Going Hence....

Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither....

Shakespeare, King Lear, V.ii

This blog is about journeys, including the last journey.  Shakespeare knew this journey somehow too intimately.

One of the things that distinguishes Shakespeare among even today's writers is his nuanced use of ambiguity.  He allows us to peel back layers of meaning that exist, often, within a single line.  His ambiguity in the word "their" in this quote from Lear shows Shakespeare's intimacy with the problem: that we must endure both coming into the world and leaving it.  Look:

Does he mean "Men must endure their [own] going hence"?

Or

Does he mean that we who live "must endure their [our loved ones'] going hence"?

Yes -- both meanings, I believe.  And it's an arduous thing to endure for both the one who departs and for the one who remains.

The character who delivers the line is Edgar, who leads Gloucester towards what he supposes will be his death.  Edgar asks his ward, "What, in ill thoughts again?  Men must endure/Their going hence, even as their coming hither:/Ripeness is all: come on."

And the dual meanings here are multiplied: we not only endure our own and others' going hence, just as we endured coming into this world, but we must also endure the people "coming hither" into our world who will offer only malfeasance (as so many characters do in Lear ); these persons are mere travesties of the attributes that make a human to be [link] (in the most positive sense).  The presence of such people is all but impossible to endure once it's clear to us just what they are and what harm their presence brings.

My nephew, Michael, came into this world as one of the happiest beings I have seen, and he was ever so.  I have seen him delight at simple things encountered in this world, and I have known him to be as innocent a soul as I'd ever met.

Beaming Boy

He was a delight to play with in his infancy and toddlerhood, and growing older he has distinguished both his life after coming hither and his life going hence with a dignity uncommon to a young man.  Not to raise him above being merely human or to idealize, but he's been quite a fine lad.

I have known people who attempted to endow their departure (or, more accurately, their funeral) with a dignity that their lives failed to warrant.  That is a vanity decorated with funereal baubles -- a sham of empty ornamentation.  I have heard of, read about, and have met others who departed without a dignified remembrance -- with little to no recognition of the dignity with which they led their lives.

It is rare when these two balance: a dignified endurance of going hence at the end of a life lived in dignity.  That this balance exists with Michael has been emphatic to me as I consider his short life and his long endurance in passing.

His days grow short -- probably a mere few now.  And both he, and we along side, endure his going hence.

Michael, Thanksgiving 2011

 Michael, Dec. 2011

The Rest Is Silence

"And there was silence in heaven for about half an hour." -- Rev. 8:1

Whether or not you believe in a literal heaven, in God, or in something beyond is not the importance of the above quotation just now.  If you don't believe in such things but are sentient enough to read this quotation as you would read any other bit of literature -- by suspending your own, immediate responses and stepping imaginatively into the literature even if it has nothing to do with your own experiences or beliefs -- then read like that now.

What I notice is how this quote points to a recognition -- occurring, ironically, in the place that is the epitome of peace -- but still: it's a recognition that terrible things happen, things that even those who dwell outside the events, those who forever dwell with and in the Ideal, can understand to be devastatingly traumatic.

I'm not talking about the Holocaust, 9/11, a world war, or a tsunami, although remembering such events brings one to profound silence -- and should do so.  There is nothing to say.  That is precisely the point: silence is the only fitting response at times.

And so...my nephew, Michael, is nearing his death due to brain cancer after nearly nine months of slow decline.  He has thus far been gently lowered into that good night.  But even so --.  There is this silence where once was elation, amusement, wit, humor and laughter, serious talk, and young insight.

I have nothing to say except that silence is the appropriate response.  What exasperates is precisely this: too many words -- WORDS! -- have, over these months, been led out to battle a reality that came silently upon him, slowly took away the happy sounds emanating from his young life, and will leave an immense silence in its wake.

It is understandable, yes, that people have tried to find the right words along the way -- the right words to comfort, to empathize, to sympathize.  And some of these people have listened to themselves as they tried to articulate something fitting, and as they listened to themselves, they sensibly found their words were failing to deliver their good intent.  They would stop...and finally understand that silence was the thing they sought to express.  I thank these people not only for their empathy but more: for their good sense.

Others?

For these nine months I have read insipidly trite messages that people repeatedly posted for Michael on his Caring Bridge and Facebook pages -- all those lengthy statements about healing, that the writer just knows God will provide healing, and here are the scriptures to prove it....  God in a box: pull him out, like a spot remover, and advertise what He can do, like the Almighty Mr. Clean.

God, so far as I've experienced Him, is never so commercial a product as he is among many of these people of a faith -- a faith that is both unexamined and devoid of understanding that we all -- the just and unjust (if you must say it this way) -- share the same human condition.  That bit of understanding is just what too many people of faith are devoid of, especially in America.  They are too often thoughtless, tactless, without depth or sensitive understanding in a moment deserving nothing but silence.  Instead, there's the self-ordained, the self-justified, talk-show mentality with its free and freely-associated advice imposed on the situation -- as if everyone is obligated to hear their opinions.  One friend observed how these people's "compulsion to fill up the emptiness with banal, meaningless comments can be more painful than not."

The ability to wait in silence -- even while holding hope for a miracle and anticipating praise to be sung at such an event should it occur -- that act of silently waiting holds compassion and depth of soul.  It shows Negative Capability in the most positive sense.

Question: what is appropriate (let alone compassionate) about preaching a trite sermon on healing from Philippians to a 13-year-old boy who is losing every single thing in life -- his parents, all of his family and friends, his dreams for the future, his ability to play sports, his favorite toys -- and at the end of all these losses, life on earth itself?  Or what about a delivering a mini sermon on "firey trials" to a boy who is past moving, drinking without choking, eating, speaking his last words to his parents, or focusing his eyes in a last look at them?

It's taunting.  It's rubbing his nose in "what ought to be." It's to say "now, boy -- you make absolutely certain that you understand this last little lesson before you take your final breath!" Nothing whatsoever is appropriate in such words, nothing resembling empathy.  It is appallingly calloused, shallow, and indicative of the worst vestiges of faith.  To do such a thing speaks of what one book calls "The American Disease": an inordinate sense of entitlement.  And when the sense of entitlement is "sanctified" because it's from a believer?  All the worse.  They believe their words have a special warrant to violate a heaven-sanctioned silence.  At root, it is only pride and a desire for control.  You know what a martyr is?  It's someone who has to listen to a saint.

What is the worst part of such inane messengers?  They feel (not think, but feel) that they have a license to babble, which issues from the fact that they "mean well."  God save us from people like these who mean to do us good.  They don't think and, consequently, will not understand.  Yet they will smile at their own "goodness" and "understanding" while they spread more pain.

When I was yet in my teens, it struck me that a shallow brook makes a great deal more noise with what little water it has than does a deep and silent river.  But which has the greater power?  And shallow we have all been at a time, another time, and some time again.  I know my own lines here....

So it goes here on Earth.  But the quote: what's the scene in Heaven?

"...silence in heaven for about half an hour."  Yes.  The dwellers of heaven know, apparently, when to shut up.  Ironic, that.  Those -- having a clearer knowledge of Him and the answer to the paradox of how the giver of life is involved in the workings of death -- they know when to shut up.  There isn't some tres chic Archangel stepping lively and clapping to get everyone's attention -- then rattling like a choreographer on the set of a musical rehearsal: "OK, EVERYONE! Thank you!  Great job, Suzie!  Now we're just going to have a moment of silence."

 No.  These beings know when to shut up because of their own humble prescience and understanding of Him who is just and sovereign -- and because of their simple recognition that terrible things happen on the earth, things that their words do not have the power to undo.

Job -- the guy in the Old Testament -- had "friends."  When they first came to Job in the midst of his devastating calamities, they did what?  "For seven days and seven nights they sat beside him on the ground, and none of them spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great" (Job 2:13).  They had the right idea that week.  They went wrong when they opened their mouths to deliver their little sermons and lessons.  They knew nothing of what God was doing.  Yet in their petty self-concern for offering the best word for the situation, each "friend" had to add what he knew.  They undertook to explain God and His ways to Job, nothing about which they understood.  And...they were dead wrong.  In their self-entitled, ego-driven, and uninformed "opinions" (the very pablum of thought), they cruelly increased their friend's suffering.

And think: is it not the absolute worst irony in Job's story that the only family member left to him was his wife (it doesn't matter that she was a woman; it only matters what her advice was)?  At the start of his troubles, she simply tells her husband to "curse God and die."  Helpful advice, that.  This is who is left to Job beyond his "friends."  And such people most often think they are serving God by their words....

When Jesus went to his friend, Lazarus', grave, we are told merely "Jesus wept."  An action only.  St. Paul remarked, "rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep."  Again, action only.  What about words?  And what about the woman caught in the very act of adultery? (Um...if it takes "two to do," where'd the guy go?  Setup, eh?)  There she sat, moments before suffering a horrible death from stones thrown by the religious elders (ironic, is it?  No -- that's invariably typical ).  And -- from Jesus she hears merely, "Neither do I condemn you.  Go and sin no more."  And then silence.  Silence to live in or silence to die in, but silence.

And Jesus' own suffering?

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth

                               (Isaiah 53)

Tradition is that we should remember horrible events, remember those who perished and those who sacrificed, with a moment of silence.  Charles Hamilton Sorley, a British soldier and poet of WWI killed on 13 Oct. 1915, wrote this:

When you see the millions of the mouthless dead

Across your dreams in pale battalions go,

Say not soft things as other men have said,

That you'll remember.  For you need not so.

This is precisely why speaking is prohibited and silence enforced at the great ossuary at Douamont, where people still today take new-found bones of soldiers of WWI, lost in the mud of the fields outside Verdun.  Beyond the silence, the only occasional sounds you might hear there are the aching strains of Faure's Requiem...itself largely a lament for our condition and prayers for God's mercy in it.

The Ossuary at Douamont, France (Source: Naidoo)

In remembering the victims of 9/11 this year, there were "six silences and a prayer" [Link].  Paul Simon sang his old song -- movingly, memorably -- "The Sounds of Silence" [Link].

Terrible things happen on this earth -- whether to a throng of people in some great and sudden conflagration or to one young boy in the lingering decline of an insipid disease.  They happen in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia..., on the highway outside, at the house next door.  As someone once said (in a quote given in an earlier posting), "sometimes the mountains have nothing to say."  So should it be.  Shakespeare, who lost his young son, Hamnet, also knew this. While grieving for his own son, he wrote the play Hamlet and gave this as the dying Hamlet's last words: "The rest is silence."

Into Thin Air (1)

 17 July: 12,800 ft.  Near Independence Pass

The mountains of Colorado (and I assume mountains elsewhere) seem to exist without change.  Obviously, they are the same as they were when I went to college here.  Well, except for one mountain in Clear Creek Canyon by Idaho Springs which some company is literally removing in order to extract a mineral and leaving a massive mess of loose gravel in its place.  It would be nice if someone would force the company to "put it back," but two problems would result: 1) HOW?  2) Some poor workers would be set to gluing the bits back together for an eternity, a task I could not wish on anyone except the Ass-of-a-CEO and the derelict and weasely politician(s) who authorized moving the mountain in the first place.

Otherwise, the mountains stay pretty much the same.  They tower in their magnificence and inspire in their majesty (as everyone says).  Yes.  They do.  My experience is that they speak volumes to us at one moment and then, at another moment (perhaps when you most need a perspective, a view on life, some inspiration), they face you with stark indifference.  One person I knew put it this way: "Sometimes the mountains have nothing to say."  A mountain's indifference to us is not a sneer.  It's not malevolent.  It's simply that you are no factor within nature's on-going equations.

But you can get caught in the equation.

They can fall on you or let you fall off of them with no concern over your fate whatsoever.  What seems unbelievable, Ueli Steck, humble carpenter and climber extraordinaire who set 3 "time-climb" records on the north face of the Eiger among many other magnificent feats, fell in April of 2017 from Nuptse, near Everest.  In June 2011, a climbing accident in the French Alps left 6 people dead (men, women, and a teen) after they all fell from a high snow field [Link].  Dr. C. Everett Koop's son also died in a mountaineering accident: a rock fell on his leg, trapping him, and he bled to death.  On 6 Oct. 1979, the day I first made the summit of Long's Peak (14,259 ft.), one climber, Charles Nesbit [Link], died in a fall from Lamb's Slide, a steep snowfield to the left of Long's Diamond Face.  The snow moved — so a ranger told me that day: if Nesbit had been roped to his fellow climbers, they all would have gone.  I remember seeing his friends late that day as they left the ranger station, silent, staring — blank.  And the mountains stand, indifferent to whatever happens to whoever is on them.

Long's: A Serious Presence

A More Trivial Presence atop the Serious Presence
6 Oct. 1979

While hiking in Colorado last week, I thought about the unchanging nature of the mountains — mountains as a constant factor in life's equations.  Yes, over-worn truths offer the usual emotional fluff about spring after winter, that even as winter comes, the evergreens, covered in feet of snow, stay green beneath.  The bright green lichens under all that snow — they will emerge, still green, once again.  The aspen will go into leaf again, the flowers bloom.  But it's the mountains' massive presence that is, for me, the constant.  And their constant includes both their indifference and eloquence.  These are part of their personality.

From under the Snow

But it was while hiking around the Maroon Bells that I had a sudden epiphany, an awareness not of a constant but of change.  It is we who change with that sort of thing Wordsworth spoke of in "Tinturn Abbey" — when, in the moment of writing the poem, he looked back upon "the thoughtless type of youth" he had been, and the man he was years later.

A "Deadly" Marmot at the Foot of Maroon Peak (Very Dangerous Photo: author)

What struck me was how we pass through generational lines without realizing it.  It's like when you read a book you're absorbed in: you look at the clock and three hours have just passed in but a moment.  You live, go about daily stuff, absorbed in it all, and then look up at the clock of life and . . . you've become an older you.  One moment, you're 20.  Then you're 35.  When did that happen?  And then you're 50.  When did that crap happen?!  And, no, you can't go back.  At 19, I trudged up Long's in boots so heavy they should only be used to hold down a house in a tornado.  Today, I can't imagine how it was done.

My Retired Dogs, Weighing a Mere 36 Tons

Somehow we assume we're constant, unchanging.  We look ahead at others, see them a generation ahead of us and wonder vaguely (if we think about them at all) what it's like to be that age, what the "rules" are, and what few prospects for fun are left to them.

The generation ahead?  I remember that when I was very young, I looked at my baby sitter and wondered what it would be like to be so old (she was 17) — unbelievably, she no longer played with toys!  Or I looked at my high school teacher and thought, "man... shouldn't he retire?"  He was, I realize now, only in his 40s.  And my dad: what happened to him?  And I realize I am now the age he was when I had been in college in Colorado and climbing mountains.  And I look up and -- I've crossed the line to that generation.  No one welcomed me or explained the rules, the proper decorum.  I just continued being myself (for better or worse).

1970s: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

1980s: Lookout Mt., GA -- It's Just Not the Rockies

 1990s: Alone in Roosevelt Nat'l. Forest as Seen though the Wayback Machine

Then we see someone younger give us that look — obviously thinking the things we once thought about our elders.  We answer mentally, "don't you DARE think that.  I'm still young, and, yes — a wrinkle here and some grey there — but ... inside it's all the same.  I'm still green under this snow, babe.  Just more experienced."

There's no initiation.  You don't hear a chime on a clock striking the next generation.  You don't see a sign on the mountain trail marking the fact you've reached "50's Peak" — or have perhaps fallen off it.  You just look round and find others reminding you of the fact.  But inside ... you're still 19, still at times Wordsworth's "thoughtless type of youth," but now more careful on the narrows, the peaks, the snow fields.  Where's the right of passage across a generational line?  I don't really care to have one.  The less said....

2000s: 20s or 50s?  Both and Neither

Nearly 2020: Down from the Hornli Ridge, Matterhorn

It was perhaps being in Aspen that made me think of all this (or maybe it was my wheezing away on a trail somewhere above 12,000 feet).  In Aspen, you see a nubile young woman and realize — "no, that woman is actually about 65, just dressed like a teenager."  Or some young buck — "but no, that dude is 70!"  And it's not one, but everyone: men, women, and -- well, no, not children (who somehow dress more maturely than they are, but that's a different blog entry).

Aspen's a place where fighting age is the sport everyone competes in.  Apparently it's a crime to age there.  Cool.  I'd like to live somewhere where people are simply blind to your age.  But that's definitely not Aspen.  Nope.  People there seem to be fighting age because they are too aware of it.  It's a great town for denial, and every clothing, sports, ski, jewelry, or health-product shop will help you with that denial.  While I myself wouldn't "go gentle into that good night" (but rather continue to climb mountains literal and metaphorical), still — I can't try to fool myself that I look even 30.

The mountains don't change.  They are a constant.  They watched me at 18, at 30, at...well, I'm not going to tell you.  But change...?  Change is the constant for humans.  It happens while you're sleeping.  Even so, there's something in us like mountains under the snow: there's still a spring beneath, something that's evergreen.

Age Growing Old, perpetual youth, 

Optimism, Pessimism, and Realism

Thomas Hardy called himself a meliorist (someone who believes everything is getting better) although many people saw him as anything but that -- he wasn't even a realist but a pessimist.  One of his poems, for instance -- "The Darkling Thrush" -- is about the old century waning as a thrush sings at the dusk of its last evening -- Dec. 31st 1899.  Hardy hears the bird sing of

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.

No hope for a brand new century?  Grim.  Hardy's pessimism may echo from such poems as Shakespeare's more optimistic lines in Sonnet 29, a poem beginning in despair:

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my *bootless cries,    [*useless]
And look upon myself and curse my fate....

It doesn't end there, but turns more hopeful:

*Haply, I think on thee, and then my state,    [*by chance]
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate.

Nice.  Suddenly "things is better."

Shakespeare, I think, was more of a Realist although he had his Pessimistic days (Hamlet -- dark and brooding over human fates, was written after Hamnet, Shakespeare's son and twin to Judith, died.  And King Lear is probably the darkest play in English literature).  But was he a Realist?  Well, Shakespeare, after all, could write lines like "love and reason keep very little company nowadays" and "young men's love then lies/Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes."  There's some Realism for you.

But since we're working backwards from Hardy to Shakespeare, let's look at something from just before Shakespeare's day: Henry VIII's armour, preserved in the Tower of London.

A Man's Optimism is His Castle

You may just notice the codpiece.  Yes.  Well.  Some men may view that as pessimistic.  Let us not befriend them.  Others may see it as realistic.  Let us not befriend them.  But really.  As Mae Western-Holly-Wood (16th-century movie actress) asked, "Is that a cannon in your codpiece or are you just glad to see me?"  As my good friend Major Hurt observed the other day, "it's Henry the VIIIth because the codpiece was only 1/8th full."  Is the glass half empty or half full?  Neither: only an 8th....  It's sheer, blind Optimism -- hopeful winking with ego-wanking.

And please note: the realism of my friend can pose a Major Hurt in only one case: if he leads you in your workout.  He flies helicopters, but he's solid as a tank with a perpetual motion machine in him.  One day he'll be merely a General Hurt.  Just so he's past a Private Hurt, which could be major.  Realistically, he's the man you want in a situation that looks optimistically like it is going to turn pessimistic.

Major Hurt in His Heli

The thing is, we seem to grasp for excuses when our optimism comes face-to-face with the real.  One excuse, from Garrison Keillor, speaks of men having to pee when ice fishing: "When it's cold out, all men are created equal."  Realism.

Any of Those Purported Health Benefits of Optimism Here?

I have no real point in all this (that's Realism); you shouldn't hope for more than that (which is Optimism).  But I do think (without undo Pessimism) that we humans will choose any of the three that would suit us in a single moment, as with the lads pictured above -- or with Henry, Shakespeare, or Hardy.

How so? Could we possibly choose Pessimism in any situation?  Well, yes we could!  Just try having a Pity Party and inviting Optimism over to entertain.  Doesn't work.  We would need Pessimism to come over to start a fight to straighten things out.  And Realism?  True: he could come over and at least be persuaded to admit there is a darker side to things.  But for a Pity Party, Pessimism is your true friend.  Great party!

To celebrate a really big event, however, it's Optimism you want.  Sir Optimism, apparently, was an armour maker to royalty in the early 1500s, protecting nether egos with steeled and bright opinion.  If Henry had invited either Realism or Pessimism to his party, it would have been off with his cod.

But what about Reason?  Seldom invited.  Boring lad at a party.

Reason and humans keep very little company nowadays.

Chosing to BE.

A few years ago in my Shakespeare course, we had finished discussing Hamlet just as spring break approached.  In returning from the break, I asked students what they had done during their vacation that was exciting.  One student said, "I got a tattoo."  On her calf, just above the ankle in a very simple typewriter font, were two words and a period:

Just like that.  It took me a second to get the affirmation.  The student remarked that she had thought very seriously about Hamlet's question -- whether to remain in existence, albeit having to face life's many troubles, or to die and sleep, "perchance to dream" through eternity, a prospect bringing up other questions ("what dreams may come?"  They might be perpetual nightmares, worse than any trouble life might bring).

She said it was better to live, live fully -- and To be through it all, no matter what life brought along.

I am still today impressed by that tattoo.  Not being tatted myself, if I ever were to get inked, those two words might be an apt statement.

The significance lies in the undercurrent of those small words.  My nephew, as some of you know, has had his fate decided for him (unlike Hamlet, who wishes that his flesh would melt and allow him a quick end).  Michael has brain cancer.  He was given -- at the end of March -- 6 months to live, but things seem to be moving faster than expected.  Daily he weakens, can scarcely stand without holding onto something, whereas mere weeks ago he could hit a baseball (although not run the bases).  His right arm and hand are debilitated.  His face muscles have stopped working, so he has no expression even in laughter, no ability to smile.  His brain is incredibly sharp, but his body fails in new ways daily.

This is, obviously, hard to watch -- but how infinitely more so for him to watch?  At thirteen...?  And this week he grew very angry at it all.  Yes, indeed.  We all are.  But where does one direct anger at being dealt such an unfair hand?  I recall Dylan Thomas's poem:  "Do not go gentle into that good night....  Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

It is a choice, "to BE."  It may be that one's fate is decided, and the decision is that "you shall not be."  But to BE until that time -- Michael chooses every day to be.  It may be to accept; it may be to be angry.  But he still chooses: to BE.

His cancer is not unheard of.  Another young person to have this cancer was Elena Desserich [Link].  She spent her last months in an affirmative decision to be.  She wrote notes to her mother, father, and sister Grace -- even as her ability to write and draw deteriorated.  Elena hid her notes all over the Deserrichs' house, so her family would continue to find them long after she was gone.

One of Elena's Notes

Is it possible "to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them," as Hamlet asks?  Is it possible to war against this disease and by opposing end it?  To quote E. M. Forster (writing about the sea of troubles inherent in human relations), "Not now.  Not yet."  But even still, to look on these troubles, on this disease, and to be overwhelmed, to be put off of living in the face of it all, to "lose the name of action" as Hamlet says?  Not so.

Hamlet's decision is the hardest question we face whether living or dying.  If dying, we must BE.  If living, we must BE.  It is not to divert ourselves from troubles but to face them, clear eyed, honestly, not least -- as Michael teaches me -- bravely.  He's a soldier doing his duty in the midst of the hardest imaginable situation.  And, as Milton observed, "they also serve who only stand and wait."

Michael, BEing: Right Seat, UH-60 Blackhawk

Antiques: The Presence of the Past

No Label Necessary Here

Camden Passage. Every Saturday in a little street just outside the Angel tube station is a place where some antique dealers have shops -- and others have card tables set up or even cloths spread on the ground -- to display the residue of human pasts.  You can find anything there: a used light bulb, Victorian door key, 18th-century nautical paintings, Louis XVIII chairs, an early 16th-century whale's tooth with a sex scene carved upon it -- and there's everything between.

I have all the light bulbs I need, no door for the key, no place for the chairs to fit in, appreciate the painting, but the whale's tooth says something: things (and maybe sailors) don't change much over centuries, do they?

While it is true that the antique market on Saturdays has diminished in quality and size over the last decade, there was a section of Camden Passage years back where you could find military paraphernalia.  I mean, for £11,000 (this is a little expensive: today that is $18,040), you could purchase a First World War DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross) awarded to a man who did some unheard-of stunts in a kite made of cloth and wood that had a heavy, metal dynamo with a fan on the front and which hurled him past bullets (or not) at the amazing top speed of 115 miles per hour.

A 1918 DFC

Bits, pieces, flotsam and jetsam: antiques.  The things that flow in and out of people's lives.  Sometimes, obviously, people internally move away from the things they owned, selling them as they grow beyond the import of the objects.  At other times survivors of the deceased are left to figure out what to do with the objects left behind.  But the objects indicate one thing that the Modernists knew very well: the past is always present with us.

T. S. Eliot put it this way (in Burnt Norton):

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

In buying an antique, there is the hope that collecting an item of someone's past may give our own present a missing element -- and make our future moments more blissful.  True, no?  Well, that's bleak.  But is it solely our own discontents that force us to purchase?

I'm not so certain.  Some years back I bought a brass, black-powder cannon in Camden Passage and built a heavy carriage for it so I wouldn't harm the more delicate, original carriage when I fired it.

On New Year's Eve, I load the little noise-maker with black powder and a paper wad, take it out onto the deck over the snow, and light the fuse.  The fire and the bang bring in the new year with a lively POP replete with a flash of light; the cannon rolls back, and the neighborhood echoes the report.  On the 4th of July (which the English here would rather not mention), it's the same -- but without the snow.

Cannon from Camden Passage, with Heavy Carriage (above)

In firing the cannon, I don't think so much about the person who made this exquisite little object, nor about who sold it to the antique dealer in Camden Passage; I'm thinking of the miniature marvel of how it works.  But there's this: the previous owners' past has made a number of my present moments a delightful (and brightly noisy) place.

Other objects bring more somber thought.  For instance, in Camden Passage years back, there was a section of the market where Nazi paraphernalia was sold -- swastika flags, busts of Hitler, WWII iron crosses with swastikas on them (which WWI iron crosses did not have).  These things I do not want to see, touch, nor -- obviously -- own.  They are illegal to sell or purchase on the continent.  Some people, then, come to the UK to purchase them.  Still, in Germany two years ago, I found some of these items being sold at an outdoor antique market despite the laws.

I like my celebratory cannon.  It makes a humbly grand sound on a holiday.  In thinking of it going off this New Years' Eve with friends present, I anticipate its happy influence in future, even while it sits this present moment at my home gathering a little dust.  And in its past....who knows where it was?

Eliot was right about external time even though he was speaking about the internal significance of the past on our present moments.  Perhaps head to an antique market.  Find something of the past for your present and, in consequence, enjoy a unique moment in your future.

Tattershall Castle

 From Kenneth Graham's Wind in the Willows:

   The [Water] Rat sculled smartly across and made fast. Then he held up his forepaw as the Mole stepped gingerly down. `Lean on that!' he said. `Now then, step lively!' and the Mole to his surprise and rapture found himself actually seated in the stern of a real boat.

     This has been a wonderful day!' said he, as the Rat shoved off and took to the sculls again. `Do you know, I've never been in a boat before in all my life.'

      `What?' cried the Rat, open-mouthed: `Never been in a--you never--well I--what have you been doing, then?'

     `Is it so nice as all that?' asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings, and felt the boat sway lightly under him.

     `Nice? It's the ONLY thing,' said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. `Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING--absolute nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,' he went on dreamily: `messing--about--in--boats; messing----'

One place that over the years represents London life for me is the Tattershall Castle [link], a ship moored in the Thames.  No, you can't row her.  She's too big.  And she's permanently moored at the embankment.  She bobs in the waves, rises and falls with the tide, pitches in her moorings, and...doesn't go anywhere.  But she's fun to board on a social journey for all that.  After all, messing about in boats is the ONLY thing!

She has a nice restaurant below decks and two pubs above, fore and aft.  On nice days, you sit above decks on thick, varnished mahogany benches (as should be on a ship), and there are brass fittings (polished) studding the rails and gunwales.  You sit in the sun and watch boats working up and down the river.  On a rainy day, you can sit below in the restaurant and watch the river traffic out the windows.

Tattershall Castle

What is especially nice about having dinner and a pint on this ship -- and this feature is experienced most immediately by men, I suppose  -- is the helpful sensation one gets while peeing.  Yes.  It's true.

You see, you have a pint, sit talking and boat-watching for any amount of time, and then -- as the need becomes more evident -- head for the head (as they say on a ship).  So you stand there at the urinal, and the Tattershall bobs and rolls on the waves of a passing boat or sways in the strong tidal current moving up or down the river.  And as you sway you think (it's all very logical) -- "No!  No way!  I've only had one pint -- and food with it!"  One bloke along the urinal line pipes up: "Blimey!  Ah'm swayin' like six pints and Ah've only 'ad woone!"  He commented further on his savings -- it's not the cheapest pint in London.

Tattershall Castle in Her Glory Days

Which brings up a question: when exactly were her "glory days"?  She's certainly bringing in more money for her owners now without ever leaving a mooring than she did when underweigh as a lake ferry. And it's pretty soft work these days.

Ironies.

Not to dwell on beer (which is a marked and standard feature of life in England), but..."IPA" bitter stands for "India Pale Ale."  And if I drink one or two of these, you know what happens?  Yes.  I - P - A bitter....  After all, it's good for what Ales you.  Oh my Guinness.

My.  That was stout.

So boats and ships: England being an island has at the center of its collective identity the presence of the sea.  For most of the history of this country, if you wanted to get somewhere else from here, you had to go by ship, and then -- later in English history -- by plane.  Now, of course, there's the amazing Chunnel: the tunnel under the English Channel (or as the French call it, the Pas de Calais).

It's easy to forget England is an island, especially with planes and the Chunnel, but it remains, as Shakespeare called it,

 This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle...

Just think of England as a castle with a great mote round it -- or, it's sort of like a boat you can't row 'cause it's too big...and it's permanently moored.