Where I've Been!

I’ve been twice to Canada and once to New York over the past several weeks. I don’t travel well these days, though certainly each voyage out was a satisfying one, even as the voyage in was a welcome relief.

I don’t travel out very well these days. Thoreau said, “Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes,—with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.” When I travel out these days, it is rarely my own streams and oceans which I explore, and I certainly eat too many preserved meats. And alas, I am a vegetarian, and eat nothing which could look back on me—except an occasional ripe potato. As for new channels of thought—often it is all I can do to maintain my equilibrium and sense of direction! But there were these joyous occasions in which I desired to participate—my mother’s eightieth birthday, a dissertation defense, and a wedding. Each in its own way was very satisfying, and I have left a great many cans of preserved meat in my paths, and gained, if not a few pounds, certainly some weight. But alas, there was not much time for new channels of thought.

One day in New York we traveled to Jones Beach. I have, in my former youth (to be contrasted with my present youth) spent many hours tanning the white skin and watching the bodies at Jones Beach. My first serious sexual experience took place there. Some of my voyagings out occurred there on the beach in the heat of the summer’s sun and in the heat of my dreams and passions. I think I have set up my metaphorical tents on many of the numbered beaches of this incredible natural resource, and dug not a few wells in the process.

Often I drove to the beach, and this time was no different. There were a number of years when I lived in New York City when I publicly transported myself—or rather, was publicly transported—to Jones’ Beach by subway, Long Island Railroad and bus, but usually I drove in an automobile. This time was no different. I drove along Northern State Parkway towards the Meadowbrook which would take me to the toll booths and the Beaches. Today, it cost eight dollars to cross the bar, but I think I paid as little as fifty cents in my former youth.

And as I drove along the parkway, and as I rounded the curve just past Shelter Rock Road, in my body I suddenly returned to my former youth, and I felt in my body all of what what I came to associate with the expectation and excitement and angst I experienced in my whole life back then as I then had driven to Jones Beach. I was transported back in that place on the Northern State Parkway, no less than was Proust by his madeleines transported, to a former time, a former consciousness, a former youth. And it all started in the experience of my body!! The event was visceral, and my body’s sensations took me ito my memories and back to my former youth. The instant I turned the curve, I felt as I did then—I experienced my memories first in my body and not in my mind—it was the latter which had to understand the body feeling.

I don’t think this is new news—not even original news. Antonio Damasio (Descartes’ Error) has written eloquently of the relationship between the physical and the mental, and I have drawn on his work extensively in my own (I’m Only Bleeding) to explore the world of the schools, and the violence we inflict on children in our construction of an education which ignores the relationship between the intellectual and the physical, spirit and body, and between thought and activity. But it is interesting to appreciate that each of my places have not only names but events, and that in those events I discover my feelings. I discover in my body my thinking and feeling Self. Damasio:

“From my perspective, it is just that soul and spirit, with all their dignity and human scale, are now complex and unique states of an organism. Perhaps the most indispensable thing we can do as human beings, every day of our lives, is to remind ourselves and others of our complexity, fragility, finiteness, and uniqueness. And this is of course the difficult job, is it not: to move the spirit from its nowhere pedestal to a somewhere place, while preserving its dignity and important; to recognize its humble origin and vulnerability, yet still call upon its guidance.”

That’s where I’ve been. To the beach. In my present youth into my former youth.