Not So Blue a Highway

Returning to the scenes of my childhood this week, I find little of the past intact to conjure up nostalgia or even the less emotive forms of memory. The trip from the Twin Cities to Mercer, Pa. I’ve made almost a hundred times over forty-two years with a diminishing sense of evocation. Perhaps it is one’s own aging. Perhaps the psyche suffers as much deterioration as the body. Sentience is, after all, largely corporeal, and as the body goes, so must go the soul, it seems. In a bid to encounter more of the past this trip, I took the Historic Lincoln Highway for the eastward leg of my journey. That it happened to be the 250^th anniversary of the nation’s founding was purely coincidental and, truth be told, a little deflating owing to the current toxigenarian occupier in the White House. Two hundred and fifty years for this!

The southward leg is I-94E through Wisconsin to I-39S to I-80E in Illinois; I-80 is a section of the Lincoln Highway west of Chicago, but you can catch the eastern length at Joliet—of Blues Brothers fame: U.S. 30E. The first thirty miles or so must have been charming at some point in the past—1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, even 70s?—but it had, for me, rather, only the convenience and utility of a franchise-inflected strip mall, as if the beginnings of a trans-continental McMansion suburb. Stoplights offer little charm. Then, eventually, out into the countryside, fields and woods abounding, but not in the least unlike the fields and woods abounding I-80E, though without tolls. The Lincoln Highway landscape, thus, presents as much the same, though you traverse it 10 mph more slowly and with stoplights. I do not know whether it is a function of reduced speed or a genuine difference in floral and faunal diversity, but the Lincoln Highway could boast one charming feature I could not recall on the Interstate: fireflies (who needs fireworks), whose potential extinction has recently been in the news. But otherwise, the blue highways like the Lincoln are not what they once were; they’re not even blue anymore on my road atlas.

Sitting on the front porch ruminating lost time and listening to the rain, my attention falls upon a mature silver maple in the front yard, the one I planted for my mother over fifty years ago. We remain, the tree and I, for a while longer, a few more years, while the world around us dissolves, first into a seeming wasteland compared to our past, and then, magically, into someone else’s golden present and future nostalgic past, someone younger. My old hometown is not what it once was for me, but may be perfectly what it is for the current generation. Beautiful. Happy, even.

Old Men Golfing

My old man spent most of his retirement summers golfing, three or four times a week, for thirty years or so. With his old buddies, the Hammer Asses. That’s a lot of hammer-ass golf. Whenever I visited those summers, a middle-aged man, I would tag along for old man golf: gas-carted play from the white tees at special senior rates. They’re all dead now. And I’m the old man.

This summer, partly at my spouse’s behest, I’ve retaken up old man golf with a guy I met on ICE-watch over the winter. His posse includes a number of former seminarians, a couple of them in their 80s, so there may be less hammer-assery, but the game is much the same. We try to make decent contact with our drivers off the tee, and we do so maybe half the time. Good loft, good distance, good run. Up to two hundred yards or so down the middle. They’ll tee up a mulligan routinely, repeatedly, immediately after a duck hook, a shank, a scull, or foozle. I’m not there yet. Play what I hit. Winter rules in the dead of summer. Texas foot-wedge when appropriate. Score is not kept for the round, only for a given hole. No skins, though. Inside the leathers is a gimme. We tally only our pars and birdies, a prudent habit which keeps us coming back.

It’s not the old man’s game my father played: they kept score and awarded quarter skins. But something akin. I don’t know if I’ll ever develop the camaraderie that animated the Hammer Asses, but my old lady wants me to have friends and get out of the house. 

 

 

 

P.S. Have made a few strokes with the hickory-shafted mashie niblick, ca. 1905 pictured here. Older than me. Older than my old man. Still playable.

A Remembrance of Andres on His Birthday

On my birthday last November, I had turned off my audible phone notifications to attend to those more private anniversary moments with my dear. After pastry and a chai at the Black Walnut Café and just before our walk at Lake of the Isles, I felt a vibration next to my heart and pulled my phone from the breast pocket of my jacket. A call from my friend Andres in Vancouver. Curious. We were not in the habit of talking on the phone. Just occasional texts and other sorts of brief electronic messaging. The soft buzzing ceased. Probably a quick birthday greeting, though we were not in the habit of birthday greetings either other than a Facebook emoji. Maybe an additional comment. An exchange of erudite literary witticisms. All was well with our friendship. All was always well. I would touch base with him later. While the phone was still in my hand, it buzzed again signaling that a voicemail message had been received, a transcripted portion of which I could read in the little window on my iphone, “I am leaving this world in about seven hours.”

I called back. Terminal cancer, assisted suicide. We talked for fifteen minutes, of mutual love and excruciating heartbreak. He was one of those kindred spirits for me, an instant friend, a long-lost brother. We did not enact friendship or brotherhood the way it is spoken of in popular culture or even in the more serious, philosophical treatments of that subject. Our bond was largely unspoken, but felt and appreciated all the more, perhaps, for its mute power over certain difficult circumstances, some distance, and almost twenty years. Few, if any women, I’ve known understand this very particular kind of masculine vibe. They might even deny that it’s friendship. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s something else entirely, something that remains nameless in any language I know. All I know is that if there is an afterlife worth a damn, I’ll see him in it, and we’ll live all the lives of that “friendship”—for there will be more than one—in their fullness, fullnesses simply unachievable in what we understand as real life. Until then, my friend. 

Tweet Selection Trois

Volume III of Monsieur’s memoirs accounts for his years in Restoration politics and diplomacy. Of diplomacy he could claim some insight and success, less of politics. His disillusionment was pretty complete; his times as much of a political mess as our own. History went on in spite of, or because of, people’s stupidity and lack of virtue. There is a Volume IV after all, as yet unavailable.

Religion is the wellspring of freedom.

What is base does not have the power to debase; honor alone can inflict dishonor.

Duty is therefore a most positive fact, since it gives human society the only lasting existence it can enjoy.

Whoever fulfills his duties wins esteem; whoever yields to his interests is esteemed very little.

Men love a spectacle, and especially a death, when it is that of a great man.

Sleep devours existence, which is what’s wonderful about it: “The hours are short and life is long,” as Fénelon says.

Happy are they on whom age works like wine, and who lose their memory when they’ve drunk their fill of days!

Every lie repeated becomes a truth: it would be impossible to have too much contempt for human opinions.

All the English are mad, either by nature or by dint of following fashion.

A man must simply go on living if he wishes to find the debris of one century cast by time’s waves upon the shore of another.

Events separate us from the world; politics produces solitaries as religion does anchorites.

Man is as much deceived by the granting of his wishes as by their disappointment.

We don’t like a man to despise what we worship or think himself entitled to insult our mediocre lives.

An honest man is always sure of being understood by an honest man.

One might say they were pouring money on the arts in order to extinguish them, as they do on our freedoms to stifle them…

I am unfortunately fashioned; the injuries inflicted on me never heal.

When all is said and done, is there anything for which it is worth the bother of getting out of bed nowadays?

It would be better to be more humble, more prostrate, more Christian. Unfortunately, I am subject to weakness; I am nowhere near the Gospels’ perfection. If a man struck me on the cheek, I should not turn to him the other. [A triple]

At the end of your life, it is all time lost.

Once liberty has vanished, a man may still have a country, but the homeland is nowhere to be found.

We do not breathe our last where and when we please.

These men of triumph could never accustom themselves to reversals.

Prosperity does not recognize his sister Adversity.

Death does not care one jot what we have been.

I visited a beautiful cemetery: I never forget the dead.

We always win more by our faults than our good qualities.

Nothing is so sad as rereading, as your days draw to a close, what you wrote in your youth: all that was in the present is now in the past.

The only thing I want in this world is to return to my solitude and wash my hands of politics.

There is nothing good save retirement, and nothing real save a friendship like yours.

Indifference, I admit, is one of the qualities of statesmen, but of statesmen without conscience.

Love, according to Socrates, is the desire to be reborn by means of beauty.

A revolution is a jubilee; it absolves everyone from every crime, licensing greater ones.

There was a chance of success: there is always a chance of success when men act with courage.

Nothing is great today because nothing is lofty.

It is better to lose one’s life than to beg for it.

A representative republic is, without doubt, the future state of the world, but its time has not yet come.

I think, in the final analysis, the old society is finished.

More Tweets from Beyond the Grave

These tweets survive from Chateaubriand’s Napoleonic period, vol. II of the New York Review of Books’ late edition. I share them not because I consider them nuggets of imperishable geezerly wisdom—he was not yet an old man—but because they fit the form and communicate in brief something of François-René’s thought and style; and they prompt, on occasion, a reflective and critical huh? and hmm. Such leisurely effort keeps me out of mischief.

An atheist’s life is a horrible lightning strike that serves only to show him the abyss.

The profits of fame are charged to the soul.

By what miracle does a man consent to do all he does on earth, he who is destined to die?

A sickening of the soul is not a permanent or natural state.

I am the one who provoked the young century to admire the old temples.

So-called admiration was no recompense for the horrors that attend a man whose name is retained by the crowd.

They pretended to have no need of God, and that is why they had need of a tyrant.

Oh, reconciled Christian, do not forget me in your prayers when I am gone.

Time rejuvenates cities—exactly the opposite of men.

Nowadays, everything is worn down—even misery.

It is not the same thing to be above crimes as to be beneath them.

Such is the danger of literature: our desire to make a splash gets the better of our generous feelings.

Oh, may the voice of friendship betrayed never be raised against our tomb!

Sorrow finally came to fill my days: it is a resource on which one can always rely.

Sorrow is my element: I am only myself when I’m unhappy.

One should show the world only what is beautiful.

What a gift from God is death!

Of the many actors of that epoch, only one remains: Bonaparte.

Man stumbles from one mistake to the next.

Our life is a perpetual blush, for it is a neverending blunder.

Given the joy I always feel whenever I am leaving palaces, it is evident I was not made to enter them.

Yes, I noticed it: a superior mind does not bring forth evil painlessly, for it is not its natural fruit, and it should not bear it.

Prudent people find that anyone who cedes to honor imprudent.

There are times when loftiness of soul is a veritable infirmity.

Exceptional men should be careful of their tears, which put them under the yoke of the vulgar.

Obscure men, what are we compared to these famous men?

Hearts have different secrets, incomprehensible to other hearts. Let us not deny anyone his suffering. Sorrows are like countries: each man has his own. [A triple tweet!]

Oh, blessed are ye who passed noiselessly through this world, not even turning your heads in passing!

Let us be mild if we wish to be mourned. Only angels weep for lofty genius and superior qualities. [Double tweet.]

I fear that the only way I will be able to leave this world is by crossing over the corpses of my dreams.

These days I offer my arm only to Time: she is very heavy!

Shine a light on the days of your life, and they will no longer be what they are.

I am a republican who serves the monarchy and a philosopher who honors religion.

Thousands of youngsters are obsessed with the idea of suicide, which they believe to be proof of their superiority.

Every one of us reaps the fruit of forgotten lives squandered so that we might live.

Heaven punishes the violation of human rights.

Women, in general, hated Bonaparte as mothers.

Man digs the grave, and God fills it.

When a man is ready to die, he is invincible.

What noble sentiments remained had withdrawn into the hearts of women.

Napoleon’s greatness was not of a kind that makes friends with calamity. Prosperity alone left him with his faculties intact. He was not fashioned for misfortune. [Another triple.]

It is not possible to subjugate a nation whose last stronghold is the North Pole.

When you have committed a reproachable act, Heaven imposes on you the sanction of witnesses.

Old Kutuzov, for his part, was disdainful of disdain.

Anyone can turn to evil, anyone can kill a people or a king; but to come back from it is difficult.

When a man clears a path to injustice, at the same time he clears a path to perdition.

Posterity is not as fair in its judgments as people tend to think.

Fear is a bad counselor, especially for those without a conscience. In adversity, as in good fortune, there is measure only in morality. [A double.]

Poets are birds: every noise makes them sing.

God, in his patient eternity, sooner or later brings justice to bear.

There are some men who have had life thrown around their neck like a chain.

There are men who are very good at ascending and very bad at descending.

Napoleon was, in one person, all things great and miserable in man.

More traitors are made by events than by opinions.

It is not enough for a great man to be born: he must die.

One is never entitled to say all is lost if he has attempted nothing.

Only the French know how to dine methodically, just as only they know how to compose a book.

And the people shouted at him. “You must die!”—as time shouts at us all.

Most men err in rating themselves too highly; I err in rating myself not highly enough.

What is dishonorable is fatal. A slap in the face does no harm to you physically, yet it kills you. [A double tweet.]

Like most despots he was on good terms with his servants, but deep down he cared for no one.

The life of Bonaparte was an incontestable truth, which imposture had taken upon itself to write.

The great men, who form a very small family on earth, unfortunately find no one to imitate but one another.

What a pity for those who have perished!

As for honor, it eludes tyranny: it is the soul of martyrdom.

Every man feels his life his own way, and he who gives the world a great spectacle is not so moved or so instructed as the spectator.

The more serious the countenance, the more beautiful the smile.

It was a long book. 

In the Afterword of vol. II, Monsieur Julien Gracq remarked in passing of “that drop of bitterness essential to aging well” that is lacking in Chateaubriand’s immediate literary heirs. I hope this requisite bitterness is exclusive to the French, like dining methodically and composing books, and not universal. Bittersweet, I can do, but not pure bitter. With the possible exception of hemlock, when the time comes.