OPM 158, July 22nd Meditation (commemoration)

There is definitely some carry over from yesterday’s experiment redux, specifically with the adage, “write what you know,” and the fragment that was distilled. 

I’m not sure that I can avoid the creeping epistemological question that is hanging onto the adage.  Yesterday the issue was knowing the ‘what,’ as in, ‘what’ to write about.  And today, as I try to avoid the epistemological question I wonder if the best way to determine this ‘what’ is to follow the example of St. Augustine and go with collected memories, both near and far.  If we follow Augustine the adage reads: “write what you remember,” and then the challenge is determining the method for gathering memories, and next choosing those that stand out most vividly.  The question of method might, say, require that we return to the place where the remembered event took place.  Or, if that’s not possible, to an analogous setting.  For example, if I want to remember playing little league baseball I could go back to my hometown and sit in the bleachers of a game.   But returning to my summer camp wouldn’t suffice, because, while the grounds and most of the bunks, the pavilion, and the mess hall buildings are still there,  the kids are not.   The bunks are no longer in use, and the mess hall has been converted into a lodge for vacationers.   In fact, the last time I was there, visiting with my daughter, the place seemed a kind of ghost town, and recalling that day to memory actually fills me with the sadness of loss, rather than the happiness and laughter I experience when I trade stories with a fellow camper.    I think it was Tom Wolfe who said, “You can never go home,” and I suppose he means that you can’t go back in time, especially if the place where you were in that time is no longer there.  I’ve often questioned Wolfe’s aphorism, if only because I’m with Augustine on the power of memory to gather the past into the present.  And I also have a very strong bond with my family, such that the past is always gathered (for better or worse) into the present.  I should probably say, dragged into the present!  The other approach to the question of memory is best handled by the phenomenologist method of allowing for things to disclose themselves, to stand out.  And this is consistent with the general approach I took with the experiment ten years ago, which is also the reason the writing can seem so repetitive at times, as the same words and phrases were appearing again and again.   So when we are up for the challenge of writing what we know, and we decide to go for memories, and we settle on the experiment of choosing those that stand out by being so vivid, I suppose there is going to be some way to anticipate in advance what’s going to make an appearance?

I’m not sure if that was a legitimate meandering around the epistemological question, but it felt like it.  So what is the epistemological question?  It’s the question that keeps creeping up on me, like a phantom, or even a silly grade schooler who want to ‘boo’ me from behind.   (Did I ever confess how impressionable I am?  Well, existentially speaking, I might be made of wax!  Reading lots of Heidegger…I write like Heidegger.  Reading non-stop these past two days Hemingway, Kerouac and Thoreau, and I’m writing like them, in that commonsensical, straightforward prose…with a bit of the unconventional, thanks to Kerouac.  I have to admit…I’m finding this to be a really ‘easy’ way to write)   So the epistemological question asks, somewhat sardonically, Write what you know?  Ok, so how do you 'know' what you ‘know’ is what really is?  Response: Say what? 

But I know exactly what the question is asking, and it’s a funky question because it pushes the proverbial envelope for the prosaic writer.  (Here the poetic writer, and the writer of fiction, shrugs his shoulder and says, I’m writing what I write and what I write comes from what I know, and what I know comes from my experience, my imagination, and everything in between, including my dreams, and my memories.  And is it precisely because of this freedom that the project of originary thinking has as its mantra: more poetry, less prose.  In other words, the project shrugs its shoulder and make something that sounds like philosophy because it compelled to get thinking underway.)   The prosaic writer, and I take it that the phenomenologist is such a writer, at first doesn’t have a choice with regard to what he takes to be the veracity of his perception.  The philosopher Jurgen Habermas based his entire theory of communicative action on the most elegant insight regarding communication. He conjectured the following: imbedded in communication are ethical principles, such as the ethical principle of honesty.  How so?  Because, Habermas reasoned, when we are listening to someone we are always already assuming they are attempting to convey something truthful to us, and we are training our receptive capacities on understanding that truth.  And the focus on the side of the receiver is also a kind of ethical undertaking, the ethics of understanding, or what we might call ‘hospitality,’ or ‘welcoming.’  We don’t cynically or skeptically question what is being said when we are attentively listening. 

Now all that being said, the epistemological question still hangs around, because despite our best efforts to listen attentively, we might be fooled by what we hear.  Take for example an hour ago as I was sitting up here in the attic and heard what I took to be a very loud motor boat in thundering away in Casco Bay. (This is a good example, because it includes memory!)  I heard the low steady powerful rumbling I immediately understood the sound to be coming from what is appropriately called a ‘cigarette boat,’ which is long flat craft powered by either two disproportionately large twin outboard engines, or an inboard engine that could be otherwise found under the hood of the cab of an 18 wheeler.   But then, suddenly, the engine sound morphed into that of the sound of a propeller airplane.   Boat or plane?   Does it matter?  Write what you know!  Sure, but the point is to get it right, yes?  So get off your butt and run down to the landing and see for yourself! Of course, but that doesn’t always resolve the issue.  How so?  

Another example, from the other end of the street.  Town Landing Market.   A Maine styled deli, which means that they have all that the classic deli has, in addition to lobster and fresh produce…so it’s more of a market, although I grew up going to a deli…Anyway, the lobster aside (and their lobster comes from the landing at the bottom of the hill), tonight I walked the fifty paces to get myself a ‘bach’ (bachelor) dinner:  turkey sub.  Here’s where the epistemological question creeped on me and said ‘boo!’  I was waiting for my sub when this guy I’ve assumed for years was the owner (or one of the owner’s) comes walking into the market wearing his wire rimmed glasses and talking with his sing song Maine accent.   The sandwich girls get all giddy and say, ‘Hey, look who it is!?’  And he’s acting all casual, like he always does, and he’s greeting everyone who seems especially excited to see him, like they haven’t seen him in awhile.  But he’s not sporting a vacation tan, and, instead, had this little handheld computer gadget and is asking about the ice cream inventory.  So my mind starts bouncing around, and, at first, I’m thinking, ‘Oh, he’s just back in the market tonight checking in on the ice cream inventory.’  But then I realize he’s with another guy, much younger, who looks like an ice cream company rep, because I notice he’s wearing polo shirt with a company logo, and the younger guy is looking really serious and concerned about the ice cream inventory (and then the epistemological question starts to creep up real fast because I can tell the younger guy want to get it right!).   So now I’m thinking, ‘It looks like Peter’ – and I just learned his name because the giddy girls keep saying it: ‘Hi Peter! How are you Peter?  So good to see you Peter – I say to myself, ‘it looks Peter sold the place…or sold his share of the place!)  But it turns out I had it totally wrong all these years – well over a decade – of going into the Town Landing Market and having Peter cash me out with his sincere sing song, “Hahv a good daya,” and being really happy about him owning the place and keeping it real for so many years so that dudes like me can get their bach dinners and occasionally a fresh lobster, or an apple and blueberry pie with Giffords vanilla ice cream that is always in the freezer.    Yeah, I had it wrong, totally wrong, even though for the last ten years, if you asked me to write what I know about the Town Landing Market, I’d have written about this stand up guy who owns the place and cashes you out, etc., etc.  And that’s what I 'knew' to be the truth.  But it’s not!  Nope. Indeed, to settle down my bouncing ball of a mind I asked the distant and aloof and somewhat haggardly older lady at the check out, who I’ve never seen before,  ‘Did Peter [like I knew  him and his name all these years!] sell this place?’  She could smell the bull dropping I’d stepped in, but ‘politely’ responded (in between bites of pizza), “Peter?  He never owned this place.  Just worked here.” 

Now, I’ve just written a description of an experience I’ve just had this early evening.   And I suppose I’ve written what I know, which turns out to only be a report on how wrong I’d gotten the situation I’d found myself in for the past thirteen years of buying food at the Town Landing Market!  I suppose there are a few morals to this story:  first, its always better to ask what’s what so as to confirm your assumptions, especially if really are intent on getting it right! (hustle down the street to the dock, or make a friendly inquiry, ‘Hey, this is a great place you got here.  How long have you owned it?’ or ‘Is that you in that black and white photo with the lab out in front of the market?’); second,  however, getting the facts of the situation is only one half of the deal, because you still have to tell a good story.   And getting that right is not a matter of epistemology!

All that brings me to the fragment distilled from the writing made this day ten years ago, writing that for some reason was punctuated by the term ‘decay’:  “decay appears as the stasis of cultural norms and institutions that appear to foreclose upon the growth that is learning.  ‘Decay’ is thus the other of the open region, where the arrival of the ineffable is ignored and denied by the busy-ness of stagnant repetition.  Decay is the ‘static’ of ‘stasis,’ the ‘white noise’ produced by stagnating repetition appearing within the administration of bureaucracy.”   Now, I have to say I’m was really puzzled by this because it was written in the height of summer, when I’m almost certain I was here in Maine!  I wonder what would have triggered that not so veiled criticism of academia that was probably aimed at my department chair at Hofstra?  At any rate, as I read this, I am struck by the uneven phrase ‘busy-ness of stagnant repetition’.  I know that ‘busy-ness’ is a pun on ‘business’ that I borrowed from Heidegger.  And I suppose it makes sense to describe such ‘busy-ness’ as ‘stagnant repetition,’ which is another way of saying it’s all so much spinning of wheels in mud, or mindless repetition.  And it certainly makes sense to describe this as a sowing the seeds of cynicism “that thwarts and obstructs the way of entrustment,” which is the foundation of robust dialogue and community building.   But how does this repetition, that is noteworthy for appearing to be inexhaustible, lead to decay?   In retrospect, ten years later, I read this moment in the meditation as a warning against the possibility of the decay of my own enthusiasm for the work, for writing and for thinking!  But it appears that I took this warning as a serious forecast, and successfully plotted a strategy that allowed me to slowly but surely avoid the stagnant repetition (aka meetings, committees, daily commutes, etc.) and move into the open (aka four months in Maine with family, friends, and, whenever possible, with my work).

Truth is one part fact, another part beauty.  We perceive it, and we make it.   But sometimes we miss it.  And other times we forget it.