"A Terrible Thing To Waste"

Sporadically, over the course of many months, I’ve been helping a friend to clear her late husband’s library and organize his academic work. I brought home a notebook of his from 2004, because I happened to leaf through it and was reminded, by notations found within, of wonderful, deep and sometimes difficult conversations we’d had over the years.

The library is a mirror to the mind of the man, and yet contains only a fraction of what is in the mind. This individual was a “big picture” kind of person – probably one reason we got on so well – and his lifetime of reading and interacting with his books, colleagues and students is an example of a life well lived, a life of mind well and truly explored. I think he chose the academic life because he loved to read. He was always reading, always writing, notating, diagramming, referring, inferring, questioning. The library, the papers, the notebooks are what is left of a magnificent mind. They are also an example of all that is precious that we lose because we can only hold onto so much, as time moves unrelentingly onward.

The books, what will become of them? He would have wanted them to find good homes; we’re working on that. He was constantly purchasing duplicates of books he thought were important; he knew where to send them, though he didn’t always get around to doing so. Hundreds and hundreds of books; a dizzying array. Book-sellers are difficult to find, apparently, for such a highly specialized, while varied, collection. My friend said, “Everyone is going to the internet, to Amazon, they tell me.”

This was of grave concern to her husband: The retention and the sharing of knowledge. The assumption made by people is that everything is digitized. If one can call up on the computer all the records from the past, who needs a book?

Or, for that matter, who needs a printed sheet of paper? Going through this professor’s teaching materials, I have been finding his own typewritten notes and cards, tying one subject to another like a spider web across a world of thought. I’ve also found photocopied pages from innumerable books that have been out of print, some of them, for over well over a hundred years. Am I confident that the materials I have been letting slip through my fingers into the recycle bin are all digitized?

No, I am not in the least confident. I am quite sure that the assumption of digitization is incorrect, and that things are landing in the recycle bin that will never be seen again. The photocopies are from books that may no longer exist as physical artifacts.

This is how generations lose sight of what prior generations thought about and understood, correctly or incorrectly. Someone decides for us what information is of value, and lets something (or even everything) else go. “Oh, that old thing; Oxford published a modern study last year, we don’t need that one from 1925.” These days, people who write papers now find all their supporting references on the internet, and they do not question these sources. (I know this because I proofread and edit such papers for clients all the time.) My old friend, the departed professor, would shake his head in dismay; the only proper way to interact with your subject is to question everything that is written about it and, further, to question your own thinking about it. Do people question their own thinking, these days? I wonder about that, as he did – he felt that most people believe there is an “inevitability” or “fate” to everything in their lives (“It must be God’s will,” for example).

Nothing is inevitable, but a people that harbors such defeatist thinking is a people that can be easily led, lied to and manipulated, just as the digital data in which they put their faith can be manipulated. The digital world, at the touch of a button, can disappear.

Who gets to choose what we keep and what we let go? Are they authorities on the subjects, or administrators with quotas? What are the criteria for retention? Is access to the resulting digital data free, or available only through privatized subscription portals? As I go through someone else’s lifetime of study and thinking and work, I remember the many discussions we had about this very topic, in light of the trends we were seeing.

Ultimately, there is a price to be paid, a freedom that is lost, when we capitulate to the notion that we don’t have to know and we don’t have to think, and that we can find references on the internet to support our beliefs. There is a price to be paid when others tell us what to think and feel about what is happening in the world around us, and we let them do it and follow what they say, without asking questions and doing our own research.

In the case of this collection of papers, I am mainly the one who is choosing, and I there is so much that am reluctantly choosing to let go.

“A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste,” the slogan of the United Negro College Fund for more than 40 years, popped into my head, as I was sifting through file folders and baskets. My friend worked his mind until it could not work anymore; he was a walking encyclopedia of the history of political ideas, civil society, and collectivism. Every page of the notebook I brought home has a note of something just read, followed by notes referring to other books, articles, podcasts or other media that one needed to review (many authored by colleagues, friends or students), in order to gain a more complete picture of the problem, or a wider view of the question. I could draw Venn diagrams from the notations on most of these pages, Spirographs of overlapping themes and disciplines.

I can preserve the man’s papers, but no matter how much I wish that I could, I cannot preserve the man’s mind.

If I cannot preserve someone else’s mind, I can at least tell you a little of what the person said:

“Nothing is inevitable.”

“Question authority and everything that is illogical.”

“In a free society, there can be no double-standards.”

If these thoughts of my friend are all I manage to carry forward in this world, know that they are his legacy, bequeathed to you.

© 2017 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

La Habana, en versos libres: IV. Dias Quatro

Mi título al nacer puso en mi cuna,

El sol que al cielo consagró mi frente.

Yo sólo sé de amor. ~ José Martí, from “Vino de Chianti”

The maracas bird
and the electric one, as well,
rattled the sleepers awake,
but no rush, this morning,
just mission:
writings of José Martí.

Verses simple and complex,
exploring the human connection;
Annette and I had planned,
already, for months,
this excursion,
though we did not know
what being here would be like.

No hurry, this morning;
time for breakfast,
time for coffee,
a decent cup—
I’ve got it covered;
I’ll make my own,
with help from
Our Lady of Seattle.

First, however,
to the cadeca queue,
for old world monetary transactions
in silver fiats:
heroes are moneda nacional;
monuments are for the touristas.

No credit, no cheques,
it is cash, cash, cash.

The lines start before opening,
 and the guard lets each in
one at a time;
if you are lucky, the cadeca
is on the shady side of the street
—even so, the ladies
have their fans out,
beating them furiously.

Cool inside;
a long day for tells,
even with the long lunch break.

Once at the counter,
I present Canadian Dollars,
much better in exchange
than the taxed American.

I ask for Convertible Pesos,
then, further, for moneda nacional;

the teller smiles,
thinking perhaps:
la yuma,
she will spread her money
among The People.

Traveler’s alert:
count and organize your money
while still inside the cadeca;
safely stow it away before you leave.

We (Annette, Michael and I)
make our way along Obispo
toward the sea,
stopping at the guayabera shops
and bookstores,
but the stores do not yield Martí,
at least, not in the forms we desire.

We continue forward,
to Plaza de Armas;
nestled in the shade of the trees,
the portrait artist wanders,
tracing the image of Michael
across a clean white page,
and it is then we discover Martí.

Ah, Martí,
no mere revolutionary;
the vision and memory,
the myth, even,
of a romantic man
who saw the truth,
that was all around to be seen—
the corruption, the inequity,
the prices paid, and by whom
—and felt as powerless
as any patriot might
at the old world’s stranglehold
on the new.

Martí,
the revolutionary of love—
before learning and liberty,
the greatest of these is love,
amor con amor se paga,
love must precede and supercede
all action that love,
like the sun,
inspires and sustains.

Martí,
the friend
who laid down his life
for his friends,
but those three bullets
did not end the revolution;
the seemingly unfinished monument
can only testify to your continuing legacy,
as do the books we carry away.

We cut across to
Plaza de la Catedral,
to see the music cast into stone,
and to pray in air-conditioned chapel
for reconciliation,
for healing,
and for peace
among the nations.

Chicken sandwiches,
with beer and coffee
at nearby El Patio,
are surprisingly good,
though the service is slow
—we are there at the sleepy time of day.

After paying la cuenta,
we retrace our steps,
picking our way over the cobblestones,
dug up and piled everywhere,
making way for new cable
to modernize and expand
the ancient electrics,
returning to Hotel Plaza,
quickly passing through
the district of fortune tellers,
casting cards or cowries;
our immediate future
is already known:

we must quickly prepare
for our first concert.

We assemble in the lobby,
then the bus appears on cue
to take us to Teatro Nacional de Cuba,
where we meet Ensemble Vocal Luna
to launch our mutual life’s blood:
love by way of song.

We sang apart and together,
braiding our vibrations,
sending them out
over Plaza de la Revolución,
to meet the memory of Martí,
honored in his monument,
bringing one circle to a close
with the sharing of Guantanamera.

Later, under a full moon,
standing at the parapet of la Cabaña,
as the canon is fired,
seeing the skyline of Habana
beyond el Malecón,
I am reminded
that beauty can be found
everywhere
we are willing
to make the effort
to see it,
to engage it,
and to be inseparable from it.

© 2013 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Ephemera

I have been reading a wonderful collection of lectures made by e.e. cummings at Harvard. I have only read a small sampling of cummings’ poetry, but I ran across this small Atheneum publication of what cummings called “six nonlectures” (reprinted by permission from Harvard University Press), delivered as the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard in 1953.

The lectures talk about cummings’ life and development as an artist. He makes very interesting observations about the role of the poet and trends that he was seeing in the society of his times.

I have been enjoying this small pocket book, but today I am writing about the little surprise I found folded within the later pages of the book. On mint green writing paper, someone had written a poem, using a fountain pen with blue ink. There is no title at the top and neither has the poem’s author identified her or himself.

Here is the poem, in its entirety:

The weather has thrown off its shawl
of wind, of cold, and of rain,
and it’s clothed in garments
of clear and radiant sun.

There isn’t a beast or bird
which in its way doesn’t sing or shout
the weather has thrown off its shawl
of wind, of cold and of rain.

River, fountain and stream
carry prettily
pieces of gold coin,
each one dresses itself anew;
The weather has thrown off its shawl
of wind, of cold and of rain.

What a delight, to have found this little book, in the early days of Spring, only to discover a little poem tucked within its folds!

I cannot help but make the observation that technology does not account for such delights as these.

If you are the author of this poem, let me know who you are—I would love to have a conversation with you about Spring and poetry, fountain pens and books!

Forest or Trees

Deeper into the forest of books go I,
but less seem to learn of them;
the thickets of words, veritable mazes,
of which depth is oft proclaimed,
soon wear out their glib welcome
and inevitably thin to the same weedy patch,
wet and reedy, murky and muddled,
that I have explored before
--but I desire more.

The in-depth studies, the colorful analogs,
the structured cases resemble less
the actual beauty of the forest or the tree
--and I desire more.

The universe smiles wearily at my dilemma,
the untamed wilderness yawns lazily at my feet,
and the wild unknown beckons me toward its reality
--and I desire its shore.

Didn't she know? they sigh, sharing their inward smile,
experience trumps book-learning, every time;

Desire, bared upon the open shore,
shall most surely find more.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Written while lucid dreaming in 2008. Reading is a passion of mine; “so many books, so little time” is such an apt description of me that it is alarming (especially when you know that I have as many books in the garage as I have in the house…). But, the forest beckons, as does the beach. And the Buddha's best sermon was a flower in his hand.