Travelogue 1012 – October 30 

Dunes

I’ve stumbled upon my one degree of separation! The authentic quest for a true American is for his or her closest brushes with fame. We Americans love the famous, and we envy them. Granted, we envy fame in a lazy way, happy to let the famous do all the work. But we have a God-given right to the chance encounter or connection that might shed some reflected light upon us. We acknowledge that fame is a burden best borne by the famous, but, by God, the famous are duty-bound to share their glory. And at last, I’ve found my one degree!

The new movie adaptation of “Dune” has brought Frank Herbert back into the spotlight. The book is now acknowledged as one of the, perhaps THE classic science fiction novel. When I read it, I was a teenager. The book had yet to find its place in the canon. Only a few of the sequels had been published, as I recall. Hollywood hadn’t discovered it yet. It had its impact on me. The character Atreides and the ambience of the spice planet were printed indelibly in my imagination.

I’ve been tempted to pick the novel up again. Curious about Herbert again, I did some reading and discovered that he had paid a visit to Florence, Oregon when he was working as a journalist in Seattle. Florence is a town on the Pacific coast, and it boasts a gorgeous stretch of beach, notable for its huge sand dunes. In Herbert’s day, the sand of the dunes was threatening to engulf the town, and engineers were looking for a solution. Herbert was fascinated by this stand-off between man and nature. Man won that particular battle, and the beach is paying the price. But Herbert had an idea while he was visiting Florence. Imagine a desert planet, he thought.

My claim to fame is the overlap in our destinies, Herbert’s and mine. It seems that only forty years after Herbert had walked that glorious beach, I was destined to walk its length myself. I was inspired by no brilliant thoughts while I was there, but that wasn’t my job, was it? I was placed there simply to step unconsciously in the sandy footprints of literary celebrity. It was a simple task, and I performed it well. It was my mother who did the lion’s share of the work, settling on Florence to be her home during her final years. All I had to do was to visit my mother.

The seaside in Florence is a powerful place. I’m not surprised that Herbert was inspired. The ocean rolls in with majesty and thunder. The rocks that rebuff the waves are magnificent. And the dunes that suggested a desert planet are still high and wild. It’s a moving scene, and I was fortunate to have been able to see it in several seasons. It’s a remarkable location, with or without celebrity. But now it bears the touch of Hollywood, and it boasts a glow of immortality.

Travelogue 1011 – October 28 

Lucky Even So

 

During our autumn break, we flew south to Rome, finally using the vouchers from a set of cancelled airline tickets originally bought for the 2020 Bath Half Marathon. That race was to have taken place in March of 2020. It shouldn’t sound like that was so long ago. It feels like a decade ago.

The spirit of COVID still forces itself on those who are audacious enough to fly. We had two flights to make on Monday, and we made neither. The first flight required us to leave home at five in the morning, so we had little humour for the first entanglement. The airline clerk checking us in told us flatly that she was rebooking us for a later flight, then dispassionately explained that we had no “Passenger Locator” form on file for the end destination. I thought I had done my homework, checking airline and government websites, and yet somehow it had escaped us that this form was required for arrival in Rome. The staff person’s complacency informed us that, though we were insipidly foolish, we were not the first. She smugly refused any questions and sent us to the airline service office, where I sat for quite a while fuming and filling out a lengthy online form on my mobile. Thanks to this laughable form, I have collected one more black mark on my record as a father, falling very far short as a model of grace under pressure.

Even flying several hours later, we had some time to kill in Paris. We were determined to have an espresso in Montmartre. That should have required only a train ride from Charles De Gaulle to the Gare du Nord. It’s an expensive ride, and I hesitated before the ticket machine when I saw the total price for four. I steeled my resolve, I made the purchase, and, in the next minute, a new announcement came braying across the vast hall. Our train would no longer depart from Terminal 2. I saw heads swivel around me, as dozens of others processed the distorted French as best they could. Then commenced the dash. We made our way up a level and to the shuttle connecting terminals. The train would depart from Terminal Three. We pushed our way through the growing crowd to enter the next shuttle.

I had done my research. I had identified our destination if we wanted the best coffee in Montmartre. It was a tony café below the basilique du Sacré-Cœur, where tables were set up in an enclosure in the narrow little lane leading up to the basilica, where the church’s gardens overgrew the wrought-iron fence beside the road, where the people were far more relaxed than we were after our stressful trip to their door. The servers looked at us with some alarm. And they told us the coffee machine wasn’t working.

We never did get our espresso in Paris. Nor did we find the lovely croissants we imagined in anticipation of the trip. But we did stand for the first time as a family at the top of that magical stairway, looking out over the City of Lights. And we felt pretty lucky.

Travelogue 1010 – October 25
Quickly Turning to the Tudors Again

 

In my final thought in the previous blog, I was reminded of the concluding chapters of Hilary Mantel’s latest book. In the end – spoiler alert – the protagonist dies. Anyone with the barest knowledge of Tudor-era history knows it’s coming, and indeed that knowledge fuels the momentum of the work. Mantel surely writes with the reader’s anticipation well in mind, tapping it as a source of suspense. The political tides turn finally, and turn shockingly, on Cromwell, and we follow him into imprisonment. He is to be executed. Mantel has her opportunity to indulge the writer’s perennial wish to follow the mind into oblivion. She does just that, narrating to the point at which – quite literally in Mantel’s account, – consciousness flickers like a light going out.

Mantel’s books do haunt one. They are beautifully written, and they assert a Cromwellian voice so durable it is hard to shake. I’ve analysed that voice at unforgivable length in earlier blogs, but I have to add just a few more words. Who could blame either author or reader for wanting, after thousands of pages with Cromwell, to see the story to its gruesome denouement? But it should be obvious, at the minimum, that the rounding off requires a change in tone. To say more, it’s a strain on the method. The book’s narrative voice has been an uneasy compromise between observations made inside-the-head and outside, a kind of hovering above the crown that has sounded like documentation, or, more exactly, the rehearsal of a document: perhaps Cromwell dictating by rote a journal of his extraordinary life as counsellor to the king. Suddenly, with imprisonment, the options for a locus for this voice narrow radically. There is no one to report, no one to report to, and no reason to report. There is only a solitary man with no opportunity to speak. We have entered a living soul’s black hole; data does not escape his isolation. What is the privilege of our viewpoint? When he enters through the doorway of death and the voice still carries on, like the twitching of a limb, the question is pressed even further. Where does this voice reside?

Mantel is a masterful writer, and the book works. We want it to, and it does. Ultimately, that’s what counts, and I don’t mean to diminish the achievement. I broach the question of voice just as an interesting problem raised by choices forced on the artist and her readers by their own cathartic need.

I believe Henry VIII himself still haunts us. He’s in my thoughts again because I picked up a book about Tudor times in Utrecht. The book is a biography about the young Earl of Surrey, Henry’s final victim before himself passing away in 1547. Surrey was a prodigy, a free spirit and a writer who inspired generations of writers. The book is about Surrey, but it’s this capricious figure of Henry VIII that catches our eye, like a glint of light in a mirror behind him.

I find myself wondering about this man. It surprises me how often. He’s a riddle. How does one justify this power over life and death? How does one understand Henry’s choices? Does he have rules to guide him when he considers executing friend, wife, nobleman or courtier? I don’t mean to imply that he had no reasoning or that he was a sadist. What is perhaps most frustrating about Henry is the sense that he was a feeling and thoughtful man, motivated by strange (unfamiliar, mysterious) impulses.

As quite a number of people court today’s fascists with flushed cheek and shining eye, it seems important to question, what occurs in the soul of a man like this, who holds fragile life in his palm with such aplomb, such nonchalance?

Travelogue 1009 – October 23
Who’s Listening?

A final word about old Utrecht, before my geographic focus shifts dramatically southward. The history of the Netherlands is basically a story of water, and every location has its roots in some watery negotiation. Utrecht is no exception. While most of Holland (only two western provinces of the Netherlands) was a still a marshland, Utrecht rose from the wilderness as a northern anchor on the Rhine. The Romans under Emperor Claudius had settled on the river as their northern frontier, and the site of Utrecht became one link in that chain. The course of the Rhine has shifted since then, and Utrecht currently sits on a vestigial spur of the great river, a branch they call the ‘Crooked Rhine’. After Rome abandoned it, the place went dark for four centuries. When it reappears in the historical record, it’s as a fortress town for the Franks. Now Utrecht becomes the centre of a new kind of offensive, the one on hearts and minds among the Frisians. St Willibrord enters as lead evangelist, and in 723 Utrecht is made the seat of one rare Dutch bishopric. That launches Utrecht’s long reign as the Netherland’s most important city. It will take the county of Holland centuries to dig itself out of the mud, and Amsterdam to rise to prominence on the back of its commerce. Even then, Utrecht is not eclipsed. It remains important enough to play a role in the establishment of the republic, and to become the site for the republic’s biggest university, founded during the Dutch Golden Age.

This is the town I overlook as I climb the glass mountain of the event centre, a town that has been a vital religious, political and intellectual hub for the country for centuries. It makes sense that I would come here - from the bigger city of Rotterdam – to feel some intellectual connection to the wider world.

English author Max Porter has written a poetic little book about the last days of the painter Francis Bacon. He was invited to the Utrecht literary festival, and he was interviewed in one of the highest little alcoves in that alpine glass monument. He was warm and thoughtful and witty. The event was thoroughly enjoyable.

The book is something both more and less than the author event, as well it should be. The book is about many things, as well it should be. For me, it poses an age-old question, a question particularly poignant to writers: who is listening to our final thoughts? The true writer wants every thought and experience to be recorded, is haunted by those that escape. He or she is most keenly tormented by the final thoughts, perhaps the greatest, that go unrecorded. Porter imagines, probably justly, that most final sensations are trivial and thoughts gibberish. But the question outweighs our conjectures. The exercise only draws attention to the emptiness at the centre of it.

Travelogue 1008 – October 16
But There Was More

During the Utrecht literary festival, I attended two live author presentations, and I watched the videos of two other author events that were online. Each was framed as a discussion between a local writer and the visiting author. That structure worked well. It was more natural and allowed the author to be challenged. But I could have wished for more talk about books.

Authors feel like they have something to say. That is why they write, of course. The two authors hosted live in Utrecht had a lot to say. They were eloquent and what they said was truly moving. Relatively little was said about the writing process. There was much more to be said about philosophy, grief, shame and politics. I was inspired and exhausted by the time I left. In neither case did I have the energy to stay for the book signing.

I’m hardly a writer, I thought as I rode home on the train. I would never have the stamina for an event like that. Even in casual conversation, I don’t know what to say about my writing. I figure I’ve said everything “on paper”. I went to great trouble to phrase it the way I wanted. Why then dive in impromptu? These authors did not have my reservations. They were even more compelling live than on the page. They were unfailingly articulate, humble, gracious and correct.

I was inspired by them, proud of them, and then embarrassed for them, as well. It seemed a lot to ask of authors, this display of courage and virtue. Fortunately, each of them had a wealth of ideas, fully formed and correct ideas that motivated their writing and overflowed the banks of any one of their works. Their literary projects were a means to speak about those bigger things.

The audience hung off their every word. The hall took on a church-like atmosphere. The topics became esoteric, and these men’s stories became like the lives of saints. The topics became like theology.

I’m allergic to theology. Theology has a didactic purpose, just as preaching does. Theology was invented for debate, preaching for conversion and enforcement of conformity. These aren’t evils in themselves, but devices to make one wary. When it comes to church, I prefer mute ritual and the shadow talk of stories.

Sadly, I’ve seen the impact of this virtue-mining on authors who are less gifted orators. They become so circumspect and cautious as to drain the interview of life. Interviewers prospect for philosophy and politics, and authors retreat behind carefully worded deflections.

Travelogue 1007 – October 15
He Wrote About His Childhood

I had a birthday a few weeks ago. It was a big one, and so I needed to dream up a suitably big way to celebrate it. After you’ve seen enough birthdays, though, you run out of big ideas. What I really wanted to do was get out of town. It had been too long.

Usually, I go out of town when I have some activity to motivate me. In previous years, I had organized fun trips around road races. For a previous ‘big’ birthday, I ran a full marathon in Rome. A few years of COVID cancellations have soured me on the road race strategy, and, along the way, have left me in regrettable condition.

No, this year, athletics weren’t going to cut it. Given that the body wasn’t ready, it would have to be a celebration of the mind. I wanted a literary angle. The town of Utrecht came to the rescue. Thanks to a fortuitously timed literary festival, I got to travel to Utrecht and listen to a few authors speak about their work.

It’s fun to observe how places evolve in our lives, in our perception and our experience. Utrecht during my first years in the Netherlands was an enchanting town, built round a famous cathedral and along the winding river beneath it, lined with cosy pubs. Once the honeymoon was over, Utrecht became an ugly train station in the middle of the country, perpetually under construction. For a moment, it became a bookstore hidden on a busy lane by the river, full of riches. Rotterdam is not a literary city, and book shopping had become stale.

The train station is finished now. It’s no prettier on the inside, but much more so on the outside. What an impact on the visitor when he can simply exit the train station and emerge into a wide public plaza with fresh air and can see the town laid out before him; rather than, say, being shepherded through dusty warrens made of plasterboard for hundreds of metres, only to emerge inside a rather shabby shopping mall. The latter was the only experience I had known of arrival in Utrecht. The finished station was an epiphany.

The event centre is not far from the central station. It stands like Everest before George Mallory, a city block of high rooms and precarious stairways. We walked in, brandishing our QR codes for the vaccinated, and we found ourselves lining up with people in tuxedoes and evening gowns. This didn’t seem like our crowd. Downstairs, we discovered, was reserved for Bach. With a vague gesture toward the sky, we were directed up … and up. Stairway after stairway, rising inside the high glass walls until we overlooked the city like aviators. Near the summit, we found our small hall, exile for the literary types, come to see a French author who wrote about his childhood.

Travelogue 1006 – October 1
The Power to Surprise

It happens we have some family time before the girls’ school opens in the morning. We sit on a bench together in the playground outside, a playground that is an odd oasis of fun in a tightly packed little neighbourhood. The playground is a like a stage set among brick buildings, a platform of concrete between two lanes that veer away from the school.

I’m the family’s schedule-keeper, and I’m compulsively early. It’s not the kind of quality that wins anyone’s affection. I’m the one to wake everyone up and urge them to get ready. When we’re early, it appears as though there was more time to sleep after all. Though we’re never more than five minutes early, it translates into hours of lost sleep in the imagination.

It doesn’t help that it’s the time of year when light comes later and later in the mornings. By now, we’re waking as first light only just discolours the night sky in the east. Soon enough I will truly seem a villain, waking them when the stars are still in the sky.

It’s light by the time we arrive at the school. The day’s light is a diffuse, autumnal light, grey with clouds, a glow rather than direct warmth from the sun’s rays. We watch the other kids play, climbing, swinging, kicking a ball. Sometimes Baby Jos joins in, while Little Ren hangs back.

The two girls’ natures begin to diverge a bit, even as they grow more alike in looks. Little Ren is nearly as tall as her big sister, and even her parents mistake the two occasionally, when the girls are seen at a distance.

Ren takes this opportunity to share a few thoughts. I won’t pass them along now, as they are still so special to me. I’ll say simply that she’d taken it into her head to tell me what her two superpowers were. She did so in a distracted way, as she often does, speaking as she watches all the action in the playground. Her remarks were so creative, I just laughed in surprised.

That’s the “superpower” of art, and of wisdom, to surprise and delight. Little Ren has that. Baby Jos is more forthcoming, but she’s like her papa, in that her thoughts are well-ordered. She can be brilliant, but her thoughts follow upon one another in plain sight. Ren prefers to avoid conversation, but then she’ll blurt out the most stunning things. Immediately, a children’s story blossomed in my mind, based on Ren’s utterances. I hope to have Menna illustrate it soon!