On “Experience”
We, or rather I, find it difficult to look inwards; difficult to peer into the shaded corners of the soul; difficult to determine the slope of the jumping and diving line of the mind; difficult to recognize our face in the mirror. Looking downwards, there is little left to be sure of amidst the malleable, unbalanced pedestal on which we are perched, so our neck straightens, our eyes flatten their gaze, and focusing on the horizon, we find we can almost cease the shaking in our legs and the wobble of our perch. Almost.
As we gaze outwards, we lose sight of our arms, which hang loose at our sides. Staring into the distance, we whisper aloud, “Where do we find ourselves?” (¶1). This postulation, not quite a plea, nor a statement, nor even simply a question, echoes loudly back at us, knocking us off balance, pulling our eyes from the horizon to look for something to steady ourselves, and look! Our arms are in front of us, with hands, grasping at thin air! Fingers stretched wide, hoping to catch hold of anything! Our eyes light up. For a moment, we remember! For a moment, we remember that we have a body, that we are something. And then we are pulled away, twisting, flailing, crying, yelling, (writing, singing, drawing,) and we are falling.
With a crunch, I hit the ground.
-/-
In “Experience,” Emerson writes: “Our love of the real draws us to permanence, but health of body consists in circulation and sanity of mind in variety or facility of association” (¶8). There are three aspects to unpack here: the inclination towards permanence, the circulatory nature of the body, and the necessity of relation for the mind. Circulatory, in this instance, does not mean cyclical (starting, ending, and restarting), but rather movement, like blood circulating in our veins, or the river’s incessant flow. Circulatory is a form constant change. In many ways, the first, “the love of the real,” is at odds with the latter two, although it is not a cosmic battle, but an internal conundrum for the individual. A probing outwards, towards what we call infinite, or Truth, reveals only that we are not that, and we are reminded of our impermanence, our finitude. This, of course, is unsettling. How fleeting is our footprint! How short our breath! This “love of the real,” pulling us towards permanence, causes despair. And Emerson is quick to remind us, “We need a change of subjects. Dedication to one thought is quickly odious” (¶8). Our pursuit of realness, of reality, is a search for some solid ground on which we can walk, and we can say that our ancestors walked on, and that our sons will walk on. And when this pursuit shows us our own fate, shorter in length and lesser than meaning than we desired, we despair.
Permanence and infinitude do not denote the same understanding. The infinite, a term twisted and pressed by so many, almost to the point of being finite itself, is described only in the negation of finite, and if finite means “ending”, perhaps in-finite is best understood as “not-ending.” Permanence is different than “permanent,” which too could be understood as “not-ending.” Yet, if we try to limit “permanence” to “the state of not-ending,” we lose sight of the permanence of permanence. Permanence is not a state, it is fully dynamic: it is constant change. It is constant change, not limited by any sense of ending, nor a negation of ending. Permanence is not known, or understood. Permanence is experienced. Permanence is beyond our grasp. This is, of course, a part of our condition: “I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition” (¶4).
Yet let us not wallow in our pity like a pig in its sty! Rush the gate, and run to the open field! Emerson says, “The only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is.” Grief “plays about at the surface,” with “all the rest.” Emerson, his grief that of losing a son, recognizes that the assumption of permanence, or at least the pursuit of permanence, and the inevitable grief, reveals little of true nature, although we would “pay the costly price of sons and lovers” to contact this reality (¶3). And although we are willing, the only reality revealed is the lack of realness, the lack of permanence. “The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us” (¶3). And it is easy to find comfort in this ending, this finitude, almost as easy as denying it. “[G]rim satisfaction” is acceptance, but the clenching-of-the-jaw sort of acceptance, the buckling-down-on-living sort, fully aware, and yet, not resigned to.
-/-
In a heap, we lay, pressed against the ground, heavy with initial sadness. But yet, peering upwards, the pedestal still stands, sunshine brushing its marble with golden light. Up we sit, slowly, pushing ourselves off of the dirt to climb atop the pedestal again. We notice the glare from the sun is more penetrating than we remember, and as we balance precariously again, we bring a hand up to shade our eyes.
Instead of looking past the horizon, we now point our gaze at the trees around us, ones we had not noticed before. Oaks, cherries, maples, firs, willows, stand in glory near us, branches outstretched, and we realize the pedestal wobbles less, our feet feel more sturdy. At the top of our vision, our hand is blurred slightly by the nearness to our brow.
-/-
How then do we orient ourselves, without permanence to grasp on to? We must reorient ourselves in relation to permanence. Let us again turn to Emerson’s language. He begins his essay with an image, the first scene in an act --
We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. But the Genius which, according to old belief, stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake the lethargy now at noonday. Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree (¶1).
We know little of the beginning, waking midway on the stairs. We know even less of the end, which, if any, stretches far out of sight. It seems that upwards is the best option, but not towards anything. “Our life seems not present, but prospective; not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast-flowing vigor” (¶18). Look not at each step, but at the stairwell. Think about our placement on the stairs not as the middle of a trip upwards, but the “mid-world” (¶13). How does one recognize this? In the recognition of the finite, but interconnected nature of our life: “Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus” (¶5). With each step, on each step, our view of the stairwell changes. On each step, the view of the previous step changes, and likewise, the next step, and in turn, the current step. Why step? Why upwards? That falls to temperament, the “iron wire on which the beads are strung” (¶3), the banister lining the side of the stairs. Temperament, “on its own level, or in the view of nature,” is final (¶7). Temperament allows us to begin to see this “vast-flowing vigor,” this “Being.” Naming this generalization “Being” is a confession to our inability to go farther, yet Being is not a wall, but “interminable oceans” (¶18). Our temperament upwards, our stepping, is our greatness, but not in action, but tendency. Our temperament is our orientation towards permanence.
-/-
We have stood solidly on the pedestal now for a good time. We have watched the trees, know when their leaves fall, which birds nest in the crooks of branches, which in the forks. We have seen some trees collapse in a windstorm, and others push through a layer of snow to enter the world. We begin forget we were ever not on the pedestal. We whisper to no one in particular, “I know the trees.”
The pedestal comes loose, swaying backwards. We begin to tip, and we pull our hand from our brow and reach for the pine that has grown next to us. Our fingers grasp a branch, but the bark comes off in our hands and we fall, quietly this time, knowing how far the dirt in from us.
With a crunch, I hit the ground.
•••
Lying on the ground, pressed against the dirt, we feel the urge to rise again. “But why?” we ask. “We’ll only fall again.” Temperament answers:
-/-
How do we make sense of this tendency upwards, with no end in sight? Sisyphus comes to mind, the perpetual pushing uphill. But like Sisyphus, our stone rolls regularly back to the bottom of the hill, and we are afforded a moment’s rest, walking down the hill. What rattles in the mind of Sisyphus as he walks down towards the inevitable return to pushing? It is not hard to guess that he is resigned to the infinite nature of his punishment, but his temperament, his orientation towards permanence, that constant change, is not hopeful, but present. I imagine Sisyphus saying, to no one in particular, “This is what I do. This is me. I am Sisyphus.” Resignation becomes mindful engagement with his moment, and his string of moments.
We return to the beginning, where you may have forgotten I started, with “sanity of mind in variety or facility of association” (¶8). What is associated in order to keep the mind sane? “The consciousness in each man is a sliding scale, which identifies him now with the First Cause, and now with the flesh of his body; life above life, in infinite degrees” (¶17). We look outwards, not upwards, and we see our life in each broadening circle. We see our place within each circle, and recognize our importance and fleetingness in each ring. As if we were trees, our circles build outwards, incorporating and responding to our experience. We are conscious of the stairs, of the trees, of the falling. “I am very content with knowing, if only I could know” (¶25). The moments we are conscious of are beads on the string. Consciousness, as the “sliding scale,” is never frozen, never static, never the same one moment to the next. With each step, we are conscious of new, renewing our beliefs, what we held truth a step ago. With each step, we renew the staircase, we renew the banister, we find ourselves there on each step, gone before we can grasp it, but trying again with the next step, evermore.
-/-
“Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat; up again old heart!”