Thursday
12 December. 10 a.m. We are still frosted in. Not much time yesterday working, other than
an essay and reading St. Augustine. I took my
camera around town, looking for pictures of the ice and frost. While it is cold, the days are mostly sunny,
except for fog in the morning and evening.
Attended
the St. John's choir service yesterday at 2:45.
Lessons from the old and new testament, followed by Christmas carols,
some new, some old, including familiar carols sung to different tunes. It was beautiful, containing much more of the
true spirit of Christmas than do the grade school entertainment programs at
home. Dinner afterwards with everyone at
Brown's in Cambridge, following an afternoon of Christmas shopping.
WISDOM
In
his essay, "The Philosophy of Shelley's Poetry" (1900), W. B. Yeats
speaks (discussed in Edmund Wilson's book, Axel's Castle [1931]) of each person
having a scene in his or her mind, which, if dwelled on "life long"
will ultimately lead to a sort of glorious pure understanding of life. I have often remembered a particular scene
from my childhood, and when I read this passage, I had a new hope that by
continuing to dwell on my memory, I might someday achieve that special
understanding. Now I will not pretend to
be a profound interpreter of these things (I am happy to see that someone with
as great a mind and imagination as Yeats spoke of a life long meditation), but
the idea intrigues me. Though Yeats
writes of symbols and I do not have the classical education to endow my
personal symbols with the same richness, as a product of Catholic education
and, in particular, Irish nuns, I do not lack a meaningful vocabulary of
religious symbols.
In
any event, when I was a boy, I lived for many years at the beach in Malibu,
California. My scene: It is about eight
thirty on an October night, and the evening is unnaturally warm, owing to the
presence of the Santa Ana winds that occasionally gust this time of year,
blowing rough out of the desert towards the sea in place of the usually
reliable cool ocean breezes. I am riding
my bicycle down Malibu Colony towards home from my friend's house, pursued by
my shadows chasing one another. As I
ride past the street lamps one by one, the shadows follow a pattern as they
grow behind me, then overtake me vanish up ahead. In the background the rhythmic thumping and
crashing of the surf fills the air with growing sound, then increasing silence:
a parade of sounds and silences which echoes the pattern of my shadows,
visible, then invisible. What is out
there in the night?
It
is a wonder-filled image in my mind, fresh as ever and latent, I think, with
hidden meaning (why else does it remain?).
Yet though I can appreciate the potential meanings of the different elements
- the wind, lights, shadows, darkness, ocean, I have never been able to come up
with a compelling reason why I should keep remembering this scene, other than
my particular sensitivity that night to the natural world, a sensitivity
heightened by my year in Britain, which I now relate.
A
few years before this Malibu night, in 1958, I had lived in England with my
family. We had exchanged barefeet and
breakers in Malibu for wellingtons and green fields in Horley. I was eight years old and attended St.
Hilda's (RIP), where I was in the second form.
I was confirmed. Perhaps it was
the stark contrast to the semi-aridity of Southern California, whatever the
reason, a feeling for the green English countryside remained with me long
afterward; enough so that here I am, on a sabbatical thirty odd years later, in
search of that undefinable feeling I remember as an eight year old. Another event from that time also lingers in
my consciousness.
When
I came to England five months ago in search of a distant memory of green, it
was also with the memory of a somewhat sheepish feeling I had had as an
adolescent of having received the sacrament of confirmation at so early an age
that I had not appreciated my gifts, but had wasted them, like forgotten
childhood toys.
Cut
ahead now to 1968. My parents and
brothers and sisters have moved to Las Vegas, but I have remained behind in Los
Angeles to attend college. I begin to
spend holidays and summer breaks in Las Vegas, and a new image begins to
implant itself in my mind, that of the desert.
I also begin journal writing, providing me with my first conscious
opportunity to reflect on things such as memory and nature. As I learn about the desert, my story is
complete and the clues assembled; it is the desert wind that gives me my first
inkling.
Desert
winds are thrashing, growling powers which in one day can raise enough dust to
blot out the sun at noon, then render the air so clean by nine o'clock that the
smallest stars gleam. The crashing of
the surf is a sound not far removed from the rushing of the desert wind. Santa Anas are misplaced desert winds: by the
time they reach the beach, they have diminished, having wreaked their havoc in
the foothills; but they are still warm from the desert and still strong enough to
blow the city smog well out to sea . . . .
What is known here as a "fresh" breeze rises out of the west, blowing in from the ocean, bringing with it at least one solution, as my mind turns to the ancient desert, "And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind." Acts, 2.2. Did I squander my sacrament or was it tied to my memory at such an early age that every wind renews its presence?
What is known here as a "fresh" breeze rises out of the west, blowing in from the ocean, bringing with it at least one solution, as my mind turns to the ancient desert, "And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind." Acts, 2.2. Did I squander my sacrament or was it tied to my memory at such an early age that every wind renews its presence?
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| The Morning Delivery at Westfields House |
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| The Saffron Walden War Memorial |
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