that could have done any of these things just as badly. And, as a person who remembers telephone party-lines, the basic voice and text capabilities still amaze me.

I just hope this phone doesn’t end up going through the washer like the last one did -- but that was many years ago.

Postscript: Alas, alas! I thought the little wonder had survived it's bath unharmed but the "1" key rarely works now. Perhaps it will recover with time and use? But probably not.

Next: Summer II. Traveling.

Spring VIII. Nature and society + special moments

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: VII. Roots of philosophy

The early coming of spring in this happy Devon gladdens my heart. I think with chill discomfort of those parts of England where the primrose shivers beneath a sky of threat rather than of solace. Honest winter, snow-clad and with the frosted beard, I can welcome not un-cordially, but that long deferment of the calendar’s promise, that weeping gloom of March and April, that bitter blast outraging the honour of May -- how often has it robbed me of heart and hope. Here, scarce have I assured myself that the last leaf has fallen, scarce have I watched the glistening of hoar-frost upon the evergreens, when a breath from the west thrills me with anticipation of bud and bloom. Even under this grey-billowing sky, which tells that February is still in rule: --

Mild winds shake the elder brake,

And the wandering herdsmen know

That the whitethorn soon will blow.

I have been thinking of those early years of mine in London, when the seasons passed over me unobserved, when I seldom turned a glance toward the heavens, and felt no hardship in the imprisonment of boundless streets. It is strange now to remember that for some six or seven years I never looked upon a meadow, never traveled even so far as to the tree-bordered suburbs. I was battling for dear life; on most days I could not feel certain that in a week’s time I should have food and shelter. It would happen, to be sure, that in hot noons of August my thoughts wandered to the sea; but so impossible was the gratification of such desire that it never greatly troubled me... I remember afternoons of languor, when books were a weariness, and no thought could be squeezed out of the drowsy brain; then would I betake myself to one of the parks, and find refreshment without any enjoyable sense of change. Heavens, how I laboured in those days! And how far I was from thinking of myself as a subject for compassion! That came later, when my health had begun to suffer from excess of toil, from bad air, bad food, and many miseries; then awoke the maddening desire for countryside and sea-beach -- and for other things yet more remote... Sound sleep (often in places I now dread to think of) sent me fresh to the battle each morning, my breakfast, sometimes, no more than a slice of bread and a cup of water. As human happiness goes, I am not sure I was not then happy.

Most men who go through a hard time in their youth are supported by companionship... Of my position, the peculiarity was that I never belonged to any cluster... The truth is that I have never learnt to regard myself as a “member of society.” For me, there have always been two entities -- myself and the world, and the normal relation between these two has been hostile. Am I not still a lonely man, as far as ever from forming part of the social order?

This, of which I once was scornfully proud, seems to me now, if not a calamity, something I would not choose if life were to live again.

Alpha.

One of the things I like best about Henry Ryecroft is that he is even more of an anti-social misanthrope than I am. I find myself thinking I tire of, and eventually avoid, the people I meet because they are mostly so much younger. That it is a conflict of generations. But then I remember I’m not much better pleased with the “friends” I’ve known for decades.

Society and friendship can be a wonderful thing, but it is often more wonderful in theory or in expectation than in reality.  One of the mixed blessings of belonging to an online community is that you learn how many people’s lives are racked by depression or anxiety. As a person who enjoys “fixing” or solving problems, I find people who are overwhelmingly depressed or anxious for no particular reason very frustrating. And since, in the long run, we are all alone anyway, I prefer Ryecroft’s peaceful isolation to the doubtful consolations of friendship.

And suppose you do achieve that perfect connection with another person. It is a wonderful thing, I don't know that anything is better, but what if you then lose that connection. Joyce Carol Oates was devastated by the death of her first husband who had been, I think she would have said, the better part of her self. Within a year she had found a new "better part of her self," and had moved on.

It puzzles me how few (male) characters in fiction achieve or even seek this sort of a connection. Faust (Goethe) is all about the Eternal-Feminine but seems to care very little about actual women. I could say the same for the male protagonists of The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq and for Bernard Marx in Brave New World. Marcel, in In Search of Lost Time, while usually consumed by a very particular sort of fetish that (in the novel) focuses on one female or another, is at least interested in women and ends up in some sort of a relationship with Gilbert. Christopher Tietjens, in Parade's End, for all his other failings, does form a connection with Valentine.

I try to tell my young online friends that, in the long run, and in the end, you are on your own, but I don't press it because no one wants to hear that, and in some cases I will be wrong... at least for a time.

Beta.

This section also reminds me of one of my favorite passages from Proust -- favorite because it resonates so well with my own feelings. Frustratingly, I can’t find the passage (although I’m almost certain it's in the 2nd volume).

Imagine the perfect quote here. Perhaps a taste of madeleine with a splash of tisane will help you with this. Adopt a French accent in your mind. You are a young, hyper-sensitive, young man on your first holiday at the beach in Brittany. You are overwhelmed by an aesthetic feeling as you contemplate some transitory view. You long to share this moment with another person but then you realize that if you had company the moment would quite possibly be ruined. You would be too involved in conversation to fully attend to the marvel before you (especially if your company was in any way connected to the Guermantes dynasty). The extent to which you were engaged with your friend would necessitate a compensatory disengagement from the very thing you wish to share. And it would be even worse if your friend was in a “mood,” and utterly impossible if your friend was the Baron.

The longing to share special moments with people close to you is so often spoiled, even when such a person is at hand, by our inability to comprehend another’s experience. Their experience of our “special moment” is not the same as ours. At best it may be a sort of translation. Worse, our “special moment” may be undermined by the mere presence of the other person.

Art -- painting, photography, literature, film, even music -- may be a better attempt to share those special moments with others. Within art we can control their experience and curate their impressions. We can try to bring to the experience the emotion we feel.

For Proust, in this passage, you need to keep in mind the character’s youth and delicate health; for Ryecroft, his lifetime of travail and his surprising respite and new found sense of peace.

And it gets worse... If our special moment is based on the evidence of our senses, as it most probably is, we have to consider the very real possibility that our friend does not perceive the world quite the way we do. Synesthesia is, in itself, freakish enough, but once you are aware of it you have to think that Synesthetes only know they are Synesthetes because their condition is so extreme. If it was less extreme, who would know? Just recently I took an online color test and discovered I can distinguish fewer colors than is normal. I'm not color blind, but where I see a shade of blue or red or green, most people can distinguish several shades of that color. I can't imagine any way this detracts from my life, but it does mean that I see the world slightly differently than others do.

If what I know as "red" is what other's know as "blue" is an entirely different question and one no one can answer.

Here's a fascinating passage from The God Delusion that Richard Dawkins really should contemplate some more:

What we see of the real world is not the unvarnished real world but a model of the real world, regulated and adjusted by sense data -- a model that is constructed so that it is useful for dealing with the real world. The nature of that model depends on the kind of animal we are. A flying animal needs a different kind of world model from a walking, a climbing or a swimming animal... I've speculated, in The Blind Watchmaker and elsewhere, that bats may 'see' colour with their ears. The world-model that a bat needs, in order to navigate through three dimensions catching insects, must surely be similar to the model that a swallow needs in order to perform much the same task... Once again, the perceptions that we call colours are tools used by our brains to label important distinctions in the outside world. Perceived hues -- what philosophers call qualia -- have no intrinsic connection with lights of particular wavelengths. They are internal labels that are available to the brain, when it constructs its model of external reality...

Next: Spring IX. Independence, forsooth!

Spring IX. Independence, forsooth! + annotated books

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: VIII. Nature and society

For more that six years I trod the pavements, never stepping once upon mother earth -- for the parks are but pavements disguised with a growth of grass. Then the worst was over. Say I the worst? No, no; things far worse were to come; the struggle against starvation has its cheery side when one is young and vigorous.  But at all events I had begun to earn a living; I held assurance of food and clothing for half a year at a time; granted health, I might hope to draw my not insufficient wages for many a twelvemonth. And they were the wages of work done independently, when and where I would. I thought with horror of lives spent in an office, with an employer to obey. The glory of the career of letters was its freedom, its dignity!

The fact of the matter was, of course, that I served, not one master, but a whole crowd of them. Independence, forsooth! If my writing failed to please editor, publisher, public, where was my daily bread? ... I marvel at the recollection that for a good score of years this pen and a scrap of paper clothed and fed me and my household, kept me in physical comfort, held at bay all those hostile forces of the world ranged against one who has no resource save in his own right hand.

But I was thinking of the year which saw my first exodus from London. On an irresistible impulse, I suddenly made up my mind to go into Devon, a part of England I had never seen. At the end of March I escaped from my grim lodgings, and, before I had time to reflect on the details of my undertaking, I found myself sitting in sunshine at a spot very near to where I now dwell -- before me the  green valley of the broadening Exe and the pine-clad ridge of Haldon. That was one of the moments of my life when I have tasted exquisite joy... The light, the air, had for me something of the supernatural -- affecting me, indeed, only less than at a later time did the atmosphere of Italy...

I had stepped into a new life. Between the man I had been and that which I now became there was a very notable difference. In a single day I had matured astonishingly; which means, no doubt, that I suddenly entered into conscious enjoyment of powers and sensibilities which had been developing unknown to me...

... so intense was my delight in the beautiful world about me that I forgot even myself; I enjoyed without retrospect or forecast; I, the egoist in grain, forgot to scrutinize my own emotions, or to trouble my happiness by comparison with others’ happier fortune. It was a healthful time; it gave me a new lease of life, and taught me -- in so far as I was teachable -- how to make use of it.

Alpha.

I experienced a 20th century equivalent of his life of the “independent” man of letters. For about a decade I made my living as a freelance computer programer. I too was proud not to be a mere employee, only to end up a contractor dependent on a variety of bosses who were pleased to leave me to my own devices whenever there was no work to be done. It all worked out well enough, but the only security was in the knowledge that I was always on my own. Others might be blindsided by a layoff but for me the future was always contingent.

Perhaps this is a bit like the difference between being a theist and an atheist. The theist believes there is a Guiding Hand conducting his life while the atheist realizes he’s on his own. An analogy could be that the atheist is like a free climber on the side of a cliff, carefully negotiating the hand and foot holds, while the theist boldly climbs the rock face secure in his reliance on his safety line -- which is not actually secured to anything.

Beta.

Since my last rereading of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, I’ve been wanting an illustrated and hyper-annotated versions of all the books I read which are set in an earlier time. Rereading Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End added another aspect to this desired annotation, as I also want to know not just what a word like “Tory” means, but what it means to the author. A quick trip to Wikipedia tells you too little or too much in such a case, as the meaning of the term changed from generation to generation and, at times, almost from year to year.

Ideally, I want texts that make clear what the author meant by his use of every word, since the meaning of words changes so quickly. And this doesn’t even touch on the additional issue of a character using a word or term incorrectly. Here’s an example, in The Elegance of the Hedgehog, one of Muriel Barbery’s characters uses the word “Epicurean.” The common usage of that term means the opposite of the word’s original, philosophical, meaning. Epicurus wanted a diet that would be so simple to obtain that there would be little chance of your ever craving something you couldn’t easily supply. The world, however, thinks of an Epicurean as a gourmand, with highly refined tastes.

Given Barbery’s background in philosophy, I’m sure she knows the correct usage. There’s every reason to think her character also should know this, but could Barbery be using it in the more conventional way to be less confusing to her readership? I’m not positive.

There are many other cases where the correct meaning of a term is less certain and where the author or character could well be under the impression that the term means something other than your understanding. If only we could see an image of all the artifacts referenced, hear the music mentioned, and get a quick definition of all the terms used. Is that asking too much?

This is a bit random (joke) but I’m including this Vsauce video here because it discusses the change over time in the use of the word “random”, and also because it talks about Quantum entanglement, something I will refer to later.

Next: Spring X. Salad days