When Now Unstiches Then

Two weeks ago I decided I was going to become an essayist. Why? Because I started reading The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald. To be perfectly honest, this novel (or series of 10 essays) are rather confusing, initially, I found them meaningless, and overall a difficult and uninspiring read. And then I took a second look. Within the pages of an unsettled and shifting conscious I found the remnants and threads of a truly beautiful experience. But perhaps just as important I found myself in the words and mind of a human being I didn't know. Someone who expressed the reason I write.

“But the fact is that writing is the only way in which I am able to cope with the memories which overwhelm me so frequently and so unexpectedly. If they remained locked away, they would become heavier and heavier as time went on, so that in the end I would succumb under their mounting weight. Memories lie slumbering within us for months and years, quietly proliferating, until they are woken by some trifle and in some strange way blind us to life. How often this has caused me to feel that my memories, and the labours expended in writing them down are all part of the same humiliating and, at bottom, contemptible business! And yet, what would we be without memories? We would not be capable of ordering even the simplest thoughts, the most sensitive heart would lose the ability to show affection, our existence would be a mere never-ending chain of meaningless moments, and there would not be the faintest trace of a past.” 

-W.G. Sebald

Later I began to read some essays from On the Shoreline of Knowledge by Chris Arthur. Once again I found a confusing, seemingly meaningless representation of the wanderings of a human mind. But then I was instructed to find a poem in the words. Kind of weird, but this is what I found.

When Now Unstiches Then and is in Turn Undone

When Now un-stitches Then,
This harpoon from the past-
Sharp, pointed, barbed-
Carries with it a reminder that everything we do
Is transient, mutable; that memory's sarcophagi
Are buried in the sands of change;
That the moments which we colonize now,
Our perceptions, our fragile present,
Are already marked with obliteration.

[But,] I know- with a certainty
That outweighs the most cherished particularities of memory-
That I should welcome anything that helps
Attune the ear to time's complex harmonies.
Google may have made once stable images
Come crashing down,
But in the sound of their falling, I can hear
More acutely than in any monotone of static preservation
The Elusive voices of the moments we inhabit.

And that's what it's all about. I've often sat down an wondered where I would find my own meaningful existence. Perhaps in leaving behind a legacy, but would anyone read it. Besides what are words if not read, or understood. Words for the sake of words like Art for the sake of art? No one liked that movement anyway. Okay, it's a gross generalization but what are ink stains and pen scratches when the mocking corrosion of time will all too soon wipe it away? Perhaps this is nothing but the existential crisis of a writer. You see in less than two weeks I'm headed to England, Scotland, and Wales to backpack 200 miles across the countryside.  I'm traveling across an ocean to feel the presence of past lives and the hear past voices. But after the cathedrals crumble, the gardens hedge and hide their secrets and thoughts, and the shores erode their pathways will the word endure. Will a garden and misty morning inspire the words of William Wordsworth when all is gone:

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.	5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Or will that too fade?

So back to the original question: Why become an essayist when continually faced with such a crisis? Because where Wordsworth is the truth so also are the words of Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson saying, 

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

So when I also, like John Keats, have "fears that I may cease to be, before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain," I simply remember that this is my meaningful existence. To write down the story that I have to share, regardless of who opens its pages. And "through living roots [that] awaken in my head, [though] I've no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb, the squat pen rests. I'll dig with it." -Seamus Heaney

The other day as I was walking, surrounded by busy students, I myself found a rushing figure in my own person. I was heading to work. And then it stopped. Or began. A gust of wind, before pleasant, had swept away dozens of loose leaf papers from the hands of a stunned young woman. Before the blinking moment, they were slipping across the concrete like lifeless butterflies caught on a harsh breeze. A moment passed and suddenly twenty bodies, before moving in a chaotic, self-absorbed direction, all turned to chase the sheets that held meaningless words. Yet, somehow precious. I myself began to chase down papers succeeding in trapping only two sheets. But, somehow on her face, I saw the meaning of meaningless words. Somehow in our task, I had found my answer. Though now unstitches then and is in turn undone, perhaps I can somehow make something out of nothing . . . something worth chasing after.

-Natalie Cherie