Island
Living 45: Long Thoughts, Learned Lessons
by A. D.
Coleman |
|
For those of
us who understand the base-10 mathematics on which
western culture relies, the third millenium of the
Common Era began not on January 1, 2000, but on
January 1, 2001. New year, new century, new millenium:
no one now living will ever see that confluence
again.
No equivalent
this momentous New Year’s Eve of the premature
hoopla of the previous December. Instead, we got
a near-blizzard to mark the occasion. I preferred
it that way, actually. I love heavy snow in the
city, especially here on the Island. It slows everything
down, suspends time, drapes a soft hush over the
world, emphasizes the underlying, enduring rural
aspect of life here in the most outer of the outer
boroughs, and -- for me, at least -- creates a profoundly
meditative psychological space.
By coincidence,
after over a decade of faithful service my water
heater gave up the ghost just a few days after Christmas,
so I spent the last few days of the year organizing
a replacement, boiling water for sponge baths, showering
at some friends’ apartments, and generally
looking after my personal support system. My goal
proved simple: to enter the new year with all systems
go. It worked out fine; at 3 o'clock in the afternoon
of December 31st I stood in my own bathtub under
a hot shower, washing away the last of the twentieth
century.
Hunkering down
and keeping warm during those last twentieth-century
days and nights, I found myself eating home-made
pea soup and bread I'd baked myself, as peasants
did in the heart of winter a thousand years go.
Adrift in this bubble of slow time, I found myself
thinking long thoughts, reviewing my life, and asking
some hard questions about where I’ve come from
and where I’m headed.
I've spent this
past decade on the road, working my ass off, taking
care of family business and various professional
commitments and, on top of that, rehabbing the house
I live in. All of that has come to fruition and/or
closure (well, the house isn’t quite completed;
another six months to go). I'm glad to have done
it all, and have no regrets: In all cases, I consider
the energy well spent.
But I'm frazzled,
tired of living out of a suitcase and sleeping in
unfamiliar beds, coming home to a tangle of construction
and sealed boxes of personal possessions. My life
has become much too fragmented and disorganized.
I feel like a traveling salesman. I want a home,
and a home base. I also want a home life, a social
life, a personal life, and a private life that don't
all face constant travel-related disruption. I need
stability, and continuity, and a sense of place,
and greater engagement with my community.
This has proven
an extraordinary year. The car crash, the pilgrimage
to my childhood home in France, my mother's passing,
all of which I’ve written about here, plus
the publication of several books (including my first
volume of creative writing), and a week I spent
in Paris in early December, variously consolidated
feelings, revealed things to me, brought closure
to diverse issues and commitments, opened doors.
I'm in very good shape, I think. But I'm not living
the way I want to. I'm not satisfied with the quality
of my life. I've no desire to retire (I don’t
even know what that idea represents in my context),
or to become less productive. However, I want more
time to myself, for creative ends. I want to entertain
my friends in my new home. I want to build/rebuild
a personal and professional network. I want to reengage
with a major research project I’ve put off
for a decade. I want to live the life of the mind.
And I want to spend more time, literally and metaphorically,
in the cafés. So I need to make some substantial
adjustments to my current way of life.
How will I do
that? To start with, by taking a step back and getting
the long view of things as they stand in the present.
My work will carry me to the southwest from mid-January
through mid-March; by the time your read this I’ll
be residing temporarily in Las Vegas, that weird
and most American of all cities -- teaching at the
University of Nevada and, in my spare time, reviewing
the lessons I learned in the twentieth century,
preparing myself to live as a twenty-first century
human, acquiring some new skills, redefining myself,
and plotting some updated courses of action.
Yet I do so
fully aware of the fact that life is, indeed, what
happens when you're making other plans. If I needed
proof of that, the past decade handed me an ample
supply. But in fact I knew that already. When I
started writing this column, back in 1997, several
people asked me what direction it would take. I’m
a practicing Buddhist, and one of the tenets of
my faith is this: The path is the goal.
Once, a quarter
of a century ago, a mentor of mine -- a zen master
disguised as a failed writer -- stopped me in my
tracks on a sunny spring day as we strolled the
Lower East Side in New York, so that he could teach
me a lesson. We’d been talking about the study
of art. "Here’s how I look at a sculpture,"
Charlie Devlin said suddenly, instructing me to
stand stock-still; then -- as passers-by gaped --
he proceeded to bob and weave around me for ten
full minutes, even jumping up in the air and getting
down on his hands and knees to achieve different
vantage points. It was a virtuoso rendering of the
choreography of observation, an analytical cubist’s
lindy-hop. No one had ever paid such close visual
attention to me as a physical object in my life.
"I look at a person the way I look at a sculpture,"
he told me when he’d done. I never looked at
either the same way again.
If true knowledge
has to be earned (and I think it must), then you
acquire it only by putting ideas to the test of
experience. So the wish to have known something
before you learned it the hard way doesn't make
a lot of sense to me. And it seems to me that when
someone else's wisdom resonates for you, it's not
because they've spared you the pain of learning
it for yourself, but because they've helped you
see that you've already passed that test and don't
have to repeat the course. The "price you have
to pay to get out of going through all these things
twice," in Bob Dylan's words, is learning your
lessons the first time around.
Here are a few
things I've learned along the way, a few assumptions
I'm carrying from the previous century into this
new one:
•
Lip service is better than no service at all.
•
Money from home always comes out of the apron
pocket.
•
Free advice is worth every penny it costs you.
•
Do not protect yourself from heartbreak. Unless
interfered with, the heart is a self-repairing
aspect of the psyche. Guard instead against your
tendencies to relish your own damage or even seek
it out, and to stand in the way of your own healing.
•
You know something's a matter of principle if
you've paid a price for it. Until then, it's just
an attitude.
•
There's no future in nihilism.
A happy new
year, new century, and new millenium to you all.
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©
Copyright 2001 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved.
By permission of the author and Image/World
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P.O.B. 040078, Staten Island, New York 10304-0002
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