After a long day, during a semester with a number of long days; a semester with lots of small successes, and some unpleasant failures; a semester where I was conscious the whole time of aiming towards the freedom of the end of January, when I'll go on research leave, and won't let anyone ask me for anything at all –
I found myself already utterly sleepy at 7:30 pm; pulled the Greek cotton blanket (surprisingly warm, and after many washings very soft) over me, turned out the light, and listened to the wind in the chimney.
And for some reason kept returning to this phrase, this idea: I am here, in the middle of winter, in northern England – what does that mean?
I have an impending birthday; fifty-one – an age where one can no longer get away with wild or hopeful speculations about one's own future. I'm worried about people a third of the way around the world, and wondering if I should do something about it – I found myself telling Merrie today that it had occurred to me that perhaps I should simply resign, and go take care of my family – especially because of my (admittedly intermittent, and inflected by my attempts in cognitive behavior therapy to defuse some of my preconceptions about myself) sense that my life here is not what it should be anyway. So why not be brave, drop everything, career expectations and home and all, and go devote my time to something valuable – to people who may need me?...
And last night, a friendly, talkative, rough-edged half-Scottish, half-South African man, eating dinner at the next table at the Italian restaurant near my home – the very picture of the British working bloke – told me all about his traveling life at dinner, and was friendly in a way that made me wonder whether there was more than friendliness going on. Yes, he gave me his card; and last night I had a long dream that was partly a response to what he made me imagine, of road adventures, of leaving everything behind, and going to see what the world might give me – one of those dreams that felt more real and more interesting than anything in the waking world.
And, perhaps, some of this is a reaction to reading Susanna Clarke's The Ladies of Grace Adieu, which was giving me a disturbing sense of the demands of time and place. Clarke's exquisite writing, her witty entanglement of Napoleonic England with the dangers of magic, her selfish dandies and calculating women, all give a sense of delicate suffocation – the constraints of a competitive society in turmoil, where it is so difficult to find the place you want and hold on to it, but also absolutely necessary to fight for that place. Such gorgeous writing, but you want to help the characters find a way out: a way that they can be free of a demanding and money-ridden life, a way that they can find happiness, rather than just the correctly wealthy husband, the secure inheritance....
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So, with all that in my head; and the events of the day, meetings, a word with a colleague in the hallway, tomorrow's classes – so many connections, images, inputs, demands; it is interesting that my mind would suddenly throw up this attempt to clear the air, to judge where I am, and who I am, on the most basic terms – I am here, in northern England, on a winter night. What does that mean, and what does, what can my life mean as a result?
Just think: if we could see ahead to the whole shape of our lives – even if they seemed disappointing, if there was a lot of loss, or if eventually we got painted into what seemed some rather small corners – would we have the sense to make more of what we do have? If we could simply accept the facts, the limitations, of where we are, could we make more of it – can we find some certainty, some happiness, some fulfillment, in whatever corner of the world we accidentally find ourselves, in whatever situation we land?
Can I make some sense of all this – stand firm where I am, wherever it is?
I am here: in a small brick row house, in a suburb in northern England, with the wind sighing in the chimney. It is now: near midnight, on a winter night in early December, at the end of my fiftieth year.
That is what I have.
What can I make of it?...
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