Journal
Dec. 25
Late afternoon, Christmas Day, I trudged through new fallen snow
toward a secret place within the confines of the Harvard campus.
A regal iron lion standing guard demands “what is your business?”
I answer, I’ve come to find meaning in desolation and hear the
whispers from the ghosts of American giants.” He stands aside
allowing me to pass. It is breathlessly beautiful as a peaceful
loneliness prevails. A late December flurry blankets the campus
weighing down ancient trees, living beings bearing witness to the
intellectual and spiritual seeds of the American nation and the values
of its founders. Here, in a private courtyard, the now is as pure as
snow falling on a billion year-old mountain at the end f the world,
one that has never known a human presence. That purity will remain
another 11 days with the exception of an occasional foraging squirrel
and until the students return to campus. The students and faculty
have flown with the geese to warmer climes for the holidays and to
the familiar cheerfulness of home, leaving me alone a million miles
from nowhere in the solitude of my own thoughts.
Everything is quietly muffled gray and white with occasional gusts swirling
snow into corners of windows, decorating wrought iron gates, and
capping Reverend Harvard in a crown of white as he tries to stand in the
way of mendacity, ignorance, and materialism. My only three-dimensional
companion, a foraging squirrel, who like myself is trying to find sustenance
in a place of isolation. In the distance over the yard, I see feathery
temperamental clouds drifting over Greco-Roman temples, smoke bellowing
from chimneys whose furnaces struggle to keep empty Dickens era
65
buildings warm and where an occasional, forgotten Christmas light blinks
through a frosty window in hopes of being seen.
As I watch the squirrel carry a nut, I wonder as I always have, how people
find meaning and beauty in lonely, forsaken places. Although how they
find it is not as important as seeing the light myself in people and places
where it’s assumed only darkness exists.
The setting sun darkens the yard, further chilling the air, prompting me to
seek a more hospitable place to continue ruminating—hopefully in a
room cast in rosy firelight whose sparks throw bobbing shadows on a tea
pot and a reading lamp attached to a padded chair facing a large window
that looks-out onto the falling snow.
Dec. 25
Late afternoon, Christmas Day, I trudged through new fallen snow
toward a secret place within the confines of the Harvard campus.
A regal iron lion standing guard demands “what is your business?”
I answer, I’ve come to find meaning in desolation and hear the
whispers from the ghosts of American giants.” He stands aside
allowing me to pass. It is breathlessly beautiful as a peaceful
loneliness prevails. A late December flurry blankets the campus
weighing down ancient trees, living beings bearing witness to the
intellectual and spiritual seeds of the American nation and the values
of its founders. Here, in a private courtyard, the now is as pure as
snow falling on a billion year-old mountain at the end f the world,
one that has never known a human presence. That purity will remain
another 11 days with the exception of an occasional foraging squirrel
and until the students return to campus. The students and faculty
have flown with the geese to warmer climes for the holidays and to
the familiar cheerfulness of home, leaving me alone a million miles
from nowhere in the solitude of my own thoughts.
Everything is quietly muffled gray and white with occasional gusts swirling
snow into corners of windows, decorating wrought iron gates, and
capping Reverend Harvard in a crown of white as he tries to stand in the
way of mendacity, ignorance, and materialism. My only three-dimensional
companion, a foraging squirrel, who like myself is trying to find sustenance
in a place of isolation. In the distance over the yard, I see feathery
temperamental clouds drifting over Greco-Roman temples, smoke bellowing
from chimneys whose furnaces struggle to keep empty Dickens era
65
buildings warm and where an occasional, forgotten Christmas light blinks
through a frosty window in hopes of being seen.
As I watch the squirrel carry a nut, I wonder as I always have, how people
find meaning and beauty in lonely, forsaken places. Although how they
find it is not as important as seeing the light myself in people and places
where it’s assumed only darkness exists.
The setting sun darkens the yard, further chilling the air, prompting me to
seek a more hospitable place to continue ruminating—hopefully in a
room cast in rosy firelight whose sparks throw bobbing shadows on a tea
pot and a reading lamp attached to a padded chair facing a large window
that looks-out onto the falling snow.
