A NEW PERSPECTIVE

Very often, I find myself thinking about the fact that everything we think and see and do depends on how we look at things, and how we look at things grows out of ideas we've absorbed from our culture, our temperament, how we were raised and what our experience has been. We use those things to determine truth, which is filtered and measured against all that we already are. This is why two people can look at the same thing and come to opposite conclusions about it. In a sense, we are only our opinions. None of us has access to Truth with a capital T.

     One more time, I wonder how any of us understand each other and why we don't get into more trouble because of misunderstanding. Well, we do get into a fair amount of it. There are many religions in the world with their individual perspectives and we all know the devastation the clash of these perspectives, these opinions produce. People find a perspective, often a received perspective, and cling to it because it's so much easier than having to figure out the world on your own. People need to be sure they have the right perspective and will sometimes go to any length to defend it and make other people believe it.

     There is often a clash of perspective between two people. Most of us don't like to be challenged - we get defensive or dig ourselves in even more. Sometimes, there simply is no way across the gulf of clashing opinions. But usually, unless we're rigidly stuck in our egos, we can talk through our differences and reach some kind of understanding.

     But even though the fact that we make our own truths leads to many of the world's most intractable problems, it also means that we can arrive at new truths. We can look at things from a new perspective. We can learn. We can change our minds. For years, the fight for civil rights, womens rights and gay rights existed on the edges of our culture. But little by little, those movements grew until a majority of people found a new perspective. They changed their minds. 

     It seems ridiculous to point out that we can change our minds, that we can grow. But in the most profound sense, it's our glory. It's what enables us to transcend our fears and doubts. It's what enables us to expand our consciousness.     

     

INTENSITY

I will say nothing against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again, forever -- Goethe

     When I first read this, I was floored. Goethe was one of a handful of exceptional men in his time, amazingly productive, full of accomplishment. Not only a great writer, he did pioneering work in color theory and anatomy, designed gardens, ran a theatre and served as a councilor to the head of a German court. He traveled, wrote 10,000 letters and had a calendar that was always full.  
     He was restless, possibly driven and I wonder if that's how he dealt with the dissatisfaction he must have felt at bottom. I see him whirling through his days, busy, curious about the world around him, social, but when he is alone depression - anxiety - emptiness - move out of the background he can mask through his busy days, and come to the fore, as if they are the default in his consciousness. I wonder if he would have traded his accomplishments for a life of well-being. I think not. He was part of a Romantic generation that saw poetry in suffering and he might have sensed how much his angst and restlessness led him to make his world as big as possible.
     It's the push and pull between a life of inner peace and a life of public accomplishments. It's our idea of the tormented artist who suffers for his art, or our suspicion that creativity needs the irritating grain of sand in order to make pearls. It's hard to picture a peaceful person doing much more than contemplating whatever has caught her eye.  
     I suppose I, too, am Romantic with a capital R. I value my restless mind, my curiosity. They keep me from getting bored. Passion and obsession get me going, make all the lights brighter so I can see more intensely. Words, images often come in a barrage and I feel that I'm on a taut string, vibrating with ideas. It's not peaceful but it's often productive. The question is, is it worth it?
     I've spent a long time cultivating inner peace and yet there is a part of me that hates that phrase. Not only because it's become a main stream cliche but also because a part of me can't imagine anything duller. I know a spiritual person would tell me how I'm misunderstanding. In fact, I can tell myself: inner equilibrium in no way has to block intensity and creativity. It can do the opposite - unblock all the feelings buried inside. But I want the Sturm und Drang, the thunder and lightening, the yearning for something I can't even see much less have. Intensity, intensity, as long as I'm alive.

ARNOLD BERNSTEIN

I love vintage steamship paper items from the 1920s and 30s - brochures and booklets, deck plans, passenger lists, menus, luggage labels and tags. They often have wonderful graphics, deco ship images a la Cassandre, the great French graphic artist, with strong clean lines, blocks of color, everything crisp and clean. I can't say why I'm so drawn to these particular pieces of paper; it's one of those mysteries of aesthetics, why we respond to one thing and not another, but there are times I think the "hit" I get from them, the aesthetic pleasure, is as sharp and deep as that from a great painting. 

     A couple of years ago I came across a brochure with a typed letter from the Arnold Bernstein Shipping Company whose ships sailed between Europe and the United States. The company's headquarters were in Berlin and the letter is dated 1934. I looked at the date and I looked at the name and knew instantly what probably had happened to a man named Bernstein in that time and place. I shivered as I put them carefully away and, from time to time, when I'm looking for something else, I come across them and stop for a long silent moment before I rush on to something else.

     Then, last weekend, as I was going through a stack of vintage luggage labels at a paper show, I came across a little trove of Arnold Bernstein Shipping Company ephemera - six different luggage labels and tags. There's a big one that could be marked "Wanted" or "Not Wanted" to identify which bags were to go to the passengers' stateroom and which to be held in the hold for the duration of the voyage. There is one for Plymouth and another for Antwerp, tagging which bags were to go ashore at which port. Two more are for a sailing from New York to Le Havre and New York to Plymouth. Amazingly, they're all unused and in very good condition.

     This morning, as I was putting them away with the letter and brochure, the papers in my hand were suddenly sacred relics, ritual objects that led me through the abstractions of history and into the real life at its heart. I saw Arnold Bernstein, the man. He was obviously prosperous and I imagined him in one of those huge Berlin apartments I've seen in the movies, with polished wood floors and beautiful carpets, paintings in gold frames on the wall, heavy drapes and dark wood furniture, fine china and silverware - all of it the essence of gemultlichkeit, welcoming, warm, inviting. He's at the dinner table raising a glass of red wine, surrounded by family and friends. It's an ordinary scene, almost trite, and that's the point. There's no hint at all of what is soon to come.

     I felt Arnold coming back to life, and he was suddenly very close, this man I knew almost nothing about. I wasn't thinking about his probable end. The man I wanted to touch was active, productive, deeply enmeshed in a thriving world. I found myself wishing, really wishing that he could know I was thinking about him. I want him to know that something of him survives, that across the years and distance, I have found this record of his existence: I have found him. I feel his heart beating, as if I'd placed my hand on his chest. It's not too much to say I feel love. 

     After I put my Arnold Bernstein archive away, I sat for a while thinking about our human capacity for empathy, this ability we have to feel another person's humanity across time and space, even without knowing them. In fact, it's one of our greatest gifts, that as sealed off as we usually are in our private egos and consciousness, from time to time, we crack open and a deep reservoir of feeling flows out of us, connects us with another, and loops back to enrich and expand us.  If I want more of that enrichment and expansion, I can remind myself to reach out to the many people that cross my path every day, to be kind, generous and tolerant, to see fully the person standing in front of me. But, sometimes, I don't have to remind myself. A deep empathetic connection arises spontaneously and carries me out of myself and into the world. Those are the golden moments for me, when all the barriers to another are gone and all I feel is love.

      

    

INTERPRETATION

The other day I made a plan with a friend to go to a movie. I can't remember exactly what we said, but he went to the theatre and I went to his place. There he is standing in front of the theater, eventually fuming and finally going in. Here I am, instantly understanding the miscommunication, leaping in my car and of course too late for the beginning of the show. I went inside anyway and afterwards we met up in the lobby. 
     This kind of misunderstanding has happened more than once. It isn't due to not hearing right; it's because two people, hearing the same thing, can have two different interpretations of what was actually said. Sometimes I think it's a miracle that we understand one another as well as we do.
     Here's something related: when I say "chair" I don't have to actually visualize a chair because the concept of "chair" is so embedded in my mind. If pressed, I come with the image of kitchen chair, painted white. I don't know why that's my particular archetype of "chair" but that image has put down tracks in my brain and probably will never disappear.
      When you say "chair," chances are your archetypal chair is different than mine. If pressed you may see a plush down chair, a pool chair, or one designed by Gustav Stickley. Who can why you have that connotation? But no matter what I see and you see, we both have the general concept of chair and can understand each other.
     We each have our own private interpretations, filtered through our own consciousness.  We interpret everything that comes to our senses as symbols; everything is filtered through our own consciousness. I can't touch a "word" but if I see w-o-r-d, I know what it symbolizes. The same is true of everything in our world. We understand it in accordance with our assumptions and opinions, the received knowledge of our culture, our own experience and temperament and all the resonances and connotations we've formed in the course of our lives. All of that gives a sense of internal continuity; it's everything we mean when we say "I."
    This may sound abstract but in fact it's the most stunning aspect of human consciousness.The world we receive isn't set in stone; it's what we make of it. Because it is we who invest the world with meaning we can over time change those meaning. We are free to revise opinions, gain new insight, come to a new perspective. We can change our minds.  We can imagine more than one reality, and form an opinion of our choices.  We understand the power of "should" and how it's at the heart of what we call our conscience.  We can give ourselves over to certain abstract symbols in which we invest the deepest meaning, ideas like honor and morality and sometimes we're prepared to give our lives for them. 
     This is how it is for all of us, and it's how it is for me. No matter how far down the trail of depression I go, or how much self-loathing I latch onto in any given day, I know I have the possibility of turning that reality into a completely different one. Experience has taught me if I find a way to turn my focus just the slightest bit the world will look very different, filled with new possibilities. No matter what my circumstances or how difficult the outside world is or how mired I am in all the things I'm often mired in, I can find a new perspective. Just knowing that is comforting. And even more - it's the ultimate freedom.