Christopher Candy (ccandy@chs.cusd.claremont.edu)
So I picked up that volume of remembrances of yesteryear, and began to thumb through its pages, still glossy and unbent, so far untouched by the withering hand of time. I began to flip through it, seeing the pictures of what my high school was, and what it was like, at least in the eyes of the yearbook editors. Pictures of cheerleaders and homecoming and the band and the various clubs and sports and what not. Sayings and quotes from people who I haven't seen since that day in June when I received my diploma, and possibly will never see again in my life. Pictures of campus life, of people whom I knew, and some I did not. And I came to a realization.
It was not me who went to that school.
What, you say? Oh, don't worry - it was my yearbook - or at least, Christopher Candy's. Claremont High School, 1993. But the rather disturbing revelation that I received while perusing that tome's pages was that it was not me who went there. It was another Christopher Candy, one who won't exist ever again. It was a rather saddening experience, in a way.
It's not that I wish to be that person that I was in high school - certainly not. I was a very limited person then, unable to truly deal with anyone else in a truly human fashion. In many ways, I still have this problem. But in college, I blossomed in many ways. Instead of the insecure person I was then, who lashed out verbally at those who would appear as a threat, I know take a much calmer course. I find myself being able to relate to people, and to appear as something other than a being of ice.
But still, that person, that incarnation of myself, had his good qualities, the worthy parts of him that made him a worthwhile person. After all, he was me at one time. In a way, realizing he's gone is a reminder of mortality, not of the body, but of the soul.
Some say the soul is immortal, and point to various religious texts and other assorted arguments to further their point. In a way, I believe them. The soul, in one fashion or another, does carry on, whether it be in the remembrances of others or a separate existence outside of the realm of our understanding. However, that is not the type of mortality I am discussing. Rather, it is the type of mortality associated with change, with the moving from one state to another, the difference in situation that is the cause of another mindset, another belief system, another way of thinking, acting, BEING.
Time is the Great Leveller - it cares not for one's station in life, one's nationality, one's humility or attitude, one's race, colour, or creed, but affects all equally. All of us fall in its domain, and all are subject to its whims and its awesome power. We all pass through Time, experiencing and being and hopefully learning, and changing all the while. Onward it goes, on its journey towards infinity, and we are caught up within it, driftwood on the tide of existence, inorexably drawn to a destination we may or may not know is out there, or even exists.
But the thing that strikes me is that rather than despairing in the predicament of humanity in relation to Time, I revel in it. For Time, and the Change that comes with it, is a good thing, at least in my eyes. I frankly do not want to stay the same person I was yesterday, or am today. I want to continue to grow, to experience, to learn. I want to continue on with life, rather than be frozen in an experiental stasis, not experiencing new events or occurences, just continuing on day after day, all the same. I want newness, whether it be in surroundings, thoughts, ideas, concepts, actions, words, or anything else that is out there.
Life is a growing process, one that requires advancing and deepening one's breadth of knowledge. To stand still is in essence to die, withering away without the sustenance that sustains the soul. The soul is something that needs to be nuriushed - much like the body, it requires its own brand of "food" in order to survive. It is not a perpetual motion machine, continuing on blithely without some motive force driving it to continue in one fashion or another.
Mortality, whether of the body or soul, is an inescapable fact of existence. However, the type of mortality that occurs is immensely important. I would rather have the mortality of change, where the death of one "me" is celebrated in the birth of another at that same instant, rather than the death of nonexistance, where my soul fades into oblivion, leaving nothing but an empty shell.
Yes, I miss that Christopher Candy of a year ago. But rather than wishing for yesterday, I realize that I should look to tomorrow, and the soul that on that day will miss the author of this. For I will be glad when that occurs.
And you know, I think the me of yesteryear felt the same way.
No form of communication can be perfect. However, it is more important to make the attempt, rather than give up on it for its lack of perfection. For in attempting to transmit ideas, other ideas can be sparked in the recipient, furthering their understanding and inner knowledge. To not attempt communication is to leave oneself cut off from a valuable source for new ideas, new thoughts, new concepts to spring forth from. No voice should be stifled, no cry unheard.
However, this requires an effort upon the part of the listener to be discriminating, using reason to judge that they receive, rather than accept in on blind faith. Otherwise, nothing is in truth being communicated - it is just that the listener is using the idea of another without understanding, without seeing what truth there may be. It is dangerous, much as anything can be dangerous when handled improperly.
Let the voices cry forth.
The insidiousness of this tendency within humanity is that once begun, it has a cumulative effect, much as a malignant cancer will spread throughout its host unless measures are taken to stop it. Peer pressure, while a topic that has been beaten into the ground, does exist, and does have its effects upon those in society. It is much harder to stand up against one than against a multitude. With each new follower, it is harder to resist the siren's call, harder to buck the tide.
But to what extent are those of us who profess to free will able to interfere in the demogogue's following without overstepping our own bounds of allowing others to follow their own course, of their own free will? Where does our protecting their right to choose their own path become an abridgement of that same right? Where does are path of altruism become the same devilish concern that engrosses the mind of the demogogue?
Within this society, rules gain meaning as interactions between humans rise in number. This occurs because rules serve as necessary guides for interaction among humanity, a required lubrication to prevent the rise of friction and hostility between people. Without rules, no conventions exist in regards with how to deal with that most destructive of forces - man himself.
However, these rules should not be considered sacrosanct. Civilization as we know it will not end because certain conventions were broken, much as a train finds its doom after leaving the rails it travels on. Rather, it is a river, in that it follows a definite course, but can and will cut a new course if it jumps its banks.
Rules are guides, no more. They exist to make interaction in society easier - no other purpose can truly be attributed to them. To consider them as coming from divine will, and thus to be followed blindly, is to shackle oneself unnecessarily. Rules server a purpose - but it must be understood that this purpose is secondary. When rules become the problem, the must be swept aside like a blockage in a river. Rules are to server, not to bind. Forget this, and one forgets what is needed to exist as man.
Oh, how wonderful it is to fly so! What beauty, what joy! Such a bittersweet rapture, such an ambivalent pleasure! I ache with pain while barely ceasing to cry aloud my ecstasy of being in such state. This need to write of my feeling conflicts with the need to revel in the feeling itself. I have no choice - my hand moves of its own accord, writing letter after letter, word after word. It follows its own dictates, putting to paper what the mind cannot, acting while the mind remains locked within a feeling that consumes it utterly.
To think that some say man is driven by animal-like instinct alone - ha! Then how does one explain this feeling within me? For writing certainly does not serve what baser instincts I have. Does it provide me sustenance? No, it does not. Does it provide me a sexual pleasure? No, for that which grips me is of the mind, not of the loins. Does it provide me an escape from fear? No for I welcome this feeling, both its positive and negative aspects.
This but confirms within me the knowledge that there is more than instinct to man. More drives him than the pure need to survive or gain momentary pleasure. There is a place within him that transcends the mortal sphere, passes the bounds of our normal worldly ken. It matters not whether you call this place of transcendence the "mind" or the "soul" or any other term like these. Rather, two things do matter. First, that one admits to the existence of this otherwordly portal. But even beyond accepting the existence of it, one must enter it, pass through it to what lies beyond as much as each of us are capable.
For therein lies the difference between us and everything else. We are the children of two worlds: this reality, our normal existence, and that of the "adult's" world, that which we all catch but glimpses of. We must step through to that other world, and leave this cradle of ours to others.
However, when this outward drive slows, the forces of expansion become cancerous, causing tension and decay. For expansion implies displacement. In expanding in new directions, there is no force other than nature to oppose it. But once enclosed, the expansion forces will smash against other expansionist forces. Thwarted, these forces cause a backlash effect, rebounding against their source, continually causing damage, poisoning its own wellspring unless a new direction for expansion can be found.
Humanity can be seen as the Midgard Serpent of legend. It devours all, overcoming everything within its path. This predatory vorasciousness consumes all, until the point is reached where nothing is left to consume but itself. Thus the serpent eats its own tail, as humanity does war upon itself, dooming itself to death by the hemorrhaging of its own self-inflicted wounds.
This conflict can be seen in numerous examples of the past. The numerous wars within Europe, from ancient times on demonstrate this in fine form. The Roman Empire became strong on its expansion - and then proceeded to annihilate itself with internal strife once its expansion was blocked by the Parthian Empire on one hand and natural barriers on others. England spent its energies on expansion for its entire history - first at home, with Wales and Scotland, then France, and then in colonization, once the maritime technology had been developed to expand into the New World.
The United States has been the same way. Everywhere it could, it has expanded. Wilderness has been civilized and filled with people, while the borders of science have been pushed back an amazing amount in order to facilitate this. When the continent had been absorbed, American interests turned abroad, and finally led to its role as a superpower. Space then was conquered, and turned away from because of what seemed to be insurmountable barriers.
Never before this century has man found himself enclosed as he is now. All usable land on the planet has been claimed, including Antarctica. Few true wildernesses exist where one can not find others settled. More and more, man finds himself hemmed in, surrounded on all sides by nothing other than other humans, each with their own need for expansion.
So man feeds on himself. Crime increases, and insensitivity towards others grows at a startling pace. Rudeness becomes the vogue, and showing kindness and courtesy becomes a sign of weakness, rather than what is to be expected or the sign of a confident person. We celebrate those who embody this predatory turn, those who are willing to break the laws and revel in doing what is not considered right. We scoff at and consider with suspicion those who offer to help from nothing more than altruistic motives.
Humanity must find some way to deal with this tendency of itself. The choices it has are rather easy to see, rather easy to name off. Whether or not it can be distracted enough from its cannibalistic feeding frenzy is something that we will have to see.
Remembrance is about to become very important for me, in a fashion that has never had meaning before. Until now, remembrance has been a dry concept, one attached to such dull events as Memorial Day, celebrating long-dead and distant heroes of a nation I no longer feel much attachment to, or equally mind-numbing activities such as recalling dates for an exam or not forgetting to take the garbage out after supper. In an existance that remained roughly the same, day after day, remembrance of specific events, thoughts, emotions - it was rendered rather useless, as those events, thoughts, and emotions would repeat themselves in deja-vu like fashion.
But what happens when that mundaneness is shattered, torn asunder by events planned or unforeseen? Then the happenings become very important indeed - as does our grasp upon those happenings. What happens to us creates our lives, or psyches, our selves. To lose recollection of that is to lose part of what we are, to lose sight of what is important. A Jew from Auschwitz is unlikely to forget that horror, or forget the reasons why it is so important not to forget. Equally, those who recall the fall of the Berlin Wall are unlikely to let that memory slip away.
My mundaneness, my normal life, was uprooted root, tree, and branch for nine months and thirteen days, flung completely from the soil it had known into another life, almost fairy-tale in many ways and fantastic from any point of view. My world as I had known it ceased, to reform in another pattern. And now it is to be uprooted again, returned to where it had grown before. But how will that change be received? And how well will I remember that time of wonder?
To think of how simply it started. In the fall of 1994, I began asking about casually at my university, Cal Poly Pomona, if there was anyone there who could teach the Welsh language, which I had an interest in at the time. While I never did find a teacher of it there, I did find Dr. Elliot, who got me started on the road to the International Program. Through it, and the time it had me spend in Wales at the University of Wales, Swansea, my life was transformed.
I am afraid. My memory, as I've joked in the past, is rarely good for anything that has occurred after the date of my birth. Names, faces, dates - all blur, all fade. I think back on my senior year in high school, remembering it as a fun year - then cannot for the life of me remember anything about it beyond the most fleeting of images. I cannot even remember all the classes I took even a year ago. Yesterday, I received a letter from someone I spent years with in junior high playing clarinet alongside - yet it took thirty minutes of desperately racking my brains to remember who they were - this, one of the first people I ever had a crush on!
I am afraid. I am afraid that I will forget my life here in Wales once I have left it as much as I have forgotten what my life in California was life. I am afraid of it becoming no more than a bedside fable, something to say "Did I do that?" to. I am afraid of it becoming nothing more than a notation on my CV (resume), another point towards recommendation for graduate school. I am afraid of the places I have seen becoming less than dreams, of the people and faces I know becoming phantoms, forgotten names, misplaced friendships. And most of all, I fear forgetting those I came to love, either as friends - or as more.
Do you ever dream of a place? I mean, _really_ dream of a place - create an image in your mind burning its way permanently into your consciousness, burning a hole, a gap, a void that hungers for fulfillment, for peace, for the attainment of that picture, that place, that vision? Have you ever seen a place, to be forever haunted by it, have it a constant pull on your soul, a gentle poison in your blood forever sapping your strength, distracting your concentration, and disturbing your peace? I have. I have seen wonders, delights, glories. They haunt me, making my world a monochrome pastiche of greys, a drab, dull vacuous existence lacking in the brilliant colours of the past, of that world I visited, lived in once, and have now returned from. How I wish to return.
Just imagine... you stand within a farmhouse on a hill, looking about. Cosy, homely, the classic welcoming home, a couch, a chair, a merrily burning fireplace, a small table with a vase of flowers brightening it. The lights are off, only the flickering of the fire and the hiss of the flames disturbing the image of the room - all else is still. Two large bay windows face south and west, curtains open. Outside, night reigns, blackness blanketing the sky, God's inkwell poured across the heavens. Broad strokes of cloud undulate across the sky, a thin veil of rolling white gossamer forming a meld between sea and sky. Above this lace of vapour, glittering diamond dust has been flung, peeking through the whitened strands of silk to glisten wondrously, undimmed by man's attempts to conquer his paranoia of the night.
To the south, a brooding mountain rises up, the clouds clinging to its peak in a tattered, majestic cloak. On its slope is a village, grey stone old as existence, as much a part of the mountain as any boulder. The occasional orange light glimmers in window or on street, gentle pools of warmth adding touches of shadow and mellowness to the mountainside. Heather graces the neck of the mountain, while the slopes are lush with green. A crown of snow glows in moonlight descending from out of your view, a tiara of light. At the foot of the village, cradling the stonework houses against the peak like a mother's arm holding her child to her bosom, lies a small river, winding its way under a bridge, passing from the southern window to the one facing west. Your view follows, tracing the river as it joins to another in the distance, catching fire and becoming quicksilver in the light of the moon, a glowing ribbon flowing out of site, amongst gentle hills promising the mystery of a night and a land still relatively untrammeled by humans.
What would you do if this was forever to be your fate? Would you accept its passing? Would you do everything in your power to return, regardless of the fact that no matter how many times you go back, it will never be the same? Would you lose your grip on sanity, just a touch, a wee fraction? Would you set yourself to forget? What would you do? What would you do?
Well, here I am, taking the bus home once more, and considering the strange circumstances of my life. To the south, Elephant Hill is limned with the last vestiges of the setting sun, a dusky sienna as we head over the Ganesha Hills. The street lights are taking over, the lights on the bell tower of St. Joseph's Catholic Church just visible before the green-swathed stone of the hill interferes.
To my left now is Bonelli Park, its natural meadows giving way to a golf course and its most un-natural fairways. Then we are over the hill, letting me stare at my hills, the hills to the north that I live by, and the mountains beyond, snow-capped from the monumental storms of the past month. Rainwater two days late still flows in the unforgiving concrete of Thompson Creek, and night falls.
It's rather odd, in truth, how you notice the little things once you know they're no longer to be part and parcel of your life. That is where I stand now, knowing that seven months from now, I will be packing, perhaps for the last time, to leave this place, this town where I grew up. Not just this town, but this nation, this continent. Durham calls, with its castle and cathedral, its smallness and its stream. So too does Swansea, Dylan Thomas's home, which so ensnared me the time before.
Ever since my return from my last sojourn in Britain, this area has been alien, unknowable to me. Oh, I survive day to day, and life goes on much as it always had here. But that comfort, that easy knowing is gone.
Was I truly gone enough for that to happen? In truth, does it matter? Whether it was long enough or not, I now feel it, and by what other criterion should I judge? One thing is certain: the clock cannot be turned back, the game cannot be reset. No Mulligans for me this round, even should I wish it.
Yet here I am, discovering things that are lovely in this place. Small things, those we take for granted. Sunset on a hill, mountains on a skyline. A casual walk with a friend, _these_ friends. A kind word, a merry song. A walk up the hills, a hike in the valleys.
Will I miss California? I don't know. Perversely, I probably fit in here more now than I ever did. My relations to people are more easy, more congenial than ever. Strange, because I no longer think like them. Perhaps I never did, and only realized it two years ago.
I'm afraid that I won't miss California. Too many bad experiences, too much history. Too many assumptions on who I am and what I've been. It's time to move on. But now, looking about, seeing things, I realize that a very discomfiting thought could be true.
I may miss California after all.
It is worrisome to me. After all, I do the same things. I have been, and still often am, the epitomy of impulsiveness. Often times I will find myself on a course of action for no reason at all, with nothing truly seeming to lie behind what I was doing. If I cannot understand this in others, how can I possibly understand me?
I don't understand when someone will make a comment that reflects prejudices and biases. "Orientals drive that way because that's how they're born." "All black want to do is steal." "Whites just want to keep the coloureds down in oppression." Do the people who utter these truly think about what they say? Do they really think that genetics alone is the cause of the stereotypes that they attribute to a race, often erronously? Do they truly think that this is reason enough to denigrate and insult others, seemingly without thought?
It astounds me to hear people utter these idiocies as if they were natural truths, and act as if I am insane for not understanding. They find it natural to speak this way, saying without thinking, uttering without knowing, speaking without caring. I do not understand.
I do not comprehend the reasons why. "Why? Why not?" Why not, indeed? Perhaps because it is not a good way to demonstrate intelligence. Why not? Perhaps because it shows one to be inferior to that very thing they care to insult. Why not? Perhaps because it underscores the fact that it makes plain to all that one truly has no knowledge of what life is about.
Again, I don't understand. How can we attack the way certain people act when we give them trust, yet continue to give them that same position, over and over and over again? Is it a case of passing on the responsibility? Are we merely making scapegoats of these people, or are we making true complaints? And if it disgusts us so, why can we not change these persons to ones that we consider honest and upright?
Is it that we are not willing, ourselves, to take on the required exercise of effort and willpower to enact these changes? Are we so willing to let inertial guide us that we will stand almost any situation unto the point of imminent public violence? Are we so unwilling to exercise our decision-making capability that the decisions that we all must live by are left to those we would not trust to watch our housepet, let alone our country, nation, state?
I still cannot comprehend. What is it that makes standing up for what you believe in so abhorrent? What is it about the common stereotypical concepts that demands such obedience? Are they truly the truth... or merely a shadow of some ephemeral idea that took on a life of its own, regardless of its origin? What makes it so necessary, of such vital importance to society, that all conform to these views, not straying, not taking their own path to a person view of what may be the truth?
Is it truly the wish of our culture to create mindless herds of sheep, wandering the barren meadows and fields of mass-media thought and so-called "popular culture", with little sustenance but weeds and non-nourishing fare? Is free thought, the ability to create on one's own, learn on one's own, so alien to us now that we stare at those who would take effort to learn on their own, to take their own paths to knowledge?
I still fail to see. What is it about an athlete's physical skill, or an actor's talent to portray a character, that makes them qualified to speak on such issues as politics, religion, or warfare? What makes a man who excels in the playing of a recreational sport the one who's opinion is sought regarding the latest world events, and makes that opinion be considered as utterly serious and equally valid as that of a renowned expert who has devoted his life to that topic?
Have we become so enamoured of fame, engrossed in how much people become known, that we equate it with knowledge and power? Are we to the point where it is not what you know that is important, but who, regardless of how well informed that person is, or how prepared they are in the areas of logic, analysis, clear thinking, or common sense?
In considering, perhaps it is not me who does not understand. Perhaps it is not me at all, in truth. Do you understand?
Email to: ccandy@chs.cusd.claremont.edu * Updated 2/25/98