The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

Went to a funeral yesterday, and three things stand out — one, a Unitarian hymn, that spoke of the great mysteries and wonders that are greater than the hope of resurrection —

and two, of how what the Unitarian speakers spoke to remind us that the love was universal and eternal and persistent —

and three, that I heard the great music played, and thought once more of how music is eternal, that what it is essentially is a tempo-spatial pattern of air disturbances that have been recorded, and through the use of tuned instruments, can be reproduced ad infinitum and always retain its essential identity —

and thinking about how human identity, meaning, purpose, love, could likewise be a psychological pattern of functions imprinted on the biological brain substrate that nevertheless keeps reproducing itself in new forms and new permutations, nevertheless giving rise to universal dramas of the human condition such as love, heartbreak, joy, happiness, and peace.

and thinking, for the first time, as I watched an aged man, an old fraternity brother, stand up to eulogize the man who had passed, GB, that the nature of friendship meant that I would either eulogize my friends or they would eulogize me.

and thinking of words I’ll say over my parents, one day.

And sitting next to M, poor M, and holding onto her as tight as I possibly could.

Sitting with Margaux at Il Pittore last night, I told her about the novel I think I could write, about Elsewhere, and those people, and all my journeys there — and in so doing, told her that story, again, about all my visits down there, the gaps, the absences, and I said it could end with George’s sickness and recovery, and she said, but then I won’t be in it & I said, sure you will, and told her about the frame story, where I would say something to the effect of:

“And I’m still in Philadelphia, quiet, still, living my life, and downstairs, is the woman who loves me, and in a moment, I will rise, and I will go to her, and I will”

Maybe something like that. Let it end abruptly. And then said — you know — put in some profound thought or another — like that time is not a road, but a room —

And then turned back around, and circled back to my first time in Greece, when I was doing my Grand Tour after work and before law school, the Grand Tour paid for with the changed air ticket that had once been a ticket to Chile —

And telling her, how on one island, I took a bus back from the beach with a girl who looked just like my ex-girlfriend, and she went back to the same hostel I was at, and then got on the same shuttle, and then got on the same ferry to Santorini, and then, in Santorini, was going to the same hostel, and how, unsurprisingly, I never really figured out a thing to say to her, BUT she was reading the French Lieutenant’s Woman, by John Fowles, and told her friend about the great unceasing beauty of that book, and so, when I went to visit Atlantis Books, the only used English bookstore on the island of Santorini, begun by the old compatriots of Jay and George, the initial echo of what would become Elsewhere, I bought that book, and it was amazing, and I read it as I went on from Santorini to Amsterdam and then back to London and a single day in Dublin, my last day in Europe, when I walked by James Joyce’s house and walked by his river and then flew home to the beginning of the rest of my life —

And in that book I remembered a single line about time not being a road, but a room, and then today, reaching into the Internet, since I’m not sure if I ever got my copy of the French Lieutenant’s Woman back from Elizabeth (Zach’s ex-fiance) when I lent it to her my first year of law school, I did eventually find the quote:

Earlier that evening, when he was in Sir Thomas’s brougham, he had had a false sense of living in the present; his rejection then of his past and future had been a mere vicious plunge into irresponsible oblivion. Now he had a far more profound and genuine intuition of the great human illusion about time, which is that its reality is like that of a road–on which one can constantly see where one was and where one probably will be–instead of the truth: that time is a room, a now so close to us that we regularly fail to see it.

Sitting in my car listening to Brokedown Palace and thinking of my friend’s dead father and the sadness she will face and how long it’s been since I’ve seen her.

a river, and I’m in her current

I look at my phone and see the date June 17, no year, and think about the wonderful adaptation of memory loss — that the past does fade, that though the present may always be pregnant with the past, the past itself is less and less present itself as it goes farther back — and think of the terror I sometimes feel when I think about the passage of time, of how much time has gone between one moment in memory and Now, but think about how much greater that terror, that awe, that sorrow, would be if the total and full past was always there, always constant, so that when I look at the date June 17 on my phone, I see not only now, but June 17 a year ago, and June 17 two years ago, and three, and five, and seven, and twelve, and seventeen, yes, all the way back to June 17, 1997, when I was finishing up school, turning sixteen, getting ready for camp, getting my passport to get ready to go to Israel —

If that was the way we were, would we be strong enough for it, or would the loss of the past simply overwhelm us, utterly, completely, repeatedly, every moment of our lives?

Instead, with the toughened up and retrograde amnesia we call living, I look at June 17, and think, curious, there were other June 17s, and I think of last year’s, and that’s about the extent of it, and the sorrow of loss is brief, and small, and contained, and does not go further than it goes.

[1] Telemachus

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: 

— Introibo ad altare Dei. 

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coursely:

— Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in teh air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak. 

Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly. 

— Back to barracks, he said sternly. 

He added in a preacher’s tone: 

— For this, O Dearly Beloved, is the genuine christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence all. [transubstantiation of the host] 

He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm. 

— Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you? 

He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at hsi watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plumb shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. The pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips. 

— The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek! 

If evolution is the product of an unfulfilled capacity meeting an inescapable need, then the development of language in man must have arisen from our capacity AND need to understand each other.

Last night, I went to bed early and dreamed long, and in that dream, saw my uncle, dead now for thirteen years. He was in his youth, because the dream must have been of my youth, last night before bed, I must have been thinking of time machines, of the past that was, of all my life that is lost and gone — new lovers, maybe, do that, the resistance always to the new driving out the old — 

and in the dream, saw my uncle, walking past me, healthy, young, in his fullness, happy, smiling, and I went to stop him, to put a hand on his shoulder, as I realized it was him, to tell myself to say something to him — 

And I do not know if I did, but I think not, I think I remained silent. And he remained silent too. The dead do not speak, not even in dreams. 

I remember that from the one other dream I remember of him, which came the year after, where he stood, silent, but did not speak. 

Or the ghost-battle of Elsewhere, where the two ghosts came to me in many different forms, but never, never spoke. 

The dream was time travel, a memory. Did it strengthen me, to see him, tears in the rain, time lost, passed, gone? Or is it Margaret I mourn for, even now? 

Not all who wander are lost.