Lighting the lamp, p.26
Lighting the Lamp, page 26
Back and forth it progresses with suitable piano flourishes. Eventually, Jay is beaten down by fate, a broken mortal. The piece ends with Jay’s being dispatched in great sorrow, ironically aware of his culpability— “Yes, yes, at last he understands,” and Jeanne attaining greater heights atop the upright piano. Applause.
“Jeanne can turn a feeling into an event,” Andras says when the film fades out. “Always there is a suggestion of life’s renewal, even when really critical situations arise.”
“As in?”
“The October Crisis. She and Jay sought refuge here for a few days at the time of the searches. Dan Cleary secured them here while he got rounded up by the authorities.”
“Dan the Man behind bars. Yes, I remember. By that point in our friendship, he’d drifted into areas of concern I thought of secondary importance to my well-being, although we still compared notes frequently enough over a couple of Boiler Room beers.”
“He was spending a lot of time here then. Training horses became a passion for him. An interview for radio is how he met Jeanne Medais. Maybe. I not know for sure. He knew Jay before that. Unfortunate, I tell you, what befell Jay.”
Andras listens intently when I explain how close I actually was to Jay’s death in that it occurred in Cowichan Bay. I tell him about the writing on the wall of the BlueNote, and about how it all affected me. Andras nods his head affirmatively when I get into how the relationship between the two continues to enthral me. Almost as much as the story of the young Toronto jihadists.
“Even after watching your film,” I conclude, finally getting to the point I wish to make with Andras, “I still do not have a clear picture of what she looks like, let alone what she is like as a human being.”
“Fascinating. On the wall in the room upstairs—yours tonight as in the past,” Andras points out as he rises and busies himself first with the turntable and then the little cabinet next to it, “on the wall hangs a painting that Jeanne did at that time. Melissa, who appreciates such things more than I, says Jeanne’s work has to do with transformation—live healthier, live happier, and live longer. My recipe for all of that is hearing Paul Horn in the Taj Mahal and tasting single malt whiskey while thus engaged.”
How could I disagree? And so, for a bubble of an interlude where we did nothing but smile and sigh, it’s echoing flute music, flights of fancy, and the sipping of very fine whiskey.
“Like sitting in a cathedral contemplating the structures of existential reality,” I say when the record has played out.
“In Melissa’s language, the subduction of the ego,” Andras suggests getting up to pour more whiskey. “Savouring this, I do not hesitate to say, keeps us rooted in the material plane.”
“A troubling thing about our being on the material plane—and it remains so even after the death of grandparents, mothers, fathers, friends, even strangers—is the end of existence on that plane. For the sake of argument, overlook the possibility of the beatific vision and the horrors of a hell we’ve been told about. What I mean, metaphorically speaking, is entering the dark room of nothingness, regardless of even the most auspicious of ends and the repeated assurances delivered at innumerable commemorative masses following innumerable Irish wakes. In other words, I cannot imagine a world without me in it, me at the centre of it, not controlling it, necessarily, but living in this phenomenal world, bearing witnessing, responding through the mind and its senses to all the varied stimulation offered, even when ageing is slowing down the ability to do so. That music, for example, and this tasty cordial.”
“Yes. Generation upon generation of philosophers have mused over the same.”
“Life, Andry, as I know it continuing, and me not party to it, or appreciative of it—Jeanne Medais and her interpretive dance, to further the point, or a child marvelling at a Botticelli painting, a fan cheering on the Habs, listening to The Moody Blues, a first sexual experience, crowds entering the metro at the McGill station, a train ride, the flight of an Air Canada Airbus across the continent, a wife’s embrace, a fishing boat hauled up in the ways at Cowichan Bay, a death in the snow. Do you see what I mean?”
“Well, yes, I do, Terry. Add to your list, a father stranded in Gander making his way to New York City to do a body count. Yes, all gone when your door to darkness shuts behind you. By then, of course, you are not aware of the door closing. Or how deep is the darkness.”
“Sure. Okay, fine. But let me go on. Factor in all the immaterial stuff, heady things, thoughts, dreams, successes and failures, experiences like falling in love and the myriad memories thereof, assuming you die sentient and of reasonably sound mind. Or is what often happens to the elderly as in losing your wits the norm? I’m thinking here of a beloved aunt whose fate I’ve just learned about. Not death itself so much as what gets you there, dying with all its inherent atrophy: in Hamlet’s proposition, to be or not to be with dignity. Do you, as an individual in a moment of lucidity, embrace the coming darkness? And what of those millions of dead throughout the centuries, that endless parade of struggling humanity trapped in clay? Just abstract consideration?”
“Yes, until it’s one of your own.”
“Or until it’s you, yourself.”
“When I go, Terry, a black hole will be created in the universe that only a collapsed star could equate to.”
“A black hole, why not? Very amusing, Andras. You deserve nothing less. But for the rest of us, how about some stratospheric pool of light into which all thought and experience can be poured, a repository of human understanding.”
“Kant and Hegel come to mind here, also De Chardin, his noösphere. Which, I do not hesitate to say, is beyond human possibility, a mindscape of such magnitude.”
“Okay. A large benign intelligence, collective, pluralistic, intergalactic if you must, though not necessarily deistic.”
“But if a god, then that god in your scheme of things would be forever evolving.”
“So, it’s divine evolution, not divine intervention.”
“Ever has it been so, I tell you. Or in words you would find in a scientific journal, deep structures making the implicit explicit. Either way, Terry, as humans, we couldn’t tap in. We couldn’t borrow from this grandiose lending library you have in mind, not even in the age of the Internet. Human records, I do not hesitate to state, are terrestrial, although not absolutely.”
“You know, Andry, I used to keep a personal record, a journal, a protracted one in the shape of numerous cahiers and hard-bound sketchbooks. A legend of the quest, so to speak, where inspiration shared space with frustration and regret. I started in high school and continued through university, but somewhere along the way I lost the knack of working out the puzzle. I was forever misplacing pieces. I took it up again when I got to the west coast—that is to say, I did so eventually. You know, travels, jobs, and sundry other ventures. I failed to achieve the perfect union. Daily toil blunted half-assed aspirations. Only lately have I taken up the pen again. Grace’s influence. With her it’s damn close to the perfect union.”
“Admittedly, I had a similar outlook once, but baby Ernst’s dirty diapers changed all that, although for a period of time, a short one I must emphasize, the very fact that a son of mine could pee and cry and defecate was a kind of triumph for me. The life force was manifesting itself in a novel way. Be assured, though, that I did wonder on more than one occasion at what point in our evolution as a species toilet training became a necessity to say nothing of an obsession.”
“No regrets?”
“Regrets? If any, mostly about the women I did not romanticise enough, if you take my point.”
“I entertain only the fondest memories of past love affairs, those that I can actually remember, that is, when I’m not rationalizing failure.”
“Let me explain it this way. Those I didn’t bed, it was likely because of indifference. Or stupid preoccupation. Or because of some social convention that I can’t name even now. Or because of some misgiving, as in the case of Jeanne Medais. She was such a force. Such beauty. Now, you mentioned your journal. I believe you left some of it here. Melissa found it upstairs a day or so after you drove off. Her understanding was that symbolically you were leaving it all behind. But she secured it for you against a possible day of return. A correct interpretation, I do not hesitate to say. You’ll find it in the bookcase. And so, old friend—”
And so, after a quick discussion about the morning, old friends call it a night.
* * *
The bedroom upstairs that overlooks the oriental garden is pretty much the way I remember it from a number of decades ago, but not entirely. A replica Tiffany lamp now hangs from the middle of the ceiling throwing out a spectrum of intriguing shapes. The three-tiered vintage bookcase that Andras mentioned is missing the top pane of glass and readily reveals a series of high school and college annuals—belonging to Ernst over the intervening years, I imagine, like the basket of sports equipment and memorabilia in the corner next to the old dresser. A small computer desk, new, with a reading lamp, totters a little when I put my tote bag on it. The cable area rug, I notice, forms less of an oval on the creaky floor than it used to, its intricate colours faded.
Other than a Montreal Canadiens pennant, the only wall decor is a Jeanne Medais’ painting that hangs over the bed. It is a somewhat arresting, if not downright disturbing, depiction of renewal, to use Andry’s word, and antithetical to the cosy informality of this farmhouse bedroom that for a period of retreat I called my own. Though I suspect Andras was joking about all the love he failed to express, I understand after a quick study of the painting—basically, a large cauldron bubbles over with human limbs—why he might have had misgivings about bedding down Jeanne Medais. Hanging it over the bed, a touch of ironic humour?
From the antique bookcase, I pull out a thin volume on meditation that Melissa, it appears, co-authored, of which there are numerous copies. I flip through it quickly. I have only a modest interest in the navel-gazed nothingness that nirvana promises because, at bottom, I assure myself at this juncture with all due deference to Melissa and by extension Grace, the puzzle of life in all its myriad complexities still intrigues me.
Next in my hands, a book on New Age psychology. All I can do, given the limited capabilities of my cerebral gray matter and the lasting effects of Andry’s superb whiskey, is peruse the comments on the back of the jacket. An observation on memory, apparently one of the book’s salient themes, states: “In the simulated world that the brain arranges on our behalf is created the language-dependent autobiographical self.” Overwhelmed by possibilities, I put the book aside.
And then I notice my old journals in the corner of the bottom shelf, two variations in two distinct forms, wrapped in cellophane and bound together with rubber bands. The rubber bands disintegrate when I attempt to open up what Melissa was at pains to preserve. One is a cahier labelled 1962 - 1967, a one-time sourcebook of observations and ideas that extended well beyond the scope of an elective writing course I started when jotting down brick and motor calculations and other physical relationships was entertained from a fictional rather than a mathematical point of view. Another instance of dubious success in my life as a student. The other is a sketchbook with detachable sheets that formal academic studies required I keep. I had several like this one, each containing as much prose composition as sketches of buildings, staircases, birds, and abstracted fruit. Bundled with these mementos from the past is a volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry that Donna Haywood gave me. Holding it in my hand makes me think of the Moody Blues. Did I actually intend leaving these here? Selective negligence is as much a part of the psychological process as remembering. The past that I put behind me back then I attempt at this late hour to revive, if only by wilful fits and starts.
Dated Dec 8, 1965, Café André, a random excerpt: “Skipped Sunday mass again. Parents concerned. Endured another of Patrick’s Big Brother admonitions about duty and responsibility.”
From third year at Sir George: “Consider a potential reader, Eloise Swift for instance, who inadvertently looks into my paltry little world of Belles Letters. Here, she will say, young Terry is hurried, facile, and somewhat facetious because at heart he is involved in the pursuit of realities beyond his ability. And here, she will say, look at how he struggles with the meaning of love. Ah, but here, she will also say, Terry Burke is perfect for behold his crystal-clear prose laced with poetic images of divinely inspired truth. He must have read Gerard Manly Hopkins at some point!”
Gleaned from a Loyola lecture, October 1964: “Without doubt there is no faith. The ability not to believe is essential to believing. Scepticism sustains credence.”
“Chapel Soliloquy,” dedicated in the fall of 1963 to the girl from across the Yamaska, is an attempt at a Shakespearean sonnet with superfluous quatrains and no concluding couplet.
Quoted from Eloise Swift: “…a species of Jesuitical foreplay in a world without compassion, where gods are still called upon to right wrongs here and smite down enemies there. Get real, Terry!”
And on the following page, a comment from Patrick’s superior point of view: “Eloise Swift is the devil’s whore.”
Enough for one reading. With this determination, I close the cahier.
I head across the hall to the upper-level bathroom. Here faucets sing, rusty drains gurgle, and the floor slants inward toward the heart of the house where ghosts of your old acquaintance might be hanging out. After preparing for bed, I reach for the Emily Dickinson paperback. Many pages are dog-eared, others detach too readily from the spine, and several poems are marked with asterisks. It is, or was, a worked-over book, both before and after. A pleasurable ache of recognition sweeps over me as I take to reading “Wild nights! Wild nights!” It is as if I am reliving, if only minutely and, oh, so very briefly, the delight I had while a smiling Donna Haywood looked on.
When the head hits the pillow, my vox vobiscum begins to pluck particular images out of the vortex of varied recollections swirling about me and shapes them into words to form a self-reflective narrative. I had times of discovery, it tells me—medieval battering rams, Gothic cathedrals, secret societies, leprechauns, lesbians, and something as enlightening as the golden mean; and times of elation, the voice continues, that exceeded the cool flavours of ice-cream and the startling ejaculations of fantastic adolescent dreams; and times of pain that went deeper than cooing, handkerchiefs, and fraternal shoulder patting.
In this personal evolution, new words made available new understanding, new interpretations, and new concepts that opened up new possibilities revealing worlds that often enough offered transcendence and different access to the numinous. Perspective broadened and vanishing points became defined; sometimes there were points of no return. A wider world of choice opened up. Love, ecstatic and symptomatic, contrived time out of mind along with physical union. Manot. Marian. Vanessa. And amid the boundless modalities of experience, as in rendezvousing with Donna Haywood on a winter’s afternoon at the Budapest Café on Stanley Street, the vox assures me as it begins to wane, were those times of absolute befuddlement.
* * *
The waif-like figure of Jeanne Medais emerges in a slow dance out of the shadows and then seemingly uncoils around a vat of bubbling liquid that spills out into a stream wide enough to accommodate a boat under sail. When, in a sudden infusion of light, she points her finger at me, I see, not the dark features of Jeanne from the video, but the face of Donna Haywood. I hear a dog bark, a coq crow, and at this point I open my eyes. Then the aroma of freshly brewed coffee leads me around by the nose.
I perform the usual morning rituals, make sure not to forget my old journals when packing up, and head down to the kitchen where Andras hands me a cup. He feeds me yogurt and other healthy comestibles, all the while indulging me with trailers from the previous night’s conversation. I mention nothing of the dream to him while he discourses again on the state of the planet but reflect on his assertion that Jeanne Medais could, while dramatizing a feeling, ritualize renewal of life.
Andras introduces new theoretical paradigms. He mentions several individuals that he refers to as brights. These he defines as freethinkers and liberal-minded intellectuals, who go about their business with both feet on the ground. Their ideas, he believes, would appeal to me given the present state of my uncertainty vis à vis dubious notions derived from metaphysics I might still hold on to: specifically, God. These individuals, whatever their field of expertise, continue to light the lamps of understanding. Pouring more coffee, Andras then encourages me to learn the magic of computers so that our continued communication might reflect twenty-first-century realities. His peroration is interrupted by a phone call, which takes him momentarily out of the kitchen.
“Change of plans,” he informs me upon return. “Aidan Chase has offered to take you before the hour is out to catch your bus in Huntingdon. If you give me a few minutes, Terry, I have now to contact his father. All about boarding horses and making hay.”
With Andras occupied transacting business, I take the second cup of coffee outside where an eager Darwin guides me over towards the bridge. I am a willing participant in this instinctual herding activity, for the scene is most pleasant at this time of day. The river tumbles, gurgles, and frolics over rocks and roots while over the tops of maples birds dart, swooping down, then quickly back up into a patchwork of blue sky high above the bridge. I reach for my bag. The red-sided bungalow nestled in among the trees on the other side of the Hinchinbrooke appears idyllic. Taken with how light and shadow play off its roof and stirred by memories that fade back to beyond last night, I pull out my sketchbook and bits of charcoal but then opt for text.
Standing on this very bridge, Terry Burke saw Donna Haywood kneeling by the bank of the Hinchinbrooke. She was sifting water through cupped hands, and where it spilled, tiny rivulets flowed back into the stream. She appeared ethereal set against the early morning sunlight. She smiled at him and said she was recreating the world because Hinchinbrooke Farm was a place of enchantment where old views die and new perceptions are born. He said he understood the wisdom in all of that and would come down to join her if he could, and when he did, and took her hand, they both knew at once what would follow—
