Glimpsed Through the Fog

The other night I was watching a program about Gothic cathedrals. The lecturer's enthusiasm reminded me of the way I felt one long-ago summer when I was in England and explored everything Gothic I could find--chapels, churches, colleges, train stations, government buildings, cathedrals--you name it. If it was Gothic, I walked around, climbed around, photographed, and inspected it. I'd written a paper about Gothic architecture in a Victorian literature class for my M.A. and been swept off my feet by John Ruskin's descriptions. His soaring prose seemed to capture the essence of an architectural style carved in stone but aspiring to mystical dimensions.

Well, why wouldn't you be captivated by an architecture that finds delicacy, bravado, solemnity, ecstasy, darkness, light, ethereal beauty, and pride of workmanship in the earthiest of materials: stone, wood, and glass? A Gothic cathedral suggests, by its scale, that there's more to existence than meets the eye--and therefore, that there may be more to us than meets the eye. If out of those elemental materials a builder can create towering spires, soaring galleries, and light-filled apses that seem to float, maybe it's an indication that the things of this world are more than they appear to be.

Of course, mysticism is very Platonic, but the solidity of materials and the proliferation of so many individual saints, prophets, kings, and everyday people, created in loving and expressive detail in statuary and stained glass on every available surface, shows an Aristotelian regard for earthly life, too. It would have been impossible for a builder to put up a 140-foot ceiling or build a wall made of glass without a careful working out of scientific principles and advanced problem solving.

I think my Platonic streak was wider when I was younger, because it was really the mysteriousness of the Gothic buildings, the way they presented themselves as way-stations to something beyond, that appealed to me. I know I'm more Aristotelian now because, after listening to the lecturer emphasize over and over the other night that the ceilings of the cathedrals were built of solid stone, I wondered why it had never occurred to me to keep a sharp lookout for loose pieces. I probably still have the mystic streak, but it's accompanied now by a greater awareness of material fragility and principles of physics.

When the lecturer was speaking of Amiens Cathedral, I had a sudden flashback to an incident I hadn't thought about in years. That same English summer, I went to France, in the middle of my summer course, for a weekend in Paris. It was a rough bus ride after a choppy ferry crossing and a sleepless night, and at the time this seemed the very pinnacle of travel discomfort (which makes me laugh now, I can tell you). I was tired and rather disenchanted.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, the bus stopped in a town somewhere north and east of Paris. As the bus started to move again, I glimpsed, through the fog and darkness of early morning, a huge Gothic facade looming over the bus, ghostly, half visible, and then gone. It was easily more breathtaking than anything I later saw in Paris, though it vanished almost before I was aware of it. The unexpectedness made it seem marvelous, as if it had appeared out of the air like some enchanted castle from an Arthurian tale.

I wondered what it was that I saw, and I still do. I didn't found out at the time, having no clear conception of where we were and no chance to ask anyone (in my halting French) who might actually have been awake and in the know. Was it Amiens? Rouen? Maybe sometime I'll go there again and find out, though I have to say not knowing hasn't bothered me.

One thing I learned then, but had to be reminded of later, was that something numinous can open up right in front of you even when you're tired, irritated, hot, and overwhelmed by the experience of being on your way to Paris for the first time. It's probably not even on the itinerary, that thing you remember all your life and would have missed if you'd only figured out how to sleep sitting up. Even with a greater respect now for gravity, loose mortar, and the ravages of time, I prize the memory of that ethereal scene granted to a grumpy but wide-eyed traveler.

Time Machine

I spent the afternoon and early evening of Valentine's Day organizing and clearing out some files, an ongoing project of mine this winter. It doesn't sound like a very romantic Valentine's activity, but it actually grew into a richer experience than I was expecting. The storage box I was organizing turned out to be something of a time capsule for late 2008 through early 2010, a period in which I finished graduate coursework at Pacifica and transitioned back into non-student life at home.

My goal on Saturday was to locate all the articles and handouts from my classes, stuffed with little ceremony into random folders, and arrange them as methodically as I had papers from the first two years at school. Things had been so busy during the last year of coursework and the dissertation phase that I'd never taken the time to create folders for my third-year classes; putting everything into one box was as far as I'd gotten. I knew there were other things in the box--receipts, letters, business correspondence, etc.--but I figured it was all boring stuff except for the class material. Concentrating on the third-year papers would make a good start, I decided.

Making stacks for each class and category of material took a long time, considering the haphazard order in which I'd placed things. I had a couple of general piles for non-school items, a heap of Pacifica items not pertaining to classes, and stacks devoted to Egyptian Mythology, Religious Studies Approaches to Myth, Hebrew Traditions, and Islamic/Christian Traditions (I put these together because there were fewer handouts). There was a stack of dissertation formulation materials, somewhat organized already. The only class for which I already had a folder was Dante: I had consulted that material for my dissertation and made a folder for it when I cleared my desk off.

As a year of academic life began to arrange itself under my eyes, emotions began to arise. Almost everything I handled had a memory or feeling attached to it. As I organized the articles for my Religious Studies class, I saw myself tucked into a quiet corner at Panera Bread, happily reading Durkheim, Malinowski, and Otto Rank. I remembered sitting in a sunny garden at school, jet-lagged, analyzing an article for Reductionist, Romantic, or Postmodern thinking. I remembered painstakingly searching for images to illustrate a presentation. I thought of a conversation with another student during a class break about the Hebrew and Egyptian traditions. I recalled speaking to the class about Wendy Doniger in a small room on a dark December afternoon fading into dusk. I found directions to someone's house for a party.

There were also welcoming notes from the school for the beginning of each academic year, quarterly syllabi, instructions for those attending graduation in spring 2009 (including two parking passes), a printed email from one of my dissertation committee members, scattered pages from a handout on an Egyptian goddess that, without a staple, had somehow become separated into three or four parts (I only found the first two pages when I had put almost everything away), and, on the back of a printed class schedule, relic of a more hopeful time, an excerpt from Alice Walker's celebrated open letter to newly elected President Barack Obama. 

I also found tax forms, the receipt from a hotel where I spent my first post-Pacifica vacation, brochures for various places visited in Southern California, a calendar of events for a Pasadena bookstore (five years out of date), an empty rental car folder, directions someone had drawn to show me how to find a particular labyrinth in Ventura, Internet material on New Harmony, Indiana, a flyer on a labyrinth church in Saint Louis, notes from Jung lectures in Cincinnati, and a picture I'd been looking for for a long time, lodged mysteriously and out of time sequence in a hodge-podge of papers, news clippings, and maps.

To sum up this experience, it was like looking into a mirror that showed me how I was six years ago: busy, absorbed, hopeful, engaged, and alive, despite many lumps and bumps on the road. I didn't have much time for things like filing, obviously, but I was active, seeking, stretching, very much alive in mind and spirit. All those trips to California and other places, the people I met, and the things I was doing kept me full of ideas and purpose. 

Reliving those days was somewhat of a bittersweet experience, but it was also instructive in reminding me of who I am, where I'm going, and how full of possibilities life always is. I've sometimes looked back on my school days from a distance with very different eyes, reassessing my opinions about certain experiences and events. Quite fair enough. But organizing my papers reminded me of how much I gained from it all and what a source of richness it was, with the added bonus that I now know where everything is. I threw away fewer items than I thought I would, even keeping a few things I really don't need any more. In the end, it seemed like a time to remember. 

Inner Resources

It's been a moderately quiet week around here, with nothing very unexpected going on, except that I ended up writing a poem. This came about because I forgot to take a book with me to Starbucks last weekend. I was annoyed when I got there and found I had nothing to read, but on the other hand . . . it's good to test your inner resources sometimes.

First I decided to clean out my purse. I found a collection of miscellaneous receipts (mostly from Starbucks), expired and unexpired coupons, and a movie ticket stub, along with a couple of bank slips. There were also some notes I'd forgotten I had from an online course on Joseph Campbell. I'd jotted them down on a series of blue Post-Its that ended up in one of the pockets of my purse. Why they were in my purse and not in a drawer is a question I can't answer, but it did solve the problem of having nothing to read.

I suppose that once you've written a book of your own, you're just naturally more opinionated about things; at any rate, I found on reading the notes that I was a little annoyed by the professor's ideas. The topic was Campbell's concept of the hero's journey, and I had a different idea of what it means than did the lecturer, who thought Campbell's monomyth was too impersonal. Part of the problem, too, was that I had just finished that course on medieval philosophy a couple of weeks ago and was bursting with ideas on the universal and the particular.

The result of it all was that after reading the notes, I started scribbling a poem on a blank Post-It as a response (though not a very serious one) to the discussion of the universal versus the particular. It ended up being two haiku strung together:

Plato's Cat

Universal cat
Do you ever crave tuna?
Does Plato feed you?

If you chanced to meet
A nice, particular cat
Would it make you glad?

(I know haiku are supposed to be about nature, but I use them for a lot of things. It's my all-occasion poetic form, with apologies to its true masters. I was once asked to bring a limerick to a wedding shower and ended up writing a haiku instead because it felt more comfortable. If you really want to stretch the form, try writing about a cracker dish.)

Feeling better, I left Starbucks to go home. I had to stop on the way for milk and apples, and when I got out of the car, I noticed two things: a single star in the still bright sky paired with the top of a very tall evergreen and an odd effect of the setting sun that produced dramatic rays across an expanse of sky, something akin to zodiacal light. Either or both would have been worthy of a proper haiku, but I haven't written it yet. Maybe I will next time I'm in Starbucks without a book.

What the Groundhog Saw

It's surprising how many different names Groundhog Day has. I wrote about the cross-quarter days--of which February 2 is one--last November, and I knew Groundhog Day was called Imbolc (in the Celtic tradition) and Candlemas in England, and that it has associations with Saint Brigid and with lambs. I'd forgotten that in the Catholic liturgical year it's known as Presentation Day or Purification Day, which has to do with the presentation of Jesus in the temple and rites of purification for his mother according to ancient law. I'm trying to remember if this is also when we used to have the Blessing of the Throats, when the priest went around and blessed everyone with two crossed candles to ward off colds. I'm not sure if this is still done, though it was kind of a charming idea.

There's a lot of old European lore associated with February 2, some of which has made it to America. We think of it as the midpoint of winter, when thoughts turn toward spring, but apparently in some places of old it was considered the start of spring. That's hard to imagine here, since January and February are deep-dyed winter months, with typically nothing springlike going on. I recall a year when a mild spell at February's end lasted long enough that it seemed spring had come early, which was cause for much remark. That I remember it so well shows how unusual it was. Let's hope it remains unusual (despite its loveliness), because however much one dislikes winter, February is supposed to be cold, at least around here.

My birthday and the Super Bowl both fall close to Groundhog Day, though I had never really given it much thought before. I don't know if there is any significance to being born on or near a cross-quarter day, but having learned that in some blessed places February 2 signaled the start of spring, I now have a new way of thinking about my birthday. Just the bare hint of an association with spring so close to my date of birth is radical enough that I'm going to adopt it regardless of what the weather is actually doing. If I'd known this a long time ago, it would have helped me through many freezing, sleeting, blizzarding birthday celebrations, but that's no matter--I know now.

Regarding the Super Bowl, I'm not sure whether it's a coincidence or not that it falls near the February cross-quarter. Football seems to have no connection with candles, ewes, lambs, Saint Brigid, groundhogs, motherhood or any other cross-quarter traditions you could name, but you never know, there might be a hidden link, just as there's a connection between the November cross-quarter, harvest, and Election Day. Candlemas in the late Middle Ages was apparently heavy on candlelit processions and the intoning of chant, all very pious and reverent; football (and the spectator sport of consuming heavy food and drink) seems rather more Roman in style (though February in ancient Rome actually marked a time of purification). However that may be, it does seem somehow American to mark the deepest part of winter with a head-bashing contest.

As for me, I happened to be looking through some old calendars on the evening of February 1 (Groundhog Eve, if you will) when I came across the special edition newspaper I had totally forgotten I'd saved from President Obama's first inauguration. While I don't know if the January date of our presidential inaugurations (since FDR) signifies anything other than a date conveniently close (but not too close) to New Year's, it does fall fairly near the February cross-quarter. (Let me remark parenthetically that I looked at that newspaper in some consternation--speaking of head-bashing and headaches--before throwing it away with some old calendars I found in the same cubby.) 

The next day, as it happens, I found an article in which someone was discussing possible ways to celebrate Candlemas/Groundhog Day/Imbolc in modern times, and cleaning house was one suggested activity. Glad to know I was on to something, I took down my little Christmas tree (which I'd been saving for Candlemas), dusted, mopped, shook out the rugs, and took out the trash containing all the old calendars and newspaper. I often play music while cleaning, but this Groundhog Day I actually found myself singing along. Well, spring fever will do that to you.