I WAS AN OPTIMIST, ONCE

I was his nephew, his peculiar and intimate nephew. I was hanging on to his coat-tails all the way through. I made pills with him in the chemist's shop at Wimblehurst before he began. I was, you might say, the stick of his rocket; and after our tremendous soar, after he had played with millions, a golden rain in the sky, after my bird's-eye view of the modern world, I fell again, a little scarred and blistered perhaps, two and twenty years older, with my youth gone, my manhood eaten in upon, but greatly edified, into this Thames-side yard, into these white heats and hammerings, amidst the fine realites of steel—to think it all over in my leisure and jot down the notes and inconsecutive observations that make this book. It was more, you know, than a figurative soar. The zenith of that career was surely our flight across the channel in the Lord Roberts B....

Text:  H.G. Wells, Tono-Bungay (1909) 

Note:  It's funny the things you find in book shops when you're not looking for them.  When I was at boarding school, the chair where I preferred to read in the library when I wasn't taking notes in a carrell placed my right leg in intimate proximity to Tono-Bungay.  And today on Mercer Street a Journeyman Library edition of the novel stared me directly in the face.  When I finally was able to focus (the sun and heat were unbearable; that's what drove me into the store), it was by far the most attractive thing I saw all day waiting for my appointment. The jungle animals are dressing strangely these days.

Guns N' Roses: Welcome To The Jungle (Link)

THESE DAYS

I've been out walking
I don't do that much talking these days
These days-
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
And all the times I had the chance to

I'll keep on moving
Things are bound to be improving these days
These days-
These days I sit on corner stones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten
Don't confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them 

 

Nico: These Days (Link)

TO THE YOUNG WRITERS AND ARTISTS KILLED IN THE WAR 1914-18

We haven’t forgotten you !  We haven’t forgotten !

You were the first generation of the world’s greatest century,

And you were doing, and were going to do, fine things . . .

You were a great Young Generation . . .

And then you went out and got murdered –- magnificently—

Went out and got murdered . . . because a parcel of

          damned old men

Wanted some fun, or some power, or something.

    Something so despicable in comparison to your young lives.

Anyhow, you were glorious . . .

And we will do our best to do what you have done.

Oh, we will fight for your ideals – we, who were too

        young to be murdered with you. . . .

And—we haven’t forgotten you !  We haven’t forgotten !

--Brian Howard, published in the Eton Candle, 1922

DERBY DAY

I don’t recall exactly when my parents determined that I should go to boarding school (although I do remember my mother giving me a couple of articles to read on the subject, one in the old Holiday magazine and another in Town and Country), but I do remember trollish relatives of mine speaking ill of the decision.  From today’s time and space distance, the episode seems like our family’s version of the movie Gentleman’s Agreement.   I remember clearly discussions concerning traditional prep school anti-Semitism, and especially ones about “latent homosexuality,” which was said to core-infect these institutions.  I’m certain overhearing these conversations taught me the word “rife.”

The day they dropped me off at The Gunnery in 1967 really was “the first day of the rest of my life.”  On our way, the school requested that we pause at JFK Airport to pick up another incoming freshman from Alabama named Martin Love, who was matriculating on a scholarship sponsored by a group called ABC (“A Better Chance”).  A cheerless kid, Martin and I never became friends, not even for a day.  

But I’ll always be glad we were assigned to retrieve him because while we were waiting in the Eastern terminal, the Lovin’ Spoonful arrived and in wild style began carooming around the baggage area in wheelchairs, à la A Hard Day’s Night.  I recognized the band immediately (even new member Jerry Yester), and although we didn’t speak, I consider our brief encounter one of my “formative experiences.”

I am introspective and personally reflective only when challenged; defensively, I usually find a way of fading to gray, tuning out.  This day, my life transition day, I was for the most part ignored (I suppose it was my parents’ life transition day also) and the ringing changes meant absolutely nothing to me until the very end when they departed and all that remained were I and "my own devices.”  Darkness early-verged into the Connecticut afternoon sky and slight fall chill hit the air.  The surrounding campus buildings, which all would eventually seem like home, were alien and minatory, and people, some of whom would become friends or at least familiars, seemed the same way.  For a brief moment only, for the very last time ever, I felt existential confusion and a gulping onset of fear and tears. Then, suddenly, everything was pure oxygen.

  

All school images, Washington D.C. and Virginia: Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1899.

  
Kevin Ayers: Derby Day (Link)

STRONGLY INFLUENCED BY (HARRY GOLDGAR R.I.P.)

NOTE:  An old friend wrote to me last night saying that Harry Goldgar, our English teacher at The Gunnery and a great friend and mentor, passed away a few days ago.  I originally wrote and posted this a couple of years ago on Harry’s 90^th birthday and I thought to repost it today because of the memories it prompted, and mostly because I wrote it in gratitude for the many things Harry Goldgar taught me:  things I’ve used every day since then, never forgetting where I learned them. 

   A friend wrote to me yesterday morning to let me know that today marked the 90^th birthday of a high school teacher we both liked and admired.  Harry Goldgar was one of those pivotal teachers who, through direction and indirection, gave you access to a lot of useful information as well the tools to build on what he taught you as you progressed through the rest of your education and into life. 
 

 

  Our school, which I have mentioned here previously, was a small, very traditional boy’s boarding school in Connecticut.   Single-sex education having largely gone out of style, I don’t know whether places like this even exist any longer.  Certainly, our school today (from what I know about it through reading alumni mailings) seems completely unrecognizable to me.

  The just post-Summer of Love 1960s was a fascinating period to attend a rigorous, traditional New England boarding school.  Rigid disciplinary rules were still in place and strictly enforced at a time when such rules were being questioned and contested throughout the culture, which brought any number of things into high relief.  Attending a school like this was a lot like going into business early.  If you were lucky and sufficiently practical, you learned to survive (and possibly thrive) among your peers and to identify and navigate all sorts of competing power groups.  It was a mostly good experience for me because it gave me confidence and taught me self-reliance I never would have acquired if I had remained at home with my family.  Also, our school was much, much better than the public school where I had previously been enrolled, which was crude and rough in a Blackboard Jungle sort of way and provided a comparatively desultory education.  My boarding school, on the other hand, was superficially, at least (the surface always being potentially deceptive), tweedy, pipe smoking, genteel and scholarly. Because I was at my most energetic and educable then, I got a lot out of it and made a couple of lifelong friends.

    For some time I had been planning to write something for this space called Strongly Influenced By.  The title came to me one day during one of my usual confusion spells when I was trying hard, without much luck, to find myself on the map.   In the way they do in desert island movies and reality TV survival shows, I first tried to discern and locate some life landmarks and then after I found a few, tried to remember why they were landmarks for me.

  The teacher I mentioned, Harry Goldgar, who now lives in New Orleans, was responsible for a fairly large number of important signposts in my life and I had a good time yesterday, in the middle of some highly weird hubbub, thinking about some of them:


Bildungsroman, Robert Musil, Alain-Fournier, Carl Gustav Jung, Guy Davenport, giving Greek names to charming cats, cats in general even though I was highly allergic to cats then, Editions Gallimard and Flammarion books lining rows of shelves, Proust, Gide, Faulkner, owning complete sets of anything, afternoon cups of tea and conversation, City Lights books, bookstore and logo, the 8^th Street Bookshop, Magister Ludi, maintaining good mental discipline and organization, a Master of Sacred Theology degree from the Sorbonne with the beautiful academic robes that went with it, I Ching, mixing modern and ancient things, combining appropriate respect and a healthy reverence for the past with skepticism and  healthy irreverence, taking time out and time off from all of the above, Edward Gorey, how to set type, lay out newspaper columns and pages and write headlines, my first (and last) séance. 


    Harry was much younger then but he was still one of our more senior, mature teachers and certainly, in his quiet and polite way, our most sophisticated.  At a time when youth was overvalued, he taught me (mainly by inference and subtle comments) to discern value, to be able to figure things out for myself and to have confidence in my final conclusions based on the fact that I had carefully considered, rejected and discarded many previous conclusions.

    When life feels far too slippery, it means everything to find the things that grip, that help you sort through to what might possibly make sense.


    So happy birthday today.  I’m terribly sorry to have been too out of touch.  I hope you’re well.  I’m better today than I was yesterday because of remembering and valuing these memories.