paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- three ways of thinking of fall More than usual, my morning began on a dark note. A thick, slushy rain pelted the window, the roof and I could hear the weight of it, falling through the leaves on the trees. The darkness and coldness made me shiver and I curled up a little longer under the covers. Quinn jumped out of bed immediately, fumbled through her morning routine in the bathroom and the closet. She stormed around a bit, uncertain what to wear. Should she wear all black or mostly black? She was tired this morning because last night we were up late. After seeing a play and then baking cookies and banana bread for the neighborhood Halloween bake sale, neither of us fell asleep much before 1:00 a.m. I always sleep lightly on nights after packing enough in a day for two or three people. Somehow, my mind has difficulty settling down and transporting me to wherever it is I go when I sleep. Not unlike many people throughout the course of history, I used to believe that I went somewhere when I slept. Maybe I still do, because at some base level, do we ever really reprogram our beliefs that we first held sacred? When I was twelve, I thought long and hard about religion and this idea of god. And I decided that I felt closer to the natural world. But not �nature� as it is commonly constructed to consist of trees, mountains, fields. I decided that I believed in gravity. At seventeen, when I was spending a great deal of time with someone who was southern and religious, I thought that maybe I needed to think again about religion. I told my friend that I believed that whatever gravity was to the natural world, it was also a wonderful metaphor for a higher spirit. We had several rounds with this. I told her all of my most private thoughts about souls and gravity and what moved me. Her response to me was that I was wrong because I was taking something that a human dare not and cannot comprehend and making it tangible. I�ve been experiencing a great deal of this sort of conversation in my Milton class recently. And still, I return to this incredible interest in the idea of gravity. I don�t comprehend it, really, beyond some fifth grade explanation of it with a bunch of college physics piled on top of it. Last month, Quinn asked me what I have faith in and I told her �gravity.� I�d include all things relevant to gravity � air resistance, centripetal force, escape velocity, black holes, gravitational waves. I won�t go into my whole belief system, but, basically, these phenomena are things that I can see but that, no matter how much of the theory I learn or even on a basic level make computations, I still have to accept them on faith. To take a bucket of water and fling it quickly in a circle whereby the bucket is upside down at one interval and yet the water stays in the bucket defies the reason of which I am capable. Certainly I have done this numerous times and I have learned laws pertaining to why that is so, but still, I cannot say that I don�t take that event on faith. For me, the theories of science parallel our stories and myths. I find it difficult to believe that I will ever really come to accept any other spiritual interest. Not that I devalue any of them. And, equally important, it is not �science� I am upholding as spiritual. There is a significant difference for me in that science has allowed me to experience and/or name some of the phenomena that I find most amazing about life. And myth has allowed me to name the other phenomena I find most amazing about life. What I guess I am getting at is that I want to explore the overlap. Somewhere between those worlds, I have always found my intellectual reason d��tre. I also find it interesting that there is another force, sort of an antigravity, that is speeding up the universe. I am intrigued by how we know things in some ways and then �discover� them in science. This has been continually on my mind as my Milton class struggles with the Christian framework from which Milton wrote and I continually discover other more secular readings. This has also been on my mind because work has been a burden. I want to feel as though what I do contributes in some way. I also want to feel confident and able to tackle everything that I need to accomplish to move this initiative. These are the times when people turn to some sort of faith and I wonder whether my intellectual interests hold up to my need to feel moved. This morning before a meeting, my faculty director, a very intelligent and kind woman in her 60�s, remarked on the intensity of the fall foliage. And she wanted so much to hear my reaction to it and I said that I had not noticed because I have been arriving in the dark and leaving in the dark. She looked at the esquire and said �Piper is to get off work at 4 today and go look at the leaves and just feel how wonderful it is that they are these beautiful colors.� The esquire said �no, she can�t� in a sarcastic tone, but also quite serious. This afternoon, the faculty director and I were in an end-of-the-day meeting together. We walked back to her office where my car was parked, she put her scarf around my neck and lent me her gloves because I forgot my coat today, and the trees were intensely beautiful. A cold breeze rattled the leaves around and I watched as a couple drifted down towards the ground. As I breathed, I could see my warm breath linger in the air. I thought about how it is that leaves make their way to the ground, that my warm breath makes a thin little cloud in the air. I felt alive in these forgettable details. As we talked about how to find video recorders for French students to tape narratives of veterans who served in foreign wars about their experiences, I thought about how exciting it is to work on a campus. To sit in meetings and think about how classes can incorporate innovative projects and still be rigorous and meet objectives. I felt proud of the talent and passion at our university and happy to be there, working with these intelligent, creative people (no matter how demanding and annoying those faculty can be at times). And it also occurred to me how the esquire is like this dark number that physicists factor in to understand how the universe is accelerating. The esquire is accelerating my work like an unknown factor or force pushing it to the point that it is testing its bonds and the very fabric of its existence. Somehow she seemed inevitable, like the fall. Inevitable like the growing coldness of the earth in preparation for winter. Inevitable like the story of the fall from paradise. Inevitable like the darkness required to understand light, the sadness needed to be joyful. So, I must say that I appreciated my assignment from the faculty director today more than usual. And think I saw enough evidence to keep having faith that I am doing what is right for me to do right now. I'll take this back tomorrow, of course. 9:16 p.m. - 2002-10-31 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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