Little Gidding.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

The Dry Salvages.

It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence--
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness--not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination--
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations--not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

East Coker.

I said to my soul, be still, and let the darkness come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away--
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing--
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Burnt Norton.

Here is a place of disaffectoin
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.

About one week left.

I had my pre-op appointments last week, and they made me nervous, as hearing about familiar-sounding worst case scenarios always does. And questions about living wills. And persistent and judgmental questions about religious affiliation.


(Have you noticed how ubiquitous TVs are in waiting rooms these days? My orthopedist’s office has recently moved to a fancy new facility, and their long waiting room has two sections: on the day I was there, one section had 3 big-screen TVs playing ESPN and the other had 3 big-screen TVs playing morning talk shows. The only area you could sit not in front of a giant TV was a small, had bench between the two sections, but since the sound was on in each zone, you then heard the sound of both. When I was moved into an examination room, I found another TV, though I did ask the nurse to turn that one off.)


But I also feel fairly prepared. I’ve stocked up on clothes that fasten in the front, on magazines for reading when I cannot focus on anything longer, on a couple of light books for when I feel ready. I have found folks to cover a few classes for me. I have some good stuff on the way from Netflix. My final exams are as far finished as they can be at this point. Some friends are supplying us with meals. I have written and submitted millions of letters of recommendation. We have juice, soup, and herbal tea in the house.


Meanwhile, I am reminding myself of several things:

1. I cannot prepare for every eventuality, even when I have sufficient notice.
2. I will let some things slide. People can deal.
3. It is OK to eat too many potato chips from time to time.
4. I have an entire week of work and life between now and the arthroscope.
5. The things that will be painful and inconvenient after the surgery will also get better over time.
6. Number 3 applies to chocolate, too. And sometimes whiskey.
7. There is more swimming on the other side of all this.
8. TIHII.


If all goes extremely well, I will get to have Thanksgiving dinner with friends. And they have kindly offered to supply us with a Thanksgiving dinner on any other night of our choosing, if we cannot do it Thursday.

Meanwhile, looking at yarn makes me happy.

TIHII.

Have you read Ursula Hegi's The Worst Thing I've Done? It is not an easy book, emotionally, but it and its characters are so absorbing.

And it has given me a way of thinking about things that does not seem simplistic, but that can bring a quiet amount of peace:

TIHII. A word her father once wrote with wine on the tabletop and then said aloud. "TIHII." Like the whinnying of a horse. When Annie asked him what it meant, her father touched each letter. "This . . . Is . . . How . . . It . . . Is. And what it means is that I can do nothing about getting laid off. Not make them keep me or pretend that it doesn't matter. This is how it is." When Annie tried out the sound and whinnied, her father laugh, and the lower half of his face widened, while his thick eyebrows curved down, changing the shape of his face. On the table, the letters were drying out. Annie dipper her index finger into his wineglass and ran it across the letters till they glistened again.