Of Time Before Time After

A flutter of wings at my ear,
a pointed gaze of greeting
— all at once, a welling memory,
a time of knowing soul before words,
a completely other kind of knowing,
offering clarity to this experience
only from within sleep and dreams.

 

The amplitude of such interiority,
speaking as if from shadowed recesses,
is perhaps all that remains of that time,
all this time after time,
time filled with learned speech,
this a wholly different way
to perceive and filter experience.

 

The hummingbird,
having partaken of the offered nectar,
turns to me once more, as if to say,
“Yes, friend; we were there together,
remember?”

 

Such deep remembrance
renders planned trajectories irrelevant
to what is possible
when you look up,
reach out,
let loose and—
like the beautiful bird
—fly.

  

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

 

 

***

Memory is an astonishing attribute of mind and consciousness. 

 

This bit of writing is an attempt – in so many ways unsuccessful – to indicate an aspect of mind that I remember vaguely from my pre-verbal self in infancy. This memory is triggered every so often; last evening, what triggered it was reading this very brief passage from a lecture given in February of 1982 by Michel Foucault (published, with many other lectures delivered at Collège de France, under the title “The Hermeneutics of the Subject”): 

 

What is it to be free? asks Seneca. And he answers: To be free is effugere servitutem. 

I followed the footnote to see the more complete quote from Seneca’s Natural Questions: liber autem est qui servitutem sui (to be free is to no longer be slave to self).

And, somehow, that moment is when a recollection came of this moment I would experience before sleep, in the age of my infancy. What I remember is the sense that it seemed not so long a time before when understanding was easier because I was unencumbered, that is not enclosed, in the awkwardness of an untrained body. I can remember being put to bed, and being sleepy, and questions forming in my mind that were not tied, really, to language, as we who have words understand and experience language. My questions were about my daily experiences, about the things I did not understand. These would roll forward like an ebbing tide. Answers would flow back. The answers came in a form I cannot express; they were lengthy, precise, all at once simple and complex. Such answers would calm me and allow me to relax into sleep, but they were real answers that informed me; I recall that each night, the questions were always different, the answers were always new—like an onboard learning system, if you will.

 

Once I had attained language skills, this pre-language fell away—and I can viscerally recall feeling it recede, feeling it slip away, as it was no longer needed. Now that I had words, I could speak them to people, and get answers in that way. I can remember still reaching in my mind for that other kind of knowing, always on the way to sleep, and sometimes would still get responses. 

 

I cannot remember anything describable about this pre-verbal knowing, except that it was, and that I remember it because I experienced it, and the memory remains a part of my consciousness. In these moments when I remember it, I sometimes wonder if it remains a latent aspect within, and if perhaps I will encounter it again, in my latter days.

When The Truth Is Not Enough

This is a story. It happens to be a true story. It could have happened in your community. I hope it did not. I heard this story fourth-hand, and do not know any of the people involved or even where it took place.

The family car was stolen off the street, near the home. The owners filed a police report, while joy riders drove the hotwired car down some byway until it ran out of gas. The place where the car was eventually abandoned was located in another county, whose police found it and traced it to the owners and the filed stolen vehicle report. The auto was duly inspected, towed to a tow yard in the county where it was found. The owners of the stolen vehicle, upon being informed that it had been recovered, dropped their child off with a friend, went to their local police station to handle release paperwork that would allow them to retrieve the car. Thus, the case was closed in the county of residence.

The couple took public transit and a cab to the tow yard in the other county, signed a release form and paid the towing fee. Thus, the case was closed in the county of recovery.

While they were driving back to pick up their child, the wife found solicitation letters (junk mail) wedged in the space between the passenger side seat and the door. The mail was of various shapes, sizes and colors, from various consumer outlets, and addressed to various other people than themselves.

The notion occurred: This must be evidence pointing to who stole the car!

Instead of picking up their child and returning home, the car owners took the mail to the police station and spoke with the ranking officer at the walk-up window. They told the officer their story and showed the officer the mail, saying they felt they were doing their civic duty by reporting this evidence.

The officer listened to the story, but did not touch the mail they were offering.

“Chain of evidence rules and procedures say that we cannot accept this mail; there is nothing that indicates the mail is evidence of any particular thing, per se. It would be best to take the mail to the Post Office.”

The couple was incredulous. They started telling their story again. Apparently, the officer hadn’t been listening closely, and did not understand the import of what they were trying to say.

The officer listened to the repeated story, letting consideration and a silent pause clear the air before replying.

“We have no way of knowing how this mail got into your car or if it was even placed there by the perpetrators of the auto theft. Was the mail put in the car in this jurisdiction, or in the jurisdiction where it was recovered? Was the mail picked up off the ground near the car in the tow yard and just placed inside it on an assumption? These questions do not offer clarity about the mail and do not indicate a link to the auto theft. As your stolen property has been returned to you, the case is now closed. Please take the mail to the Post Office, where they will know how to appropriately handle it.”

The couple looked at one another. Surely, this was wrong. The couple asked to speak with a supervisor. The officer went away, but came back very shortly.

“The sergeants and lieutenant are out on calls. I am the ranking supervisor, at this moment.”

The couple couldn’t believe it. They were obviously being stonewalled. They started again: This mail had to be evidence of whoever stole the car.

“Aren’t you going to do your job?” The couple said.

“I really cannot receive this mail; please take it to the Post Office.”

Back behind the window, co-workers could hear the entire exchange. They looked at one another, over their piles of files and reports. One sighed. Another decided to intervene, so they could all get back to work. That officer silently left the office, circling around to the public lobby, where the couple stood, waving the junk mail and elevating their insistent voices.

“I’ll take it. I’ll make sure it is handled appropriately.” The officer escorted the couple to the station door, waving at them as they left. When the couple was out of sight, this officer walked the mail down the street, and dropped into the mailbox on the corner. At least the addressees will receive their mail; sale ends next week. Upon that officer’s return, the entire office breathed a healing sigh, and resumed their very real and pressing work with relief.

The couple that had brought in the mail later filed a complaint against the officer who told them the mail could not be accepted as evidence. The complaint was followed by an internal procedural investigation.

To bring further clarity to this story, you need to know that the couple whose car was stolen was white. The officer they encountered at the police station, when they took the mail there, was a non-Caucasian female, nearing retirement age; she had been training a female cadet at the time of this encounter. The officer who put the mail into the mailbox was a white male who had been a civilian office worker with the department for only a few years.

***

Appearances are sometimes deceiving, and usually never the end of any story.

When we presume we know better, we are apt to find ourselves in the position of the fool.

The ranking officer had explained the situation, but the couple, who had no law enforcement training, for some reason did not trust her to have appropriate knowledge, did not trust her explanations. What she told them did not conform, either to what they had seen on TV or their expectations of what should be done. They heard what she said, but they didn’t like it. The way they saw it, they had gone out of their way to provide important evidence that would lead to arrest and conviction of the perpetrator of the auto theft.

The well-meaning co-worker de-escalated the situation, but probably should not have; doing so undercut the authority and knowledge possessed by his supervisor in the eyes of the couple. Ultimately, this fueled the couple’s dissatisfaction to where they made the leap that this ranking officer had shirked her responsibility.

The car had been retrieved; the case was closed; the junk mail presumably was delivered to the homes of the addressees. That should have been enough of an outcome for anyone.

The rules are the rules; procedures are procedures. If we don’t follow the rules and procedures, then of what value are they? Can we assume procedures are illogical just because we don’t understand them? Yes, sometimes we do discover that rules need to be changed; by all means, we must review all rules that truly do not make sense, and either repeal them or refine them. Perhaps rules regarding the chain of evidence are not among those in dire need of revision.

That is one issue. More than this, and primarily, I wonder what irreversible damage is done when judgments are color- and gender-coded? Actually, I less wonder than know. The short answer is that citizenship is diminished for All, and this is problematical when All is We The People.

This story, Citizens, is but one example of the struggle we face in our local communities, our counties, our states, our regions, the nation – and the world.

I hope this story provides you food for thought.

(Chew your food well and completely before swallowing, or indigestion is apt to follow.)

© 2017 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

"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

Sonnet on a Poem by Ch'iu Wei

To this place, at the mountaintop,
have I climbed, in search of you and of truth;
my knock at the door echoes without stop.
Table and hearth are revealed in the booth,
but your presence is lacking, forsooth;
perhaps you fish the pools of the river.
In vain have I called on you, so uncouth

my need to know, guised to deliver

greeting. Instead, visited by shiver

of fresh rain on grass and murmuring pines,

thus I breathe in peace, sliver on sliver,

‘til purified, cleansed, emptied of designs.

Descending your mountain, light on my feet,

I know I’ve been met, and now am replete.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

A note to readers:

This sonnet is the result of an experiment. A hyperactive reader, I far too often (for the sake of my pocketbook) find myself in bookstores. I particularly like secondhand shops, as there are treasures to be found that are no longer in print; many of these are unlikely to ever be reprinted. One such treasure, a recent find, is a Chinese/English printing, entitled (in Chinese and English) “Three Hundred Poems of the Tong Dynasty.” It is a trade paper, sewn edition. Because I cannot read Chinese, neither do know the publication information or year, or the name of the translator(s). The only clue I have as to the book’s origin is the book seller’s stamp in the back of the volume: Hansan Trading Company, 28 Pell Street, New York, NY 10013; This business no longer exists.  

While waiting for my dental appointment to begin, I opened the book and started reading. One poem, not very far in, struck my eye. Thematically, the poem represents so much of what I feel life is like and about, for me and for many others: A trip through the wilderness, in search of answers.

This is the poem, as translated (by Witter Bynner, I later discover) in the Hansan Trading Company book:

After Missing the Recluse on the Western Mountain

To your hermitage here on the top of the mountain
I have climbed, without stopping, these ten miles,
I have knocked at your door, and no one answered;
I have peeped into your room, at your seat beside the table.
Perhaps you are out riding in your canopied chair,
Or fishing, more likely, in some autumn pool.
Sorry though I am to be missing you,
You have become my meditation—
The beauty of your grasses, fresh with rain,
And close beside your window the music of your pines.
I take into my being all that I see and hear,
Soothing my senses, quieting my heart;
And though there be neither host nor guest,
Have I not reasoned a visit complete?
After enough, I have gone down the mountain.
Why should I wait for you any longer?

Digging around on the internet, I found this translation by Mike O’Connor (at https://www.unf.edu/mudlark/mudlark07/recluse.html):

On Failing to Meet the Recluse of West Peak

On the mountain top: 

one thatched hut,

thirty li 

from nowhere.

Knock on the door: 

no servant to answer.

Look in: 

only a table for tea.

The firewood cart 

is covered;

have you gone fishing 

in the autumn stream?

I looked among the pools, 

but missed you;

wanting to pay my respects,

they must go unexpressed.

Grass shines 

in the fresh rain;

pines murmur 

at evening windows.

Here, at this moment, 

a harmony deep and unrivaled;

the self completely cleansed, 

the heart, the ear.

Although there is no 

guest and host precisely,

I'm able to intuit 

your pure thought.

Purpose fulfilled, 

I head back down the mountain;

what need now 

to wait for you?

Looking further into the matter, I find out that this book is an iteration of the classic collection of poems from the Tang Dynasty (618–907), first compiled in the Qing Dynasty by the scholar Sun Zhu, around the year 1763. Ch’iu Wei or Qiu Wei or 邱為 lived from 694 to around 789, and his work is represented in this anthology by this single poem. The poem was written in a form known as five character old style or Gushi. I will leave you to investigate the form on your own.

While I was having my teeth cleaned, I was rolling this poem around in my mind, and I wondered if I could take this material, which had been translated into free verse, and work it into at least somewhat of a metrical setting. I don’t know why I selected the sonnet form—perhaps because the way the poem is presented in Chinese is in groupings of five characters.

As to the success or failure of my experiment, that is up to you.

Justice

Guarded
by my lady, Python,
it was a sacred bridge
over a toxic chasm;
those rising vapors,
that did not dull or kill,
spoke
to the adept.

Then, someone said:
if such knowledge is power,
they should not have it;
it should belong to us.

First came one hero,
who slew Python
and kept her skin
as a trophy.

Then came another,
who stole Tripod
and kept it
as a trophy.

Then they made copies of it,
to give away
at the games
—(the rude joke:
it should be ours, anyway;
it has three legs!)—
as a trophy.

In sum,
the tool was taken
by those who had no use for it,
to become a symbol
atrophied.

The mistake,
in all of this,

was taking the tool
to be equal
to the act
of opening
to the holy granting
of knowledge,

was taking the sacrifice
to be a formula
that could be repeated
and reenacted,
written, embellished,
—even redacted
and gutted,
like the snake—
as if the ritual
would always result
in the holy grace.

Deafness and blindness
are the modern trophies
of such hubris;
beyond this truth,
Oracle continues to hear,
but will not speak.

© 2013 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Myrrhbearers

The angel also said unto them,

you are witnesses
to a truth beyond anything
you have been taught to understand;
this has been shown to you
because no man will believe.

Someone must know the truth.

What to do with this knowledge,
I cannot guide you;
from the wrath of those who lack faith,
I cannot hide you.
Know that this is a blessing,
though it may seem a curse.

Someone must know the truth.

Your myrrh is not needed here
—only your faithful witness;
go in peace, to love and serve;
your Friend you will see again soon.

With a blinding flash of light,
the glowing angel was gone
—and they were alone in the tomb
with the cold, hard truth.

© 2012 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen