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Prose
This page contains a very varied group of texts to dip into and enjoy. You
can scroll down through them, or jump to the one you want by clicking the links
below:
Are There
Any Questions?
The Map Is Not The Territory
The Education of Little Tree
The Invitation
The Wise Man and
the seventeen camels
The story of the
100th Monkey
The blue tit and the milk
bottle
The Alchemist
Taming the bicycle
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Prophet
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Inaugural Speech of Nelson Mandela
The myth of the
cave
“Are there any questions?” An
offer that comes at the end of college lectures and long meetings, said when an
audience is not only overdosed with information, but when there is no time left
anyhow. At times like that you sure do have questions. Like, “Can we leave
now?” and “What the hell was this meeting for?” and “Where can I get a drink?”
The gesture is supposed to
indicate openness on the part of the speaker, I suppose, but if in fact you do
ask a question, both the speaker and the audience will give you drop-dead
looks. And some fool – some earnest idiot – always asks. And the speaker
always answers. By repeating most of what he has already said.
But if there is a little time
left and there is a little silence in response to the invitation, I usually ask
the most important question of all: “What is the Meaning of Life?”
You never know, somebody may
have the answer, and I’d really hate to miss it because I was too socially
inhibited to ask. But when I ask, it’s usually taken as a kind of absurdist
move – people laugh and nod and gather up their stuff and the meeting is
dismissed on that ridiculous note.
Once, and only once, I asked
that question and got a serious answer. One that is with me still.
First, I must tell you where
this happened, because the place has a power of its own. In Greece again.
Near the village of Gonia, on a
rocky bay of the island of Crete, sits a Greek Orthodox monastery. Alongside
it, on land donated by the monastery, is an institute dedicated to human
understanding and peace, and especially to rapprochement between Germans and
Cretans. An improbable task, given the bitter residue of wartime.
This site is important, because it
overlooks the small airstrip at Maléme where Nazi paratroopers invaded Crete and
were attacked by peasants wielding kitchen knives and hay scythes. The
retribution was terrible. The populations of whole villages were lined up and
shot for assaulting Hitler’s finest troops. High above the institute is a
cemetery with a single cross marking the mass grave of Cretan partisans. And
across the bay on yet another hill is the regimented burial ground of the Nazi
paratroopers. The memorials are so placed that all might see and never forget.
Hate was the only weapon the Cretans had at the end, and it was a weapon many
vowed never to give up. Never ever.
Against this heavy curtain of
history, in this place where the stone of hatred is hard and thick, the
existence of an institute devoted to healing the wounds of war is a fragile
paradox. How has it come to be here? The answer is a man. Alexander Papaderos.
A doctor of philosophy, teacher,
politician, resident of Athens but a son of this soil. At war’s end he came to
believe that the Germans and the Cretans had much to give one another – much to
learn from one another. That they had an example to set. For if they could
forgive each other and construct a creative relationship, then any people
could.
To make a lovely story short,
Papaderos succeeded. The institute became a reality – a conference ground on
the site of horror – and it was in fact a source of productive interaction
between the two countries. Books have been written on the dreams that were
realised by what people gave to people in this place.
By the time I came to the
institute for a summer session, Alexander Papaderos had become a living legend.
One look at him and you saw his strength and intensity – energy, physical power,
courage, intelligence, passion, and vivacity radiated from his person. And to
speak to him, to shake his hand, to be in a room with him when he spoke, was to
experience his extraordinary electric humanity. Few men live up to their
reputations when you get close. Alexander Papaderos was an exception.
At the last session on the last
morning of a two-week seminar on Greek culture, led by intellectuals and experts
in their fields who were recruited by Papaderos from across Greece, Papaderos
rose from his chair at the back of the room and walked to the front, where he
stood in the bright Greek sunlight of an open window and looked out. We
followed his gaze across the bay to the iron cross marking the German cemetery.
He turned. And made the ritual
gesture: “Are there any questions?”
Quiet quilted the room. These
two weeks had generated enough questions for a lifetime, but for now there was
only silence.
“No questions?” Papaderos swept
the room with his eyes.
So I asked.
“Dr. Papaderos, what is the
meaning of life?”
The usual laughter followed,
and people stirred to go.
Papaderos held up his hand and
stilled the room and looked at me for a long time, asking with his eyes if I was
serious and seeing from my eyes that I was.
“I will answer your question”.
Taking his wallet out of his hip
pocket, he fished into a leather billfold and brought out a very small round
mirror, about the size of a quarter.
And what he said went like this:
“When I was a small child,
during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on
the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been
wrecked in that place.
“I tried to find all the pieces
and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest
piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone I made it round. I began to
play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect
light into dark places where the sun would never shine – in deep holes and
crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most
inaccessible places I could find.
“I kept the little mirror, and
as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue
to challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was
not just a child’s game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came
to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light –
truth, understanding, knowledge – is there, and it will only shine in many dark
places if I reflect it.
“I am a fragment of a mirror
whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I
can reflect light into the dark places of this world – into the black places in
the hearts of men – and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may
see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life”.
And then he took his small
mirror and, holding it carefully, caught the bright rays of daylight streaming
through the window and reflected them onto my face and onto my hands folded on
the desk.
Much of what I experienced in
the way of information about Greek culture and history that summer is gone from
memory. But in the wallet of my mind I carry a small round mirror still.
Are there any questions?
Robert
Fulghum
Top
The Map Is Not The Territory
A Parable Retold
Once upon a time an old man sat by the side of the road, smoking his pipe, and
gazing off into the distance, contemplating. Along came a stranger who stopped
to pass the time of day, putting down his bundle and taking out a ham sandwich
and a bottle of wine. In the course of the conversation, the stranger pointed to
the village nestled in the valley below, and asked, “What are the people like in
the town down there? I’m just moving to that village, you know”.
The old man puffed a puff on his pipe, and threw the question back “What were
they like in the town where you used to live, my friend?” A cloud passed over
the stranger’s face. “Oh, they were rogues and rascals of the worst sort. Liars,
cheats, a pack of knaves they were. Never could get a kind word out of any of
them”. Smoke billowed from the old man’s pipe, as he shook his head and spoke,
“Well then, that’s what the people are like in that village down there, my son”.
The stranger heaved himself to his feet and walked sadly down the hill. The old
man leaned back against the tree for his afternoon siesta.
Later, when he woke, he saw another stranger approaching. The newcomer smiled,
and asked if he could share the shade of the stately tree. The old man shifted
over to make room for him and gratefully accepted the stranger’s offer of an
apple and some cheese. As they chatted, the stranger pointed out to the hamlet
in the valley: “What are the people like in that village?” he asked. “I’m
thinking of moving there soon”.
A twinkle, unobserved, appeared in the old man’s eye, as once again he parried
the question. “What were they like where you’ve just come from my son?” The
stranger’s face lit up. “Oh, they’re wonderful people, the salt of the earth,
not a harsh word nor a dishonest act have I heard of these many years. I only
wish I could stay, but it is time for me to move on”.
The old man hid his pleasure by lighting his pipe, as he responded, “Well, I’m
glad to say that that is exactly how you’ll find those people in the village
below”.
Top
Excerpt from
The Education of Little Tree
“I would go far up the spring branch, wading the clear water, bending low
through the green feather curtains of the weeping willows that hung down,
trailing branch tips in the current. Water ferns made green lace that curved
over the stream and offered holding places for the little umbrella spiders.
These little fellers would tie one end of a thin cable to the fern branch, then
leap into the air, spilling out more cable in an umbrella and try to make it
across to a fern branch on the other side. If he made it, he would tie the cable
and jump back – back and forth – until he had a pearly looking net spread over
the spring.
These were gritty little fellers. If they fell in the water, they got swept
along in the rapids and had to fight to stay on top and make it to the bank
before a brook minnow got them.
I squatted in the middle of the spring branch and watched one little spider
trying to get his cable across. He had determined that he was going to have the
widest pearl net anywheres up and down the whole spring branch; and he picked a
wide place. He would tie his cable, jump in the air and fall in the water. He’d
get swept downstream, fighting for his life, crawl out on the bank and come back
to that same fern. Then he’d try again.
The third time he come back to the fern and walked out on the end and laid down,
crossing his front arms under his chin, to study the water. I figured he was
might near give out – I was, and my bottom was numbing cold from squatting in
the spring branch. He laid there thinking and studying. In a minute he got a
thought, and commenced to jump up and down on the fern. Up and down. The fern
got to rising and falling. He kept at it, jumping to move the fern down and
riding it back up. Then, of a sudden, when the fern rose high, he jumped,
letting out his umbrella – and he made it.
He was fired up proud and leapt around after he made it, until he nearly fell
off. His pearl net become the widest I ever saw.”
Forest Carter
Top
The Invitation
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your
heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking
like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if
you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by
life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to
hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with
wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the
limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know
if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself, if you can bear the
accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and
therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it's not pretty, every day, and
if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on
the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want
to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and
bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know
if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to
know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the
company you keep in the empty moments.
The Invitation, Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Thorson’s 1999 ISBN 0 7225 4045 0
Top
The Wise Man and
the seventeen camels
A man died, leaving his entire estate to be divided between his three sons. The
eldest was to have one half, the second to have one third and the youngest to
have one ninth of the total. The only problem was the estate consisted of 17
camels. The sons were on the verge of killing a camel and cutting it up, when
the wise man came riding into the story on his camel.
On hearing the dilemma he said to the three sons,
“Here, take my camel as a gift. Add it to yours so you have 18. Now you, the
oldest son, get half. That is 9 camels. The middle son, you get a third: that is
6 camels. The youngest son gets a ninth, so that is two camels. Correct?”
The sons were satisfied.
“That is a total of 17 camels”, said the wise man. “By a happy chance my camel
is left over.”
He mounts his camel and rides away.
Top
The story of the
100th Monkey
(Quantum leap in behaviour)
There is a legend I'd like to tell you about. In its message may lie hope of a
future for your organisation. Here is the story of the Hundredth Monkey.
The Japanese monkey Macaca Fuscata had been observed in the wild for a period of
over thirty years. In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing
monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys liked the taste of
the raw sweet potatoes but they found the dirt unpleasant. An 18 month old
female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a
nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned
this new way and they taught their mothers too. This cultural innovation was
gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists.
Between 1952 and 1958, all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet
potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their
children learned this social improvement ... other adults kept eating the dirty
sweet potatoes. Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958 a
certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes - the exact number
is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99
monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let's
further suppose that later that evening the hundredth monkey learned to wash
potatoes ... THEN IT HAPPENED. By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was
washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth
monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!
But notice. A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the
habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea - colonies of monkeys
on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing
their sweet potatoes. Thus, when a certain number achieves an awareness, this
new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind. Although the exact number
may vary, The Hundredth Monkey phenomenon means that when only a limited number
of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of just those
people. But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes in to a new
awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost
everyone!
Your awareness is needed. You may be the "hundredth monkey".
Please note that this story, taken from the book, "The Hundredth Monkey" by Ken
Keyes Jr., is not copyrighted.
Top
The blue tit and the milk
bottle
Extract from: The Living Company by Arie de Geus, Nicholas Brealey, 1999
The United Kingdom has a long standing system of delivering milk in bottles to
the door. At the beginning of the 20th century these milk bottles had no top.
Birds had easy access to the cream which settled in the top of the bottle. Two
different species of British garden birds, the blue tits and red robins, learned
to siphon up cream from the bottles and tap this new, rich food source.
This innovation, in itself, was already quite an achievement. But it also had an
evolutionary effect. The cream was much richer than the usual food sources of
these birds, and the two species underwent some adaptation of their digestive
systems to cope with the unusual nutrients. This internal adaptation almost
certainly took place through Darwinian selection.
Then, between the two world wars, the UK dairy distributors closed access to the
food source by placing aluminium seals on their bottles.
By the early 1950's the entire blue tit population of the UK, about a million
birds, had learned how to pierce the aluminium seals. Regaining access to this
rich food source provided an important victory for the blue tit family as a
whole; it gave them an advantage in the battle for survival. Conversely, the
robins, as a family, never regained access to the cream. Occasionally, an
individual robin learns how to pierce the seals of the milk bottle. But the
knowledge never passes to the rest of the species.
In short, the blue tits went through an extraordinarily successful institutional
learning process. The robins failed, even though individual robins had been as
innovative as individual blue tits. Moreover, the difference could not be
attributed to their ability to communicate. As songbirds, both the blue tits and
the robins had the same wide range of means of communication: colour, behaviour,
movements, and song. The explanation could be found only in the social
propagation process: the way blue tits spread their skill from one individual to
members of the species as a whole.
In spring, the blue tits live in couples until they have reared their young. By
early summer, when the young blue tits are flying and feeding on their own, we
see birds moving from garden to garden in flocks of eight to ten individuals.
These flocks seem to remain intact, moving together around the countryside, and
the period of mobility lasts for two to three months.
Robins, by contrast, are territorial birds. A male robin will not allow another
male to enter its territory. When threatened, the robin sends a warning, as if
to say "Keep the hell out of here." In general, red robins tend to communicate
with each other in an antagonistic manner, with fixed boundaries that they do
not cross.
Birds that flock, seem to learn faster. They increase their chances to survive
and evolve more quickly.
Top
Two excerpts from The Alchemist, by Paolo
Coelho
He walked slowly through the market. The merchants were assembling their
stalls, and the boy helped a candy seller to do his. The candy seller had a
smile on his face: he was happy, aware of what his life was about, and ready to
begin a day’s work. His smile reminded the boy of the old king he had met. “This
candy merchant isn’t making candy so that later he can travel or marry a
shopkeeper’s daughter. He’s doing it because it’s what he wants to do,” thought
the boy. He realised that he could do the same thing the old man had done –
sense whether a person was near to or far from his destiny. Just by looking at
them. It’s easy, and yet I’ve never done it before, he thought.
When the stall was assembled, the candy seller offered the boy the first sweet
he had made for the day. The boy thanked him, ate it, and went on his way. When
he had gone only a short distance, he realised that, while they were erecting
the stall, one of them had spoken Arabic and the other Spanish.
And they had understood each other perfectly well.
There must be a language that doesn’t depend on words, the boy thought. I’ve
already had that experience with my sheep, and now it’s happening with people.
He was learning a lot of new things. Some of them were things that he had
already experienced, and weren’t really new, but that he had never perceived
before. And he hadn’t perceived them because he had become accustomed to them.
He realised: If I can learn to understand this language without words, I can
learn to understand the world.
Relaxed and unhurried, he resolved that he would walk through the narrow streets
of Tangier. Only in that way would he be able to read the omens. He knew it
would require a lot of patience, but shepherds knew all about patience. Once
again he saw that, in that strange land, he was applying the same lessons he had
learned with his sheep.
“All things are one,” the old man had said.
---------x------------x------------x----------x-----------x----------
On the seventh day, the alchemist decided to make camp earlier than usual. The
falcon flew off to find game, and the alchemist offered his water container to
the boy.
“You are almost at the end of your journey,” said the alchemist. “I congratulate
you for having pursued your destiny.”
“And you’ve told me nothing along the way,” said the boy. “I thought you were
going to teach me some of the things you know. A while ago, I rode through the
desert with a man who had books on alchemy. But I wasn’t able to learn anything
from them.”
“There is only one way to learn,” the alchemist answered. “It’s through action.
Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey. You need only
learn one thing more.”
The boy wanted to know what that was, but the alchemist was searching the
horizon, looking for the falcon.
“Why are you called the alchemist?”
“Because that’s what I am.”
“And what went wrong when other alchemists tried to make gold and were unable to
do so?”
“They were looking only for gold,” his companion answered. “They were seeking
the treasure of their destiny, without wanting actually to live out the
destiny.”
Top
|
I
I thought the matter over, and concluded I could do it. So I went
down and bought a barrel of Pond's Extract and a bicycle. The Expert
came home with me to instruct me. We chose the back yard, for the sake
of privacy, and went to work.
Mine was not a full-grown bicycle, but only a colt - a fifty-inch, with
the pedals shortened up to forty-eight - and skittish, like any other
colt. The Expert explained the thing's points briefly, then he got on
its back and rode around a little, to show me how easy it was to do. He
said that the dismounting was perhaps the hardest thing to learn, and so
we would leave that to the last. But he was in error there. He found, to
his surprise and joy, that all that he needed to do was to get me on to
the machine and stand out of the way; I could get off, myself. Although
I was wholly inexperienced, I dismounted in the best time on record. He
was on that side, shoving up the machine; we all came down with a crash,
he at the bottom, I next, and the machine on top.
We examined the machine, but it was not in the least injured. This was
hardly believable. Yet the Expert assured me that it was true; in fact,
the examination proved it. I was partly to realize, then, how admirably
these things are constructed. We applied some Pond's Extract, and
resumed. The Expert got on the OTHER side to shove up this time, but I
dismounted on that side; so the result was as before.
The machine was not hurt. We oiled ourselves again, and resumed. This
time the Expert took up a sheltered position behind, but somehow or
other we landed on him again.
He was full of admiration; said it was abnormal. She was all right, not
a scratch on her, not a timber started anywhere. I said it was
wonderful, while we were greasing up, but he said that when I came to
know these steel spider-webs I would realize that nothing but dynamite
could cripple them. Then he limped out to position, and we resumed once
more. This time the Expert took up the position of short-stop, and got a
man to shove up behind. We got up a handsome speed, and presently
traversed a brick, and I went out over the top of the tiller and landed,
head down, on the instructor's back, and saw the machine fluttering in
the air between me and the sun. It was well it came down on us, for that
broke the fall, and it was not injured.
Five days later I got out and was carried down to the hospital, and
found the Expert doing pretty fairly. In a few more days I was quite
sound. I attribute this to my prudence in always dismounting on
something soft. Some recommend a feather bed, but I think an Expert is
better.
The Expert got out at last, brought four assistants with him. It was a
good idea. These four held the graceful cobweb upright while I climbed
into the saddle; then they formed in column and marched on either side
of me while the Expert pushed behind; all hands assisted at the
dismount.
The bicycle had what is called the "wabbles," and had them very badly.
In order to keep my position, a good many things were required of me,
and in every instance the thing required was against nature. That is to
say, that whatever the needed thing might be, my nature, habit, and
breeding moved me to attempt it in one way, while some immutable and
unsuspected law of physics required that it be done in just the other
way. I perceived by this how radically and grotesquely wrong had been
the life-long education of my body and members. They were steeped in
ignorance; they knew nothing - nothing which it could profit them to
know. For instance, if I found myself falling to the right, I put the
tiller hard down the other way, by a quite natural impulse, and so
violated a law, and kept on going down. The law required the opposite
thing - the big wheel must be turned in the direction in which you are
falling. It is hard to believe this, when you are told it. And not
merely hard to believe it, but impossible; it is opposed to all your
notions. And it is just as hard to do it, after you do come to believe
it. Believing hard to do it, after you do come to believe it. Believing
it, and knowing by the most convincing proof that it is true, does not
help it: you can't any more DO it than you could before; you can neither
force nor persuade yourself to do it at first. The intellect has to come
to the front, now. It has to teach the limbs to discard their old
education and adopt the new.
The steps of one's progress are distinctly marked. At the end of each
lesson he knows he has acquired something, and he also knows what that
something is, and likewise that it will stay with him. It is not like
studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for
thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring
the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No - and I see now, plainly
enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't
fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to
make you attend strictly to business. But I also see, by what I have
learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn German
is by the bicycling method. That is to say, take a grip on one villainy
of it at a time, leaving that one half learned.
When you have reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the
machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your
next task - how to mount it. You do it in this way: you hop along behind
it on your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and
grasping the tiller with your hands. At the word, you rise on the peg,
stiffen your left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a
general in indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of the
saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but
you fall off. You get up and do it again; and once more; and then
several times.
By this time you have learned to keep your balance; and also to steer
without wrenching the tiller out by the roots (I say tiller because it
IS a tiller; "handle-bar" is a lamely descriptive phrase). So you steer
along, straight ahead, a little while, then you rise forward, with a
steady strain, bringing your right leg, and then your body, into the
saddle, catch your breath, fetch a violent hitch this way and then that,
and down you go again.
But you have ceased to mind the going down by this time; you are getting
to light on one foot or the other with considerable certainty. Six more
attempts and six more falls make you perfect. You land in the saddle
comfortably, next time, and stay there - that is, if you can be content
to let your legs dangle, and leave the pedals alone a while; but if you
grab at once for the pedals, you are gone again. You soon learn to wait
a little and perfect your balance before reaching for the pedals; then
the mounting-art is acquired, is complete, and a little practice will
make it simple and easy to you, though spectators ought to keep off a
rod or two to one side, along at first, if you have nothing against
them.
And now you come to the voluntary dismount; you learned the other kind
first of all. It is quite easy to tell one how to do the voluntary
dismount; the words are few, the requirement simple, and apparently
undifficult; let your left pedal go down till your left leg is nearly
straight, turn your wheel to the left, and get off as you would from a
horse. It certainly does sound exceedingly easy; but it isn't. I don't
know why it isn't but it isn't. Try as you may, you don't get down as
you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire.
You make a spectacle of yourself every time.
II
During the eight days I took a daily lesson an hour and a half. At
the end of this twelve working-hours' apprenticeship I was graduated -
in the rough. I was pronounced competent to paddle my own bicycle
without outside help. It seems incredible, this celerity of acquirement.
It takes considerably longer than that to learn horseback-riding in the
rough.
Now it is true that I could have learned without a teacher, but it would
have been risky for me, because of my natural clumsiness. The
self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a
tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers;
and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless
people into going and doing as he himself has done. There are those who
imagine that the unlucky accidents of life - life's "experiences" - are
in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never knew one
of them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and
catch you on your inexperienced side. If personal experience can be
worth anything as an education, it wouldn't seem likely that you could
trip Methuselah; and yet if that old person could come back here it is
more that likely that one of the first things he would do would be to
take hold of one of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a
knot of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot. Now the
surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask somebody whether
it was a good thing to take hold of. But that would not suit him; he
would be one of the self-taught kind that go by experience; he would
want to examine for himself. And he would find, for his instruction,
that the coiled patriarch shuns the electric wire; and it would be
useful to him, too, and would leave his education in quite a complete
and rounded-out condition, till he should come again, some day, and go
to bouncing a dynamite-can around to find out what was in it.
But we wander from the point. However, get a teacher; it saves much time
and Pond's Extract.
Before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my
physical strength, and I was able to inform him that I hadn't any. He
said that that was a defect which would make up-hill wheeling pretty
difficult for me at first; but he also said the bicycle would soon
remove it. The contrast between his muscles and mine was quite marked.
He wanted to test mine, so I offered my biceps - which was my best. It
almost made him smile. He said, "It is pulpy, and soft, and yielding,
and rounded; it evades pressure, and glides from under the fingers; in
the dark a body might think it was an oyster in a rag." Perhaps this
made me look grieved, for he added, briskly: "Oh, that's all right, you
needn't worry about that; in a little while you can't tell it from a
petrified kidney. Just go right along with your practice; you're all
right."
Then he left me, and I started out alone to seek adventures. You don't
really have to seek them - that is nothing but a phrase - they come to
you.
I chose a reposeful Sabbath-day sort of a back street which was about
thirty yards wide between the curbstones. I knew it was not wide enough;
still, I thought that by keeping strict watch and wasting no space
unnecessarily I could crowd through.
Of course I had trouble mounting the machine, entirely on my own
responsibility, with no encouraging moral support from the outside, no
sympathetic instructor to say, "Good! now you're doing well - good again
- don't hurry - there, now, you're all right - brace up, go ahead." In
place of this I had some other support. This was a boy, who was perched
on a gate-post munching a hunk of maple sugar.
He was full of interest and comment. The first time I failed and went
down he said that if he was me he would dress up in pillows, that's what
he would do. The next time I went down he advised me to go and learn to
ride a tricycle first. The third time I collapsed he said he didn't
believe I could stay on a horse-car. But the next time I succeeded, and
got clumsily under way in a weaving, tottering, uncertain fashion, and
occupying pretty much all of the street. My slow and lumbering gait
filled the boy to the chin with scorn, and he sung out, "My, but don't
he rip along!" Then he got down from his post and loafed along the
sidewalk, still observing and occasionally commenting. Presently he
dropped into my wake and followed along behind. A little girl passed by,
balancing a wash-board on her head, and giggled, and seemed about to
make a remark, but the boy said, rebukingly, "Let him alone, he's going
to a funeral."
I have been familiar with that street for years, and had always supposed
it was a dead level; but it was not, as the bicycle now informed me, to
my surprise. The bicycle, in the hands of a novice, is as alert and
acute as a spirit-level in the detecting the delicate and vanishing
shades of difference in these matters. It notices a rise where your
untrained eye would not observe that one existed; it notices any decline
which water will run down. I was toiling up a slight rise, but was not
aware of it. It made me tug and pant and perspire; and still, labor as I
might, the machine came almost to a standstill every little while. At
such times the boy would say: "That's it! take a rest - there ain't no
hurry. They can't hold the funeral without YOU."
Stones were a bother to me. Even the smallest ones gave me a panic when
I went over them. I could hit any kind of a stone, no matter how small,
if I tried to miss it; and of course at first I couldn't help trying to
do that. It is but natural. It is part of the ass that is put in us all,
for some inscrutable reason.
It was at the end of my course, at last, and it was necessary for me to
round to. This is not a pleasant thing, when you undertake it for the
first time on your own responsibility, and neither is it likely to
succeed. Your confidence oozes away, you fill steadily up with nameless
apprehensions, every fiber of you is tense with a watchful strain, you
start a cautious and gradual curve, but your squirmy nerves are all full
of electric anxieties, so the curve is quickly demoralized into a jerky
and perilous zigzag; then suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit
in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone, defying all prayers
and all your powers to change its mind - your heart stands still, your
breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work, straight on you go, and
there are but a couple of feet between you and the curb now. And now is
the desperate moment, the last chance to save yourself; of course all
your instructions fly out of your head, and you whirl your wheel AWAY
from the curb instead of TOWARD it, and so you go sprawling on that
granite-bound inhospitable shore. That was my luck; that was my
experience. I dragged myself out from under the indestructible bicycle
and sat down on the curb to examine.
I started on the return trip. It was now that I saw a farmer's wagon
poking along down toward me, loaded with cabbages. If I needed anything
to perfect the precariousness of my steering, it was just that. The
farmer was occupying the middle of the road with his wagon, leaving
barely fourteen or fifteen yards of space on either side. I couldn't
shout at him - a beginner can't shout; if he opens his mouth he is gone;
he must keep all his attention on his business. But in this grisly
emergency, the boy came to the rescue, and for once I had to be grateful
to him. He kept a sharp lookout on the swiftly varying impulses and
inspirations of my bicycle, and shouted to the man accordingly:
"To the left! Turn to the left, or this jackass'll run over you!" The
man started to do it. "No, to the right, to the right Hold on! THAT
won't do! - to the left! - to the right! - to the LEFT - right! Left -
ri - Stay where you ARE, or you're a goner!"
And just then I caught the off horse in the starboard and went down in a
pile. I said, "Hang it! Couldn't you SEE I was coming?"
"Yes, I see you was coming, but I couldn't tell which WAY you was
coming. Nobody could¾now, COULD they? You couldn't yourself - now, COULD
you? So what could - I - do?
There was something in that, and so I had the magnanimity to say so. I
said I was no doubt as much to blame as he was.
Within the next five days I achieved so much progress that the boy
couldn't keep up with me. He had to go back to his gate- post, and
content himself with watching me fall at long range.
There was a row of low stepping-stones across one end of the street, a
measured yard apart. Even after I got so I could steer pretty fairly I
was so afraid of those stones that I always hit them. They gave me the
worst falls I ever got in that street, except those which I got from
dogs. I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a
dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that
may be true: but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog
was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I
ran over every dog that came along. I think it makes a great deal of
difference. If you try to run over the dog he knows how to calculate,
but if you are trying to miss him he does not know how to calculate, and
is liable to jump the wrong way every time. It was always so in my
experience. Even when I could not hit a wagon I could hit a dog that
came to see me practice. They all liked to see me practice, and they all
came, for there was very little going on in our neighborhood to
entertain a dog. It took time to learn to miss a dog, but I achieved
even that.
I can steer as well as I want to, now, and I will catch that boy one of
these days and run over HIM if he doesn't reform.
Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live. |
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"And how many hours a day did you do lessons?" said Alice, in a hurry
to change the subject.
"Ten hours the first day," said the Mock Turtle: "nine the next, and so
on."
"What a curious plan!" exclaimed Alice.
"That's the reason they're called lessons," the Gryphon remarked:
"because they lessen from day to day."
This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little
before she made her next remark.
"Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?"
"Of course it was," said the Mock Turtle.
"And how did you manage on the twelfth?" Alice went on eagerly.
"That's enough about lessons," the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided
tone: "tell her something about the games now."
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, speak to us of
Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of to-morrow, which you cannot visit,
not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For
life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent
forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you
with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness; for even as He
loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
THEN said a teacher, speak to us of Teaching.
And he said:
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half
asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers,
gives not of his Wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom,
but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he
cannot give you his under-standing.
The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he
cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm, nor the voice that
echoes it.
And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions
of weight and measures but he cannot conduct you thither.
For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.
And even as each one of you stands alone in God's knowledge, so must
each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his
understanding of the earth.
Father Arnall came in and the Latin lesson began and he remained
still, leaning on the desk with his arms folded. Father Arnall gave out
the themebooks and he said that they were scandalous and that they were
all to be written out again with the corrections at once. But the worst
of all was Fleming's theme because the pages were stuck together by a
blot: and Father Arnall held it up by a corner and said it was an insult
to any master to send him up such a theme. Then he asked Jack Lawton to
decline the noun mare and Jack Lawton stopped at the ablative singular
and could not go on with the plural.
--You should be ashamed of yourself, said Father Arnall sternly. You,
the leader of the class!
Then he asked the next boy and the next and the next. Nobody knew.
Father Arnall became very quiet, more and more quiet as each boy tried
to answer and could not. But his face was blacklooking and his eyes were
staring though his voice was so quiet. Then he asked Fleming and Fleming
said that that word had no plural. Father Arnall suddenly shut the book
and shouted at him:
--kneel out there in the middle of the class. You are one of the idlest
boys I ever met. Copy out your themes again the rest of you.
Fleming moved heavily out of his place and knelt between the two last
benches. The other boys bent over their themebooks and began to write. A
silence filled the classroom and Stephen, glancing timidly at Father
Arnall's dark face, saw that it was a little red from the wax he was in.
Was that a sin for Father Arnall to be in a wax or was he allowed to get
into a wax when the boys were idle because that made them study better
or was he only letting on to be in a wax? It was because he was allowed,
because a priest would know what a sin was and would not do it. But if
he did it one time by mistake what would he do to go to confession?
Perhaps he would go to confession to the minister. And if the minister
did it he would go to the rector: and the rector to the provincial: and
the provincial to the general of the Jesuits. That was called the order:
and he had heard his father say that they were all clever men. They
could all have become highup people in the world if they had not become
Jesuits. And he wondered what Father Arnall and Paddy Barrett would have
become and what Mr McGlade and Mr Gleeson would have become if they had
not become Jesuits. It was hard to think what because you would have to
think of them in a different way with different coloured coats and
trousers and with beards and moustaches and different kinds of hats.
The door opened quietly and closed. A quick whisper ran through the
class: the prefect of studies. There was an instant of dead silence and
then the loud crack of a pandybat on the last desk. Stephen's heart
leapt up in fear.
--Any boys want flogging here, Father Arnall? cried the prefect of
studies. Any lazy idle loafers that want flogging in this class? He came
to the middle of the class and saw Fleming on his knees.
--Hoho! he cried. Who is this boy? Why is he on his knees? What is your
name, boy?
--Fleming, sir.
--Hoho, Fleming! An idler of course. I can see it in your eye. Why is he
on his knees, Father Arnall?
--He wrote a bad Latin theme, Father Arnall said, and he missed all the
questions in grammar.
--Of course he did! cried the prefect of studies, of course he did! A
born idler! I can see it in the corner of his eye. He banged his
pandybat down on the desk and cried:
--Up, Fleming! Up, my boy! Fleming stood up slowly.
--Hold out! cried the prefect of studies. Fleming held out his hand. The
pandybat came down on it with a loud smacking sound: one, two, three,
four, five, six.
--Other hand! The pandybat came down again in six loud quick smacks. |
James Joyce
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Inaugural Speech of Nelson Mandela
Our deepest fear
is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are
powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness,
that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
who am I to be brilliant,
successful, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you NOT to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people
won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest
the glory that is within us.
It's not just in some of us;
it's in EVERYONE!
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others!
Nelson Mandela, 1994
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