12. Day Commuter; "Unreal City"

Wednesday 4 December  Working at home. 9:15 mass.  I attend open house at Harts (bookstore/office supply) in Saffron Walden, and meet Rosemary Hayes and her partner (author, publisher).  I see Camilla and Leslie and buy some books.  Sunrise: 7:46; sunset: 3:54.

8:15 a.m. Yesterday I was a commuter for the day, attending a seminar on environmental impacts on lending.  It's the most I've thought about law since June.  I can see what I like: law is ordered, it solves problems and it is interesting.  Lawyers spend a lot of time trying to figure things out and make them right.  English lawyers (Scotland has different laws) seem to get to the point much quicker than Americans.  Americans tend to want to make everything perfect, so our legal solutions tend to much broader and more encompassing than over here.  Here, for example, in the environmental area, the owner and the producer are liable for polluting the environment; back at home everyone who has any remote connection with the property is liable.  As the senior partner (so glib, so smooth, so British!) remarked yesterday, Americans spend a lot of time fighting with each other over who is to blame (and paying their lawyers), rather than just cleaning up.

There seems to be a tacit acknowledgement over here that not everything is fair or completely just.  One should just look after oneself and if the laws are not completely fair, it's because things just can't be completely fair: we'll do the best we can, but we must have a workable system.

As I listened yesterday, engaged by what I heard, I saw myself falling for the attractive qualities I see in law: the intellectual pursuits, gathering the facts, solving the problems.  At the same time, I also saw the context within which we work: we serve (at least in my business) those with the money to pay us.  Our clients are not always the most noble.  I do not mean to say that I do disreputable things, only that the master that I serve could have higher ends.  This realization (and acting upon it) is what sabbaticals are all about.

Could I, would I have realized this before?  I think I did, then forgot, then tended to see things in more black and white terms (hate law, I must think of something different, etc.).  Law is not by its nature bad, it is a wonderful pursuit, but what are its ends and what should be its ends? 

I was also a real commuter for the day: taking the 7:19 train into London and returning on the 18:02 (the latter was late leaving Liverpool -- very unusual) and I hated it!

I enjoy trains very much: there is something about riding along in comfort down a certain path.  I realized, however, as I tramped up the steps at Audley End, with the other returning commuters, that the idea of becoming part of a commuter crowd, scrunched together on the morning and evening trains, is not for me.  I don't know what it is, perhaps it's just the humdrum ordinariness of it or becoming part of a crowd.  I felt like a steer on a cattle drive.  If I had to make a regular habit of the train, I would be sure to leave earlier or later to avoid the crowds.

Despite my feelings on commuting, I had a great time walking yesterday.  After grabbing a cup of cappucino at the station, I resolved to walk to the seminar at Aldergate.  The streets outside were wet under a heavy mist, but the mist seemed to quickly vanish and much of my walk was under cover, through the Barbican.

Inside the seminar I was an anonymous face and, other than a few pleasantries exchanged in passing, I spoke to no one.  Yet, there was a unity in the audience: we shared a common purpose and some common knowledge, very different from the train, where, on discharge, we all go our separate ways.  Why do I compare the dissimilar parts of the seminar (sitting in the audience) and the train ride (leaving)?  Was it the end of the day, another day lost that really bothered me? 

After the seminar, I walked in the opposite direction from someone with whom I had exchanged a few words, proceeding differently on purpose, as is my style.  I walked for quite a ways, down Charing Cross/Shaftesbury to Picadilly from High Holborn, then over to Regent Street.  As the day grew dark, I finished up at Fortunam and Mason, buying some cheese and meat, then took a cab back to the station.

As the cab passed Trafalgar Square, the Norwegian Christmas tree now in place (plain, huge, not lit, lovely shape, about 30 feet), I felt an immense surge of affection for London.  I don't know why it came at this particular time: the pleasure that suddenly came to me of being here in London with some money in my pocket.  Perhaps it was the clear night, overcast, but clear.  Perhaps it was the season.

From the top of Trafalgar, the route always taken by the taxis to Liverpool Street Station, there was a lovely view of Big Ben and Parliament, quite distinct in the clear night.  From Trafalgar, we drove down to Embankment where there was another lovely view, near Waterloo Bridge: to the east, St. Paul's, with its bright grey dome, and the City; to the west, Parliament; and, to the south, the many lights from the big buildings along the river.

So ended my day in London: a feeling of being high on the place, a feeling that I loved this city.  During my walk, everywhere just about, the streets had been crowded with people, especially on Regent, where the traffic wardens have megaphones and tell people to, "Stay off the street!" "Stay on the sidewalk!" and "Cross now!"  (It was hard to figure out where the magnified voices were coming from at first.)

My London high began to leave me as I sat down to share a small seat with a fellow passenger.  The job was complete as I got off the train, smelled urine from the shelter and joined the throng marching (yes, that's really what we do) up the steps.

Over and over again, I hear Eliot's lines, from Dante, "I had not thought death had undone so many."  Now that I have read the Inferno, I appreciate the context in which the lines are made: the hordes of people lining up, milling about, waiting for their spot in hell, yet when I hear the line, I am more likely to think of people walking across London Bridge (as I used to imagine) or (now) walking through Charing Cross or Liverpool Street stations.

What is the death, the feeling of death that TSE is talking about?  It must be the same thing I think of when I walk up the station's stairs or see all those people looking up at the TV monitors for train information.  It is silence, it is resignation, resignation to what I am not quite sure, perhaps a surrender to the daily grind, the forces of the work world, which slowly but surely grind out of us the spirit of our youth, our optimism and hope in the world, and replace it with realism and belief in nothing but the facts of work and more work.

Perhaps some of my problem is the complete lack of comradery in the commuter group: no one talks, we all just go about our duties.  The reason Dante's line works, or rather the reason Dante's line is so good is because it works; and the reason it works or the evidence that it works is that it seems such a fitting way to describe the crowds.

In the end we are really and truly alone, that's the way we came in and the way we go out, as they say, and perhaps that's another aspect of the fitting image: the crowds of people, each one alone in his or her own private thoughts, perhaps a heaven, perhaps the torment of a personal hell, but mostly just ordinariness: did I get the bread, did the door get locked, is the train on time, shall I have a drink, is my wife at the station, shall I call a cab . . ..

Perhaps there are loved ones waiting: a spouse, children, but most of us, I suspect, have little thought for that love, thinking more of relaxation and responsibility, if we think at all before the first drink.

It is a tragedy that this is how we run our lives.

Conversation is the thing that is missing, such as the lively exchanges that occur on an airplane, as people fear for their lives; or pub talk.

Despite the fact that we go it alone, we do share a common fate and a common condition.  Should we be talking about that?  That's what is so wonderful about television: its ability to portray, in an entertaining way, the common condition.

What would TSE have done with television?  I have an image, that of the daffodils, a field of them, sunning themselves in a field in April.  They all stare with their heads toward the sun.  The many faces watching their TV screens at home are much like the daffodils, though it is not natural: it is no longer a seasonal thing (except day vs. night) and it is done indoors.  Yet there is similarity: beautiful creatures enjoying themselves, gazing into a god of light and warmth.

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 UNREAL CITY

 Not long after I moved to Las Vegas in 1968, I made an entry in my journal referring to it as "unreal city."  At the time the words just naturally seemed to come to mind to describe my new home town, standing out like a luminous island in the middle of the desert.  One needs little imagination to see the unreal in Las Vegas: from the glaring artificial daylight of Fremont Street to the little old ladies at the supermarket who jealously guard their two or three slot machines, a strange sense of reality is apparent.   

The strangeness of Las Vegas is even greater when one lives there.  There are many people whom I have met who cannot believe that people other than showgirls and entertainment lawyers actually live in Las Vegas.  (There are now about 750,000.)  Constant media references to Las Vegas tend to build up an internal defense mechanism in its citizens, who must learn to distinguish between the place they live and the place the tourists visit.   

 The very idea of any city in the middle of the desert is itself a wonder.  To tourist and resident alike, the reality of this arid land, two hundred miles from anywhere, surrounded by rugged mountains, where temperatures can range from ten Fahrenheit to a hundred and ten Fahrenheit, present a stark truth to those who chance to think of where they actually are.

 Having become accustomed to my image of Las Vegas over the years, I was a more than a little embarrassed recently when I reread one of my favourite poems, "The Waste Land," for the umpteenth time and for the first time noticed that my own "unreal city", which had seemed so spontaneous and suitable at the time, was nothing more than my memory of one of those wonderful phrases which we all hear in our lives at one time or another and which seem to magically arise in our consciousness on other appropriate occasions, sometimes with attribution, but more often without.

 Thinking about "The Waste Land," however, always reminds me of London.  Just as Las Vegas brings to my mind the words "unreal city", the moment I hear the clatter of feet in an underground station during rush hour or see the impassive, silent faces gazing into the television monitors at Liverpool Street Station, I cannot help but think of the lines which Eliot himself borrowed from Dante and wonder at all the people death has undone.  To bring the comparison full circle again, though the sound is certainly different, it does not strain the imagination too much to see some similarities between those faces at Liverpool Street hoping for good news of the train home, and a casino full of faces hoping the video poker machines will reward them with a different kind of good news.

The truth, of course, is that whether we live in Las Vegas or London, we all live in an unreal city, a city which presses its demands and delights upon us each and every day, no matter where we work or play.  As we struggle or enjoy our daily routines of work, sleep and play, wherever we are we try hard to remember the purpose of things, to put them in their proper place and perspective, lest we too be undone by death.

Sometimes back at home, especially when I am caught in the mire and the muck of work or routine and desperately want out, I think of Las Vegas as many do: "sin city", a place which shamelessly and tastelessly panders to the pleasures of money, drink, food and entertainment.  I long for places like the English countryside or even London, wishing for any place but my own.  Yet there is a difference between sin and bad taste, and if Las Vegas is occasionally (or often, depending on one's point of view) in bad taste, it is probably no more a city of sin than anywhere else.  For if it is sin that Las Vegas is all about, it is not the sin of Las Vegas, it is the sin which forces us to make our way by the sweat of our brows, forces us to go to work and wait for trains, and creates a need for places like Las Vegas.

Each time I visit London, indeed just about anywhere I visit in England, it seems there is a nearby church to remind me not only of the presence of God in our midst, but also of the believers who have gone before me.  One might think it is a little harder finding God in Las Vegas, but if the unreal reality of London is its place in history, the unreal reality of Las Vegas is its location in a wide open country where each day sun, clouds and time create a work of heavenly art in light and shadows upon the ground.

Even in the night, there remain more stars in the heavens than light bulbs on the Strip.  And, of course, there are more chapels than any place else on earth.