[LISTEN]
We were a small but devoted group of lifelong learners, including among others a teacher, an artist, a pilot, an accountant (retired). We tackled serious and sensitive subjects, including how it is that so many of our peers choose to identify themselves by such increasingly-constricted labels that invite mutual hostility, disrespect, and dishonesty. But we did it with civility and good humor, and a lot of fun. Wednesday nights were a sheer delight, as was our Thursday afternoon field trip to the Tennessee State Museum in July.
There were a few students younger than I, but most were of my generation. That's very different from the Fall and Spring, when I must constantly remind myself that my young charges don't have a clue what my jokes and pop culture references are about. I now have two children older than most of my students.
I'm really reelin' in the years. Some days, just reelin'... but I take heart in realizing that the view from here, from this pinnacle of years, affords a deep appreciation for life. "When you get older you realize how precious time is," says one of my student savants who quotes Shawshank Redemption: "Get busy living or get busy dying."
Garrison Keillor, who's had his inglorious moments and his #MeToo moment, keeps cranking out good thoughts. "My life is good enough. Every day is incredibly precious. When you reach 77, you’ll feel the same way. It’s a shame that a con man is in the White House as the Arctic is melting and white nationalists are shooting up our cities, but we’ll be okay, we just need a Trexit vote next year..."
But we'll have to wait 'til next year to see if that's in the cards. Meanwhile, precious days await. I find they go better when I deliberately don't expose myself to the latest deplorable Drumpf updates early in the day.
Two final reports capped our last class, one on Alan Watts (naturally reminding me of Her) and the other on the Locke-Reid debate about personal identity. That odd but oddly-fitting juxtaposition spurred the thought that living in the present is a fine thing, but so is the recovery of dormant memories and the renewal of life they can sponsor. And, so is our commitment to the future. "The really vital question for us all is, What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?" There's no reason to deprive our present of precious memory and hopeful anticipation. Wendell Berry:
"We can do nothing for the human future that we will not do for the human present. For the amelioration of the future condition of our kind we must look, not to the wealth or the genius of the coming generations, but to the quality of the disciplines and attitudes that we are preparing now for their use . . . [T]he man who works and behaves well today need take no thought for the morrow; he has discharged today's only obligation to the morrow." Discipline and HopeAlbert Camus: "Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present." The Rebel
Our course was all about the distortions and depredations both identity and truth are bound to suffer, when we allow our present to be swamped by special pleading on behalf of this or that shrunken constituency, this or that shriveled conception of self and humanity. Our true identity is large and inclusive. We are the world, nay (say Alan Watts and, in very different ways, Carl Sagan, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and many others whose views we encountered this summer) the universe. Wrapping ourselves too tightly in our own skin is a big mistake.
Speaking of dormant memories delightfully stirred back to life, and of the renewal of life: last weekend I traveled to Asheville N.C., the designated meetup location for me and several of my old pals from grad school back in the '80s. The pretext is always a minor league baseball game. Do we really need a pretext? Does it really need to be a sporting event? Well no, but so far as I'm concerned it does need to include beer and enough measured time to loosen all our conversational reticences and restraints. Baseball's deliberate pace is perfect for that.
We've done this annual Friends Weekend three times now, at three different venues, and there seems to be a strong consensus for continuing it indefinitely. It's pretty much the only time we all see one another anymore, being scattered across several states and several hundred miles. I've had a similar experience re-connecting with professional colleagues at academic conferences, but it's different when genuine friendships dating to a time of personal and professional insecurity are involved. It's like the continuation of a comfortable conversation that feels fresh, not forty years old and stale. I recommend it.
I went up early, on Thursday, to spend a little extra time with our Best Man up in the mountains outside Asheville. We squeezed in an early game, we old throwbacks, on Throwback Thursday. The Royals' affiliate from Lexington was in town. I didn't keep score and can't instantly recall who won... but who cares? When the last great scorer comes to mark against our names etc., as Mr. Rice so rightly put it, and the game we were really playing was more about renewing old ties than about cheering for Tourists in pinstripes.
We'd been thinking of a hike in the Blue Ridge on Friday, but afternoon rain scotched those plans. It was just as well, we ended up spending precious quality time walking Penney (the last surviving old Golden Retriever of a trio, age 16) down that mostly-untraveled "primative" road in front of his place, and just rocking on the porch, listening to the birds, conversing, and enjoying the lesser summer warmth of 3,000+ feet. Then to dinner by the river (creek? pond?) in the charming little mountain town of Sylva, and to the lovely independent bookstore where the young student bookseller spoke excitedly in anticipation of taking one of my pal's classes this Fall.
Then late Friday night our old friend who now works and lives in northern Alabama ("Rocket City") rolled in. I observed that the exuberant cursing quotient in the house rocketed skyward, with his arrival. Life as a university administrator does that to some people.
Saturday afternoon we made our way back into Asheville where we were joined by the rest of our cohort, first at the Green Man craft brewery and then over to McCormick Field (dubbed a "delightful place" by no less luminous a past visitor than The Bambino himself, according to the image on one of the restroom doors... Bull Durham's Crash Davis, an old Tourist himself, anointed another) for these Tourists' game against the Phillies' affiliate from Lakewood NJ.(Did you see they're going to play a game at the Field of Dreams in Iowa next year? It's not Crash's Carolina League, nor in fact is it heaven, but it too is a place where dreams are said to come true.)
Again, I forget and don't care who won. We won, we band of old brothers reunited and reinvigorated. A postgame repast of excellent Carolina barbeque capped the social evening, and then it was time for some of us to make our way back to the Country Inn. Google said it was just over a mile away, and we all fancy ourselves peripatetics of a sort (not to mention cheapskates), so we decided to hoof it.
Google lied, or else we were all really dragging. It took the better part of 45 minutes to make it back, the first portion of which presented Asheville after hours as a hopping, festive place that feels much bigger and bolder than the census figures would indicate. The middle passage was less delightful, but now at least I can say that I've walked through and seen light at the end of a tunnel. (So that's why it's called Tunnel Road.) A green light. We are borne ceaselessly into the past, straining to see the future. Sometimes, though, now is just right.
Conversation over breakfast Sunday morning again felt like stepping into a time machine. Old thoughts and memories rushed to the surface, new again. Old times rolled back the years, for a bit.
Wait 'til next year is a common refrain in baseball, and suggests one more reason to resist the call of some spiritual sages (like Alan Watts, in either analog or digital format) to live strictly in the present. I can't wait. But of course we must, with lots of specious presence to enjoy now and in the near future. Those days will carry us back ("God willin' and the creek don't rise," as some in these parts are reputed sometime to have said), and forward let us hope, to many happy returns of the day.
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On this day in 1854, Henry David Thoreau (books by this author) published Walden; or, Life in the Woods... WA
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