We have all been caught in our own empty abeyances, haven’t we? Some call it laziness. Others, indecision. Others, another subtle or violent term of inaction. Regardless of the term, if you do not already relate, my thoughts are not for you. Please, stop reading knowing I admire you or perhaps think you self-deceived.

Rediscovering _______

As I sat on the porch steps of dreadful suburbia, letting the sunshine bathe my face, my arms, my questioning soul, I sat and enjoyed an unfiltered American Spirit, trying to ignore something. Something that was a more constant irritant than the metallic click click click of the katydids’ musicless call or the blind traverse of the fat, gray-black ant up and along my calf.

That afternoon on the porch, I was reading D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow, whose story made me think of a portrait by Rodney Smith, the late 20th Century photographer. The portrait in my mind is of a woman who is silent and dark, sitting back amidst a haze of smoke. You might think: of course she was silent; it is a photograph, silly. However, where you would be right you would also be wrong, for her very posture and expression speak only of her silence. I have often thought of that photograph and been drawn to it, especially when I first saw it. For that first moment and a few moments after, I was her — both violent and placid, blurred by a haze of what I knew and did not fully understand.

The silent woman’s expression was particularly relevant as I considered Fred Brangwen — a still developing character at the point where I was in The Rainbow, who is at once as restless as he is deliberate. Fred, in the story, feels on a cold, rainy night what I felt on that dry, hot afternoon:

Photograph by Rodney Smith (1)

This wet, black night seemed to cut him off and make him unsettled, aware of himself, aware that he wanted something else, aware that he was scarcely living. There seemed to him to be no root to his life, no place for him to get satisfied in. He dreamed of going abroad. But his instinct knew that change of place would not solve his problem. He wanted change, deep, vital change of living. And he did not know how to get it. (2)

Deep, vital change of living. Yes, this sounded good to my torpid soul in the still, dying summer of the afternoon. However, like Fred — whose name I amusingly identified with that orange-and-black-clad prehistoric cartoon — I did not know how to get that change either.

At a pleasant barbecue get-together recently, I asked a young fellow where he was going now: what college, degree, future was he planning for himself? Before he responded in word, I saw his answer: a deep violate hatred that emanated from a utter lack of a non-confused and truthful answer.

“I know, I know,” I told him. “I hate the question too, and I have no answer, myself.”

He relaxed and out of half a smile said he was considering a few options. Of course, he proceeded to relate options he was not actually considering. I responded in kind with my own polite lies. We smiled, and our intercourse was ended.

Our conversation could have lasted minutes or hours, but our falsity would have been the same. It was my fault. I dangled the first thread that we would weave together into a web, as Sir Walter Scott might call it. We mingled and met, like any friendly party-goer in the nightcap of an evening, but even amid the tinkling of glass against Formica, voice against voice, smile against eyes wide-shut to the society of our back-porch barbecue, we were spinning our lies, and I knew it. I knew and he knew, yet we persisted, and through the web of our converse I could see only one truth: blankness at the bottom of myself and of that fellow and of others. A blankness to revolt against or to succumb.

That was the real question that neither of us voiced, though we might dare to feel it, touch it, never lingering long. Back up in the air like the arabesques of friendly spiders, spinning our polite conversation. This person was doing that, that person going there, but still on the back of my tongue was a ____ at the bottom that no words can describe, like the acrid aftertaste of an emptied drink, which just made me want another to wash the taste away. Fat Tire, anyone? Whiskey sour? Yes and yes. Anything. Except, no PBR, please.

Back into the Cave

That persisting blankness was the same that Robert Frost found in the winter nights of his inconsolate hours:

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it–it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less–
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars–on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places. (3)

Yes, sometimes I scare myself with my own desert places. I remember reading this poem first during one of my young, rather bleak winters. It was after the holiday season and after my early-January birthday when the world seemed to slow down to a frigid stop. Maybe it was out of egoism that I perceive that time of year thus; nevertheless, in the wake of the full holiday season was an empty _____. A blank that cannot be filled with any word — much like what I identified in myself and the fellow at the barbecue.

During these blank days, time seemed to have no consequence. This was a worse mis-perception, perhaps, than its opposite, for time had not stopped. That _____ gave the illusion of cessation with the later realization of consequences, of continuance. O, those childish hours I wasted! Like a sailor in the doldrums, I began to believe that there would never again be motion. No wind, no waves, nothing to express.

On that afternoon on my porch, which I spent with D.H. Lawrence and my thoughts, I knew that time left empty was the not the darkest truth, however. As in Plato’s cave analogy, I, having been seared by the light of knowledge and experience, could not go back into the dark without fully remembering what I had seen and done. Those memories made the _____, the re-entering into darkness, seem a farcical purgatory. I knew there was more beyond the cave that I would one day see and experience again, and I was waiting for it, but I did not understand what I knew and could not forget. Would the world outside my cave never be fully knowable or at least more understandable?

Unlike Plato’s cave-dweller plunged back into the abyss, I felt that I had to stay in the dark against the wall because I did not know what to do with the brightness that I had known. I kept making my shapes against the shadowy wall, waiting for the time I would again pursue knowledge and supposed understanding.

There I was on my front porch, in the ripe summertime sun, in both the knowing and the unknown, considering these things and wondering where next. Where next? Until I knew, I had no plans other than to sit, to think, to consider…

Si le viol, le poison, le poignard, l’incendie,
N’ont pas encor brodé de leurs plaisants dessins
Le canevas banal de nos piteux destins,
C’est que notre âme, hélas! n’est pas assez hardie. (4)

C’est que notre âme, hélas! n’est pas assez hardie: It is that our soul, alas! is not brave enough.

Works Cited

(1) Smith, Rodney. RodneySmith.com/Portfolio.
(2) Lawrence, D.H. The Rainbow. New York: Modern Lib., 2002. (233-34).
(3) Frost, Robert. “Desert Places.”
(4) Baudelaire, Charles. Fleurs du Mal. “Au Lecteur.” 1957.

Pedestrians cross 34th St. right outside my apartment building door. Photo by me.

It is a frantic city that is never calm. The street corner where I lived, seven storeys above ground, had an average pedestrian count of 10,000 to 11,000 pedestrians per hour, according to President of the 34th St. Partnership Daniel Biederman.

I took this photo one ungodly early morning before leaving the apartment to start my day. Of course, New York was still wide awake.

Add the noise of that traffic to the screech and moan of stopping and starting buses, the emphatic and accented street vendors, the talkative horns of taxicabs, the steady metallic hum of construction, etc., and you have an equation that sounds like peace’s antithesis.

Not only did the city sound her fiercest during the daytime hours, but all night long she played her nocturnal cacophony that never quite became a lullaby when my head rested on the pillow next to my apartment window, which did its level best to shut out some of the city sounds.

Below these streets that never slumber, the subway was no exception. Everyone was just as loud, just as hurried, just as disconnected. Never look anyone in the eye whom you do not wish to engage in some way. No one expected it, and it was rude to do so.

I learned this fact a few years ago while on a school trip to New York City. I noticed that people were disturbed when I noticed them, especially this one lady who raged at me in the subway car when I moved my purse away from her as we held on to the pole that kept us steady while the train sped and slowed in the underground shafts. Yet, even while she ranted in her thick alto, saying, “I am an honest woman! I ain’t gonna steal y’pocketbook. I’mma  good citizen,” her fury only caused enough discomfiture to warrant vague glances from the fellow passengers. I, however, felt quite uncomfortable and hurried away from her the moment the doors opened to the blessed Times Square platform, lesson learned.

Despite this social disconnection and incessant noise–present no matter where you stand in Manhattan–the subway is different from the city streets. These shafts vein below the life above with a heavier, pulsing air. Unlike the upper air where thousands live and work, stay and go, everyone in these underground tunnels is passing, never staying long—save an occasional attendant in the ticket booth or a musician, bravely playing his songs to everyone and no one.

As I waited for the L bound for Brooklyn one evening, I was painfully aware of these differences. Breathing the thick underground heat, I stood on the subway platform with so many strangers–our only similarity being that we were all waiting to be somewhere else. As we waited, a grizzled fellow in a dirty white t-shirt and ripped jeans played his old, scratched guitar between the railway gaps on the platform where we all stood.

As we stood there, the melody of the beat-up troubadour’s familiar song seemed to descend on us, covering the platform with a film of familiarity.

Tom, get your plane right on time.
I know your part’ll go fine.

I liked the song, so I sang along under my breath.

The only living boy in New York.

As I quietly sang along to Simon & Garfunkel’s tune, I looked up to notice the man next to me, singing in the same hushed tone.

Then we did what we would not have ordinarily done: our looks met. His eyes were light and questioning, but I knew the answer to his silent query and sang a little louder, amused at the dart of surprise in his look. Then, in an instant, or maybe it was minutes, his stolid features moved and rippled like liquid into curves and lines that transformed his physiognomy into a limpid smile that washed over my features until I was smiling back.

I get the news I need on the weather report.
I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.

Then, a fellow to my left abandoned his unsteady detachment to join us with a robust although gravelly tenor.

Hey! I got nothin’ to do today but smile.

This man’s companions joined in his intoxicated warble. As our song spread across the platform, I heard little voices and medium voices, tall voices and short voices, joining together until we all seemed like one—a unit of travelers, marching to the same beat, our souls sharing an easy camaraderie.

This was a New York sound I did like. No, I adored it.

I still do not like all the noise of the City, but out of the noise, I found a strain of sound that I wish I could have bottled and kept it safe in my memory. It would be a shame to forget.

And like Hart Crane, I too “remember much forgetfulness.”

Photo by Dominick Chapman

I do not know how long we were singing together, these strangers, these friends and I; however, for a time in the suffocating heat of the evening underground, we were all New Yorkers with the same song on our lips—that is, until the L blared forth with roaring timpani to end our chorus, renting that veneer of togetherness.

And we went back to being strangers as we entered the open doors of the stopped L train and took our seats or stood at the poles—of course, no one looking the other in the eye.

Bryan College senior Ashley Felker reads in the Shakespeare Garden at the Bryan College Library. Photo by Allison McLean.

by Allison McLean

“If you have a garden and a library, you have all you need,” a quote by Cicero reads on the plasma screen at the entrance of the Bryan College Library (Dayton, Tenn.). This library happens to have both.

All dressed up in balloons and “READ” posters, the Bryan College Library celebrates National Library Week with events and decorations meant to highlight the same importance that Cicero asserted.

In honor of National Library Week, the library staff held events such as a week-long “People Book” series, nightly dramatic readings of pieces of literature such as Mark Twain’s “The Diaries of Adam and Eve” and library-related trivia contests.

Balloons in the Bryan College Library for National Library Week. Photo by Allison McLean.

National Library Week is “an annual celebration” of the vital role that libraries play in the United States. It was begun in 1958 by the American Library Association (ALA) to raise public awareness of the services and significance of libraries across the nation.

“Libraries  are an important part of a democracy because it’s important for democracies to have an informed citizen, and library’s are a source of free information,” said the Bryan College Library Director Gary Fitsimmons.

Fitsimmons added, “They’ve been called the poor man’s university.”

Periodicals in the Bryan College Library. Photo by Allison McLean.

From academic libraries to public, they not only allow patrons to check out books but also provide services—such as free internet, classes, tutoring services, community meeting centers and many other

According to Audrey Pack Memorial Library Director Aliceann McCabe, libraries’ primary role is to be a free source of both general and specialized information for the public.

Rhea County citizen John Dotson said that the library has helped him find employment. He recently lost his job after losing both his legs in a work-related accident, and the free services of the library have aided him in his search for a new job.

Libraries provide vital services to the community, and the ALA partnering with many libraries across the nation hope that celebratory events for National Library Week will showcase their vital offerings to society.

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One of the events that the Bryan College Library held in honor of National Library Week was their People Books daily event. ‘People Books’ is a program to help students get to know the faculty and staff at Bryan College by asking the People Book authors about the titles that the authors created, which feature something significant about themselves. This video features People Book author Jody Cheon in her People Book ‘Daughter of a Traveling Yo-yo Man.’

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Other libraries in Rhea County, Tenn., where Bryan College is located did not as active a part in National Libary Week. Listen to find out why:

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Relevant Links:

American Library Association: National Library Week

Bryan College Library

Like the dramatic and desperate humanity of film noir.

Like the virile immediacy of a typewriter.

Like the warmth and style of a felt cloche.

After all, would Technicolor have evoked the same feelings of alienation, disillusionment, and quiet despair that characterize the classics of film noir?

Yes, I understand that it would seem ironic, if not contradictory, that I am writing about typewriters and other archaic, sundry items on a blog. If  you thought that, I have to admit that you are right–right on the surface of a deeper issue.

In my admiration for old-fashioned things, I do not scorn the development of society. To do so would be a vacuous and harmful sentimentality. What I admire about the archaic is the virtue of their existence.

And by virtue, I mean the solid characteristics that help direct the world to Truth. For instance, the use of a well–as opposed to a water faucet–teaches the consumer of water the value of moderation, as opposed to excess. Think about it: you might not use so much water while doing dishes if you had to haul the water in your kitchen yourself.

What could possibly be virtuous about a typewriter or a cloche, for goodness’ sake? Well, these two carry their own unique lessons wrapped in their aesthetically pleasing packages.

When I use a typewriter, I find myself becoming more careful about what I write and what I think, for the words exist with each stroke of my sometimes too hasty fingers–as opposed to the word processor, whose words can be deleted forever faster than you can type them. This care of thought that comes when I use my typewriter translates to my work on other, more efficient tools, and this care is, of course, still developing.

As for my lovely gray and black cloche, well, it is simply practical on cold or rainy days. I do not consider our society’s disregard for headgear “progress,” by any means. In fact, such a hat helps remind me that social standards are not always the best or most beautiful standards–a lesson I would like to believe that I already know and do not need the reminder, but obviously do.

However, despite my mad rush through an age of racing technological progression, I try not to forget the virtuous in the rush to be more efficient and up-to-date. Efficiency is not the mother of all progress: well thought and well wrought work are essential ingredients to success.

So, when friends warn me of the inefficiency of my typewriter or when they wonder why I walk twenty minutes when I could just drive, I have to smile and somehow try to explain that I do these things because I seek to understand the virtue that those things imbue.

So, I will walk, I will type, I will go on the path of best perceived resistance, as far as my fallen humanity can tell. That, dear friends, is virtuous.