© Columbia University Press
Field Notes from Elsewhere: Reflections on Dying and Living
September, 2009
Cloth, 288 pages, 113 illus
ISBN: 978-0-231-14780-4
$26.95
/ £17.95
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The following are passages from Field Notes from Elsewhere: Reflections on Dying and Living:
A.M.
Day
The world, ancient myths teach us, did not originate once and for all at a moment in the distant past but is created anew every time dawning light reveals changing patterns. This endlessly recurrent event almost makes it possible to believe that rumors of death are nothing but idle gossip. Eternity is neither the infinite extension of time nor its negation; rather, eternity and time meet in the paradoxical moment when creation repeatedly emerges as if from nothing.
As I write these words, dawn is slowly breaking on the Berkshire Mountains. For more than two decades, I have begun each day in silence, watching first light gradually dispel lingering darkness. The most intriguing moment in this ritual process is not when the sun’s rays first touch the mountain but the instant just before dawn when all of what will be creation hovers on the edge of emergence. I am never sure whether light makes the mountains appear or the mountains make light visible. In the twinkling of an eye, betwixt and between not appearing and appearing, reality remains virtual and all things seem possible. But this moment never lasts, for it appears only by disappearing. As soon as light falls on the mountaintop, it begins a gradual descent to the valley. If you are patient, the eye can glimpse the sun’s movement in the steady withdrawal of shadows. Light, however, is never merely light, for illumination creates a residual obscurity more impenetrable than the darkness it displaces but does not eliminate.
Annual rhythms repeat this daily cycle. On the evening of the summer solstice, the sun sets directly in front of my study window and then immediately starts its southward journey. The first day of summer marks the end of increasing light and the beginning of enveloping darkness. By the winter solstice the sun has moved so far south that I can no longer see it set. But then, in an instant, everything is reversed yet again—on the longest night of the year light begins to wax and darkness wane. Darkness in the midst of light and light in the midst of darkness. I never appreciated these rhythms until I moved to this hillside overlooking the valley.
What is most remarkable about each dawn is that the light is never the same—it changes with the seasons, by the day, even in each moment. There is a texture to light that allows—no, requires—the tissue of vision to be constantly woven anew. Scrims settle on the eye like a mountain mist that creates sensibilities no word or deed can disperse. Colors become moods, moods colors: the blue and gray of winter, the green and lavender of spring, the red and yellow of summer, the umber and amber of fall. In the mountains of New England, light is most remarkable during the early morning and late afternoon on sunny autumn days. The play of shifting light and the astonishing color of the hills creates an aura that is at once ethereal and palpable. The subtleties of its hues are reminiscent of northern light in Scandinavia. I never really understood Kierkegaard until this light absorbed me.
Around 4:00 in the afternoon on warm fall days, something very strange happens: I no longer simply see light but hear it as a tangible presence pressing on my eardrums, creating a resonance that lingers long after darkness falls. This autumnal light is always tinged with the melancholy that comes with the sense of an ending, which every beginning harbors. To see this sound is to understand that silence is truly golden.
P.M.
Night
There is not one night; there are two. The first night is the night that is the opposite of day and is familiar to all of us. At the end of a long day, we welcome this night and look forward to the renewal it brings. Night after night day dawns in the darkness refreshed, reborn, resurrected. At the end of the day, this night beckons like a lover with open arms: "Come, linger till first light."
The other night is different; it is, paradoxically, within as well as beyond what we ordinarily know as day and night. Far from familiar, it is forever strange; never reassuring, it is endlessly fascinating. If day marks the beginning in which light dawns ever anew, the night beyond night is the origin from which day and night, as well as all the differences and oppositions that structure our world and render it comprehensible, emerge and to which they return. Neither light nor dark but something in between, this other night is the realm of shades that wander and drift but never settle. The darkness of this netherworld cannot be dispersed. The light of reason tries but always fails to grasp the other night with strict oppositions and precise combinations: either this or that . . . both this and that. But shades always slip away—every light, we discover, casts a shadow. Shades of difference haunt our world and leave nothing clear or precise. If this placeless place that always appears by disappearing has a logic, it is fuzzy.
I am never sure whether I approach this night or it approaches me. It seems to draw near by withdrawing, leaving in its wake hints that provide no clues. The apprehension of shades can occur day or night, in light or darkness. Sometimes I glimpse this strange night as I lie awake in darkness, other times in the middle of the day when everything seems crystal clear. This night is inescapable—wherever I turn, it appears like a faint shadow I barely glimpse.
This night gives me no rest even when I am asleep. It is profound but without depth, utterly superficial yet fathomless, extraordinary because so ordinary. Through a synesthesia I do not understand, I hear the night beyond night as an endless murmur, something like white noise that is indistinguishable from silence. The patterns, rhythms, and routines of daily life seem fashioned to silence this murmur, but every strategy fails. The silence of this night can never be completely silenced and its echo lends every word an uncanny resonance. If someone asked me what is so disturbing about the night beyond night, I would reply, "Nothing, absolutely nothing."
A.M.
Elsewhere
I have been elsewhere. The distance is short, though its crossing takes a lifetime. Elsewhere is not far—it is near, ever proximate, never present. It is a place or placeless place that is strange because it is so familiar. Rather than beyond, elsewhere is between the places I ordinarily dwell or think I dwell. When journeying elsewhere, you do not leave the here and now; it is as though elsewhere were folded into the present in a way that disrupts its presence. The everyday world does not disappear when you linger elsewhere—all you care about approaches from a distance that increases as it diminishes. Gradually, you begin to realize that nothing is merely itself—everything, everybody, is always also something else, someone else, somehow else, somewhere else.
When you are elsewhere, vision, and, with it, awareness, doubles and, as you recognize this doubling, doubles yet again. Far from confusing, this doubling and doubling of doubling clarifies by disclosing an elsewhere that is always there by not being there—like a looking-glass world into which you can always slip but never leave. The mind is split, divided, torn not only between consciousness and the unconsciousness but also within consciousness itself. Two in one, one in two—neither separated nor unified, neither many nor one. Just as the everyday does not disappear when you are elsewhere, so elsewhere does not vanish when you attempt to come back. Once you have been elsewhere, you can never come back because elsewhere always returns with you.
A.M.
Vocation
Is it possible to believe in vocation if you do not believe in one who calls? I have never considered my work a job or even a career; indeed, I’m not sure I really regard it as work. Rather, teaching and writing are vocations and that means they are callings. It is no accident that many of the oldest and most prestigious universities and colleges in this country were founded by New England Protestants and initially were led by pastors. The commitment to the Word runs deep even in those who do not know or even vehemently reject their own heritage.
If, however, teaching and writing are vocations, who calls and what is calling? Though I was raised a Protestant, when others hear voices, I hear silence. I don’t believe you can ever be sure that what you hear is the voice of God. For Protestants, God is always a Deus absconditus, who shows himself by hiding. Even when Luther could do no other, he, no more than Kierkegaard’s Abraham, could be sure the voice he was hearing was that of God rather than Satan.
But what if neither God nor Satan were calling? In the absence of God, it is always possible that what sounds like a call from beyond is actually the echo of an inner void that can never be filled. If there is a vocation without one who calls, then perhaps silence is the Word that must be spoken. The responsibility of the teacher and writer who hears by not hearing is to sow seeds of doubt wherever there is certainty, to find fault in every foundation deemed firm, to weave insecurity into the very fabric of security. The vocation of the person called by the silence of the Word is not to expose the impossibility of faith but to show the inescapability of faith for those who believe it impossible.
P.M.
Surviving
Surviving is not the same as recovering. Recovery takes you back to where you were so you can once again get on with life; surviving takes you someplace you have never been and makes it impossible to go back to where you once were. The survivor not only cannot but does not want to get back to normal, because he now realizes that nothing remains what it was. Recovery conceals the very wound the survivor wants to keep open. This insistence on lingering with the negative does not reflect morose preoccupations but expresses the determination not to forget the lessons learned during the ordeal. Those who simply recover are not really survivors.
The most profound lesson the survivor learns is seemingly simple: life is frightfully fragile. This hardly seems to be a great revelation until you realize that knowing is not always understanding. While riding in an ambulance through midtown traffic when a few seconds might be the difference between life and death, when struggling through an endless night when life turns on calculating the precise dosage of an experimental drug that itself might be fatal, you begin to understand just how tenuous life truly is. Survivors are never cured; at best their disease is controlled or goes into remission, but it does not go away. The morning after the crisis seems to have passed, the survivor sees in the unknowing eyes of others who appear to be healthy the terrible truth he has just learned: disease and death are not out there waiting to befall us but are always in our midst, even when life seems untroubled.
For survivors the acceptance of life’s fragility can actually be liberating. If the future everyone dreads has already arrived, there is no longer any reason for it to hold us in its grip. Once you realize that the end is near, even when it seems distant, time unexpectedly slows down. There is no longer any need to rush because whatever you think must be done quickly doesn’t really matter. Though suffering alone, survivors form a community without communion. They do not need to wear bracelets or T-shirts while marching in parades or participating in demonstrations to identify one another. Inconspicuous in any crowd, survivors recognize each other by their slower gait, which is not quite leisurely but never hurried. They pause to give lost strangers directions and take time to play with a child. No longer sure what is coming next, they hesitate slightly before responding to serious questions. Those who recover always think they have more important things to do—survivors know they do not.
Though I am still living, I am not yet a survivor; I will not reach that goal for another year, and even then there will be no certainty about the future. But, of course, there never is. Though I now know, in a way I never before have, that time is short, the appreciation of just how uncertain the future is has given me more time than I ever knew I had.
P.M.
Melancholy
There is a melancholy of things complete that arrives unexpectedly. Fulfillment does not fulfill, and the end so eagerly anticipated proves disappointingly empty. The deal is closed, the book finished, the class graduated, the career complete, and it is finally time for celebration. When family and friends gather, there is, however, an uninvited guest. Melancholy disrupts the moment—the person in its grip can never be fully present. While others are immersed in the moment, the vision of the melancholic is split, his consciousness always double. The most profound melancholy is invisible to the eyes of others. The melancholic spirit travels incognito—while seeming to be absorbed in the moment, he floats above, watching from without, knowing the moment will pass and uncertain it will ever arrive again. In melancholy the present is never fully present but always already past—even before it arrives. This trace of this impending past is most haunting in precisely those moments that are supposed to be complete.
Melancholy is never a matter of will. It settles like a mist that cannot be dispersed and, as long as it remains, shades every corner of life. The color of melancholy is neither the black of bile nor the gray on gray of a winter day; rather, it is the glow of late August light playing on goldenrod. Melancholy reflects the beauty of summer’s last flower, which is almost perfect because it is already fading.
For those devoted to living in the moment, there is a sadness about melancholy that inevitably leads to mourning. And yet . . . and yet, there is also something strangely sweet about melancholy. Far from prompting flight, melancholy has an allure that coyly attracts even the most resistant. That is why Kierkegaard called melancholy "my most faithful mistress." While undeniably disturbing, melancholy does not necessarily agitate; it often brings a sense of calm and serenity that allows pensive reflection—perhaps even contemplation. Though I often curse her for it, melancholy was the most precious gift my mother left me.
A.M.
Ordinary
When you first receive the diagnosis of cancer, it is difficult not to feel singled out. Though I did not for a moment ask "Why me?" I did nonetheless feel exceptional in a way I never had before. In the days following that dreaded phone call, I watched friends and colleagues go about their business as if nothing had changed and realized that now I was set apart—I had become not merely different but other.
I had not, however, anticipated how much things would change when I crossed the threshold of the cancer ward. Forbidding from the outside, the hospital offers unexpected reassurance to those who know there is no certain cure. What I found most striking during the first days of this long ordeal was the way the brutal honesty of the hospital staff and people suffering transformed the extraordinary into the utterly ordinary. Everybody admitted to the cancer ward had received the same traumatic news I had, and we all were engaged in a life-and-death struggle whose outcome was far from certain. What was exceptional on the outside became routine on the inside. Doctors and nurses approached every crisis in a completely matter-of-fact way: "This is the situation. This is what needs to be done, and here is how we are going to do it." Their words were confident without being arrogant. Most doctors who treat cancer patients have seen too much inexplicable suffering to be certain about anything. Slowly, their honesty and calm assurance spreads to patients, and panic turns into pragmatism: "OK, what do I have to do to get from here to there? When do we start?"
Something else also begins to happen that is quite extraordinary. As patients become as matter-of-fact about their condition as their doctors, they begin to talk to each other. Strangers who do not even know each other’s names, and who never would exchange a word outside the hospital, talk about intimate things they cannot discuss with their families or closest friends. The shared sense of crisis creates a freedom of expression unknown in the outside world. In the waiting room, the private becomes public without being obscene. When passion gives way to compassion, fleeting relationships deepen.
Kierkegaard was wrong—anonymity and community are not opposites; and Heidegger was wrong—the prospect of death not only drives us apart, it also draws us together. Though we rarely talk about it with those to whom we are close, disease and death are not really exceptional but are what we all finally share. In the hospital a unique community emerges among strangers. This community is all the more intense for its brevity—it might last no longer than a single conversation in the waiting room, an afternoon in the recovery room, or a few days in a hospital bed. Such relations end when the stay is over: what goes on in the hospital stays in the hospital. And yet these relations run deep and remain more memorable than many of the relations with others we think we know well. Anonymity and the awareness that relationships will not last allow people to become closer to strangers than they are to those they believe closest to them. In a world where intimacy is often cheap, the richest community might be found in the most unexpected place—the cancer ward.
P.M.
Extraordinary
An Ordinary Evening in Williamstown
The extraordinary is ordinary,
The ordinary extraordinary.
"The serious reflection is composed
Neither of comic nor tragic but of commonplace."
Lush, purple Concord grapes ripe on the vine,
Goldenrod glowing in the day’s last light,
A monarch butterfly lighting on the silk of a burst milkweed pod.
"A permanence composed of impermanence."
Geese honking high above as they gather to leave once more.
High low, low high.
The sweet serendipity of the everyday.
A rabbit nibbling grass at the edge of the field,
The plunk of an apple falling to the ground,
Pears left half eaten by deer and crow.
Mountains whose "lineaments were the earth."
The glint of a turkey feather lost in the grass.
"Hallucinations in surfaces."
Shadows visibly growing longer.
Drooping black-eyed Susans dreading first frost.
"Obscure in colors whether of the sun
Or the mind."
Weeds—but why weeds?—grown tall waiting to be mowed.
Sun, moving south, slipping below the distant tree line.
"The instinct for earth," for Williamstown, where, unexpectedly,
"The real and the unreal are two in one."
The truth of incarnation.
Wisdom asks nothing more
Nothing more.
***
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