{"id":791,"date":"2011-11-07T07:26:18","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T07:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blamming.wordpress.com\/?page_id=791"},"modified":"2011-11-07T07:26:18","modified_gmt":"2011-11-07T07:26:18","slug":"25-clifton-home-and-harbor","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ehomba.ro\/blamming5\/25-clifton-home-and-harbor\/","title":{"rendered":"25. Clifton: Home and Harbor"},"content":{"rendered":"

November 7, 2011<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ve been home for more than a week now.<\/p>\n

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I wrote nearly 10,000 words over several days but have decided not to post it. I feel it\u2019s overwrought, too private, and laced with contentious reflections that are likely to offend almost anyone \u2013 bearing witness to some of my favorite personal deficiencies.<\/p>\n

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On the other hand, I also feel I\u2019m holding back the best of what I have to say. But I\u2019m eager to put closure on this travel blog \u2013 for now \u2013 so I can get on with other business. Therefore, I\u2019m going to compromise.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ll edit out what I think is frothy, and opinions I might later regret being too forthright about.<\/p>\n

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One of my intentions has been to add an appendix, or an epilog. I\u2019ll do this later \u2013 whenever, when I\u2019ve got the leisure for it. I\u2019ll cast my nets wide and pull in a range of themes, including much that\u2019s either whimsical or unconventional and argumentative, requiring delicate consideration as to exactly what I say and how I say it.<\/p>\n

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Another of my intentions has been to relegate the recent travel journal to one of various dimensions, and begin to add pages or postings on completely different topics. This will entail the acquisition of blogging skills I don\u2019t possess \u2013 i.e., how to set up my site so what I want to feature will be both attractive and convenient.<\/p>\n

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Dealing with computers and software issues is not one of my strengths, so I\u2019ll have to put this off until I\u2019m sufficiently caught up with a large backlog of tasks and obligations, and until I\u2019ve set by a sufficient reserve of time and patience.<\/p>\n

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Whatever I was sick with is now almost completely gone. Only a bit of a cough remains. I have slept a lot, and deeply, including long naps during the day, a custom I\u2019ve practiced all of my adult life. I\u2019ve had a voracious appetite. My diet at home is so much healthier than it was on the road. I need to restore myself. I\u2019ve started going to yoga classes again, but not as regularly as before I left. There are just too many ragged edges, and too many pieces of my life to put back in place, after so long and challenging an absence, before I can lock back into my old routine.<\/p>\n

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Everything at home is immediately familiar \u2013 but also indescribably and subtly different. This is the way that you come back refreshed by travel. I have definitely been revitalized, in a way that makes me eager to re-embrace my old life, where I\u2019d been sluggish and lethargic for some time before I left.<\/p>\n

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For days after my return, I felt like I was still in motion \u2013 bedding down in a different, unfamiliar place every night, passing through a long succession of towns and countryside where I\u2019d never been before. My dreams were weird, and I didn\u2019t immediately know where I was when I woke up. But that psychological momentum is beginning to dissipate.<\/p>\n

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One of my most treasured habits is to keep silence in the morning after I awake, sipping my fresh-ground coffee and reading seriously while the mind still retains some alpha-wavelength quality, perhaps the residue of sleep, unruffled by worldly commotion.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s been good to resume this habit of contemplative leisure.<\/p>\n

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Some ways back, I quoted a passage from Arthur Koestler\u2019s book on \u201cMan\u2019s Changing Vision of the Universe,\u201d which I still haven\u2019t quite finished. His portraits of the great are none too flattering, with Johannes Kepler being somewhat of an exception. There was another passage which thrilled and vindicated me \u2013 if I can admit that without the taint of immodesty, or delusion in comparing my own mental processes to those of one of history\u2019s most outstanding scientists.<\/p>\n

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After being widowed, Kepler, who was now a man of consequence, set about to choose his second wife. Koestler goes into some depth portraying the methods by which Kepler made his choice among eleven candidates, comparing this procedure to the extended rigors he practiced in framing the eccentric orbit of the planet Mars.<\/p>\n

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\u201cKepler\u2019s way of discovering the right wife for himself strangely reminds one of the method of his scientific discoveries \u2026. There is the same characteristic split in the personality between, on the one hand, the pathetically eager, Chaplinesque figure who stumbles from one wrong hypothesis to another \u2026 who proceeds by trial and error, falls into grotesque traps, analyses with pedantic seriousness each mistake and finds in each a sign of Divine Providence \u2026. But on the other hand he did<\/em> discover his Laws and did<\/em> make the right choice among the eleven candidates, guided by that sleepwalking intuition which made his waking errors cancel out and always asserted itself at the critical moment. Social rank and financial considerations are topmost in his waking consciousness, yet in the end he married the only candidate who had neither rank, nor money, nor family; and though he anxiously listens to everybody\u2019s advice, seems to be easily swayed and without a will of his own, he decides on the person unanimously rejected by all\u201d (409-10).<\/p>\n

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I love it.<\/p>\n

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Regarding Koestler, I don\u2019t know enough about him to say without hesitation that I admire him, but I am in awe of the knowledge he commanded to write this book, of how well written it is, and of the \u2013 probably, for all I know \u2013 groundbreaking insights it offers into the history of science.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s material on the Internet that comes in with breathtaking immediacy. Back in my comfortable office chair, I am ideally positioned to draw from these sources again. But there is so much dire turmoil in the world now, and getting to the root of it is neither obvious nor palatable. So on second thought \u2026 I\u2019ll pass over now what just a few hours ago I was going to pass on.<\/p>\n

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I herewith present the final load of images from my marathon bicycle ride \u2013 in the same, reverse sequence I used when I wrote from Lola\u2019s Pasteries and Eatery in Nixa, MO, and later, that evening, from my tent near Branson West, on September 21.<\/p>\n

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