Amy McMahon
24 April 2010
Dr. Sexson
Literature 494
VOICE OF THE HIDDEN WATERFALL
“The journey is the thing.”
(Homer)
Epiphanies inspire and form us, us English majors, and so one day Dr. Sexson decided to fulfill a wish to model a class after this revelatory idea. We proceeded to read many works, some we’d already read, some well loved, some not liked, some brand-new, to search for the elusive turning point, the moment of change, the revelation. For me, I was surprised at how perfect this class was as an ending or an enhancement of many years of formal education. Full of reflection, we explored our own personal legends, our individual epiphanies, our “A-HA!” moments and the little “ohs” and “ahs.” We find ourselves, “At the source of the largest river, the voice of the hidden waterfall, and the children in the apple tree, between two waves of the sea”(Eliot 59). We find ourselves here, in this moment, an epiphany of sorts—for most of us, this IS it, the accumulation of our entire college career, and has been made into a gathering of our complete life, choices and classes, friends and ideas, moments and pictures. If there is anything we have learned, we have learned we should be continually responsive to the presence of the world (M. Sexson) as it is waiting for us, but we won’t be here forever to take it. “Not I—not anyone else, can travel that road for you, you must travel it for yourself” (Whitman).
WANDERER
“Over hill, over dale,
Thorough brush, thorough brier
Over park, over pale
Thorough flood, thorough fire
I do wander everywhere.”
(Midsummer Night’s Dream)
There once was a girl who spent many days writing and reading, and spent many an hour in the outdoors. She loved to explore and she loved her books, and tried to find a way to meld them into two. She read, and explored, explored further than she ever imagined, dreamed of more places and more discoveries, went through school and discovered some classes she did not love, and ideas she could learn to love, and books she would adore, put up with, for four and half years. She read many words and wrote many words, and eventually came to this milestone, this class, this cap of a stone: It’s your only duty, your sacred duty, to write the best paper you’ve ever written. “Through the unknown, remembered gate, when the last of earth left to discover, is that which is the beginning” (Eliot 59).
This duty, these words, leave a slightly panicky feeling, a discomfort in a corner of the mind that doesn’t quite ease unless much writing is commencing rapidly and brilliantly. So, this young girl, quite bright and modest, pondered over this paper and this pressure-filled idea. Captivated by myths she’d read over the years, she wished to explore these further, until a wise man pointed out that these very same Greeks were ruled by fate. Thus, the girl began to wonder, of fate and choice, of the parts of life that made these choices—and for her, the biggest catalyst of the moment of potential transformation was and is nature, and literature. “And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything” (As You Like It).
THE FATED, THE CHOSEN
“All things are in the hand of heaven.”
(Homer)
Not long ago, I came to a point of severe writer’s block, or rather writer’s disability, as I was trying so hard to write I could hardly even spell. As it happened to be one of the first truly beautiful days of our capricious spring, I decided to take a breather, and head out into the outdoors. While I was mulling over where exactly I should go to breathe, I remembered something else I had heard: “It is not so important to visit a place as to re-visit a place” (M. Sexson). When I first heard this, I shrugged it off, again dreaming off all the wonderful places I wish to see, rather than focusing on all the fabulous places I’d been. So, inspired by this, hoping a favorite trail would hold the answer, there I headed. And there, among the typically bright-with-song birds and beautiful colors, I heard a tree fall close by. A small epiphany popped to the front of my brain as I remembered that philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound? This also immediately reminded me of an Eliot quote from Burnt Norton: “the unseen eyebeam crossed” (Eliot 14). Now, according to the rules of science and physics, yes, the tree still makes a sound. However, for me, this idea symbolizes choice. Nature is here, around us and between us, ready to be grabbed and used for our epiphany, but nature itself does not care about the epiphany of the young girl sitting in the woods. Nature continues on, blooming and dying, growing and planting, cycling with the heavens and Earth. It takes us, humans, with our unique and perfect combination of evolution and chance, brains and technology, oxygen and carbon dioxide, to make nature our catalyst, to use these everyday miracles to reach that higher place within ourselves, our mind and our souls.
This leads me to the question of epiphanies and choice. Are epiphanies ruled by fate, or by choice? Are we fated to make every little, seemingly insignificant decision to get to this epiphany, or does one small modification take us on a different path, on an entirely dissimilar passage to a completely unique epiphany?
In this world, it’s difficult to narrow down one’s beliefs due to the sheer volume of options, choices, corridors. Due to this, it’s not always easy to believe in either fate, or in choice. Does every little turn in the road, chosen right or left, always lead us to a different place? Is life merely a journey of taken and missed opportunities? “Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage which we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose-garden” (Eliot 13). Or does it not matter which road we take, because in the end, we’ll get to where we need to be?
In Greco-Roman belief, upon your birth your life was unraveled, measured, and cut by the Moirae, or the Three Fates. Klotho spun the thread of life, Lakhesis, “alloter of lots,” measured the thread, and Atropos, “she who cannot be turned,” made the final cut (Hesiod). The very fact that the goddess who made the final choice “cannot be turned” epitomizes the Greek feelings towards fate: once it was set, it could not be changed. There was no changing of your stars in Greece—in fact, if you attempted to defy the will of the gods, your afterlife in Hades was much worse than the everyman, thanks to the unforgivable sin of hubris.
However, despite the general inflexibility of fate in Greece, choice was not entirely dismissed. For instance, see our good friend Oedipus from Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus. When he was a baby, Oedipus was exposed, left to the elements with his ankles bolted, because his parents, king and queen of Thebes, had been told by the Oracle of Delphi that Oedipus would grow to kill his father and marry his mother. This is where the irony sets in, as we all know the horrifying ending—Oedipus does commit all of these, but only because, as a consequence of being abandoned, he did not recognize his true parents. If his parents had not tried to change their fate—if they hadn’t committed hubris—everything would have been prevented. Oedipus is also the ultimate example of the transformation caused by a particularly life-altering epiphany: at the moment of his pure realization, nothing at all in his life could ever go back, he would never be given the peace of forgetfulness until the river Lethe, even though he gouged out his eyes to avoid seeing what his life had become (Sophocles).
The question remains: would any of this had ever happened if one choice had changed, if Oedipus had taken a different road? Would these epiphanies ever have been reached, and are we better for reaching them? For the Greeks, their idea of epiphany was centered in true metamorphosis, which is the ultimate epiphany: even the physical self is altered after this epic comprehension. However, outside of the Greek myths, us everyday beings prefer that this realization is not accompanied by being turned into a tree, as in the myth of Daphne, or by the horrific knowledge of Oedipus: “Fate has a terrible power. You cannot escape it by wealth or war” (Sophocles). The answers to fate and choice may never be answered, and sometimes I need to believe something is meant to be, and sometimes I need to believe that I can change my stars. Perhaps, it comes down to our belief, and how this choice in our mind affects every choice we make, and ultimately, affects our fate.
“No man, against my fate, sends me to Hades.
And as for fate, I'm sure no man escapes it,
Neither a good nor bad man, once he's born.”
(Homer)
NATURE WORTH KNOWING
“People thinking pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it is always trying to please us back.” (Walker)
Occasionally epiphanies come without a warning, and sometimes they are the sought-after moment. One may find it cliché to base your epiphanies on nature: after all, the popularity of climbing and hiking and skiing are all sports that base their adventure on reaching the top of the peak and being amazed by the view. However, man is a part of nature, something that is often forgotten among the sidewalks and ovens and computers. Perhaps we find ourselves on a higher plane, and indeed capable of the sophisticated thought that produces epiphanies, but often events that are completely natural inspire this unparalleled moment.
Several Decembers ago, after months of stress and lack of motivation, my beloved dog, still a puppy then, went missing. I bundled up, scared for her and angry to be going out in the cold, and headed around our neighborhood, searching. It was a freezing evening, just before the New Year, and I was tired of the cold, the snow, and just tired of everything. Christmas had been particularly stressful, between family drama and the process of ending a relationship, reminding me again that the glow of my childhood was over, Santa was no longer real, and I was expected to carry the full burden of the dreaded adult. My feet led me to a lonely trail, bright enough under a sky so clear that seemed close enough, in the winter air, for me to reach up and grab one of the many darts of light. Yet, I was so miserable, I did not even notice this—I merely kept my head down, and kept up my search without a pause to glory in my backdrop.
And there, suddenly, sitting by a rock in the tree-surrounded clearing, I spied my dog. My little puppy, constantly with her hound-nose to the ground, was calmly sitting, looking and breathing in her surroundings. This small dog, hyper and happy, usually in constant movement and activity, had noticed something I had not, or rather, wouldn’t let myself detect. She had perceived the proximity of the stars and the smell of the trees, had found herself a perfect little spot on that frosty evening. There, in that clearing, I realized that I while I had been keeping my feet on the ground, I had forgotten to keep my eyes on the stars, thus trapping my soul. I had forgotten to go outside and be with nature, letting winter be my excuse, losing myself in the discouraging events that kept occurring in my life. And so, there I sat, letting a silly puppy dog teach me the value of sitting, thinking, in the outside.
It was not until that later summer when I finally, truly, realized something in my life needed to change. I have a tendency to dig in my heels, and I just would not admit to myself that I needed something else, a new frame of mind, a new place, a new major, something, to change the weariness in my heart. I was working at a ranch near Ennis, Montana, a lonely job as I had the night shift, and was spending much of my time alone. I traveled back to Bozeman every weekend I had, rather than look around and truly know the people working under the same roof. I didn’t realize until later how lonely I had become, but this loneliness was not completely terrible—I loved the absolute freedom of not answering to anyone, of spending my days how I wished. At first, these days went by in a blur of books, and slowly I managed to get somewhat used to my sleep schedule and was able to explore. One day, I went driving around, clicking my camera, hoping to find moments that I could look at later. It was a big field trip day for me—I had a picnic, and I was taking a long way around to see the Red Rocks National Wildlife Refuge. In taking the long way, I found myself on a bumpy, deserted mountain road, that even in my trusty Subaru was difficult to maneuver.
And there, in the middle of a meadow that I had barely noticed, my tire went flat. I was forced to leave the safety of my car and attempt to fix this. I knew the basics of the concept, I knew all the tools to use and had watched this act before, and yet I was at a loss. Panic floated the edges of my mind, like a relentless sliver, and the sliver got a little bigger when I discovered I did not have cell phone service—the horrors! I sat down, in the middle of a dirt road, and had a small little panic attack.
When I finally calmed down, I become aware. I noticed the perfect sky, and the meadow, filled with my favorite wildflower, Indian paintbrush. It was still early in the day, and it really was an ideal summer day. I could see the lake in the distance, full of the trumpeter swans the park is famous for, and for some reason, I was composed. Words floated to my mind, words from Walt Whitman, from a poem I did not realize I had taken anything from. The first line was: "But where is what I started for so long ago? And why is it yet unfound?" I realized how clear everything was in this moment, how everything seemed far away and insignificant in the face of this great wonder around me, and how I had been distancing myself from the lucidity for a long time, out of fear or obstinacy I didn’t know. I realized I had stopped looking for my epiphanies, for my life. The other Whitman words that entered my brain were: “I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.” Which is exactly what I was doing when, moments or hours later, I cannot say, a nice family happened by a fixed my poor job of attaching my spare to the Subaru.
I didn’t realize what these moments were at in their present instant, although I had a vague idea they were “eureka!” moments. I took me several years to really learn what was summed up one day in class in a few words: there is no story worth telling without strife, without conflict (M. Sexson). There is no light without the dark, there is not joy without the pain. “Every moment of light and dark is a miracle” (Whitman). This is true in nature, in the true reason for my personal epiphanies. I went out into the natural world, when I was dark in a lost wood (to paraphrase Dante) and nature showed me what I needed to know, even if it took awhile for the reason to get through my hard skull.
Nature itself is the ultimate example of the light in the dark. The cycles of nature, the rhythm, is based on endings and beginnings, “in my beginning is my end” (Eliot 32). The only way there is ever beauty in the world, is for something else to end. The only way to achieve the epiphany, whether it be a wondrous epiphany or one that means you’re losing something precious, you need an ending to get to this moment. The endings of nature provide these “wow!” moments, the miniature, everyday epiphanies that happen all around us.
Walter Pater and his conclusion to the Renaissance is one the most prominent works we read this semester in my mind. Pater explores the physical thought, and the physical world, and reminds us all of the magic in the everyday: “Like the elements of which we are composed, the action of these forces extends beyond us: it rusts iron and ripens corn. Far out on every side of us those elements are broadcast, driven in many currents; and birth and gesture and death and the springing of violets from the grave are but a few out of ten thousand resultant combinations.”
MEMORY BE GREEN
“To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour.”
(Blake)
A level of epiphany is inspired by memory, and nature can be a great catalyst for memory. Nature and its cycles, while completely unpredictable, is also one of the most reliable things in this world. The falling of the leaves, every year, without a doubt, can always stir up a little memory of a long-ago time. Personally, many natural moments can inspire the memory of so many things. The shooting of a star reminds me of a long-ago night under comets in Yellowstone; the smell of wheat reminds me of my Nebraskan great-grandfather; the taste of coconut brings back the coconut ice-cream shacks on the edges of Ecuador. Gary Snyder, one of the Beat poets, explores this idea of memory and nature in his poetry:
“Last night watching the Pleiades,
Breath smoking in the moonlight,
Bitter memory like vomit
Choked my throat.”
Perhaps what would be a beautiful moment is taken up by the pain of memory. However, this moment, while full of pain, would also not necessarily be an epiphany without this memory, again reiterating that the joy would be much less if there was no pain, the light wouldn’t be as bright without the night.
Memory can be an incredible catalyst for epiphanies: seeing what we once were, seeing how we’ve changed, seeing others who’ve left their footprints long ago, can still change the moment and aid in the search for that peak moment.
"Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!"
(Wordsworth)
THE LAST BEST GIFT
“Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.”
(Eliot 14)
Whether the moment is an epiphany or a complete metamorphosis, it is the way of our lives, our individual sandglasses of time, that the moment will end. “All that live must die, passing through nature into eternity” (Hamlet). Nature, our foundation, continues as well, the cycles progress, the leaves dance in spring and fall in autumn, the young girl ages in mind and soul and face, (except for those cheeks that refuse to shed that baby fat) and loses some dreams while finding others, her words move on the page as the sun sets and the sun rises.
“I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again” (Homer).
The epiphanic moment is over…now we have circled back to fate, and choice. We must choose, choose to immediately search for the next epiphany, mourn the old, or try our best and keep living as life sees fit. With the miracle of the epiphany, we are given a gift, small compared to the epiphany, but, like Ratty and Mole, we are given a “last best gift.” We are given are given forgetfulness, usually a symbol of age, usually a negative symbol, but in the case of an epiphany, can be very helpful. Our lives do not begin and end with the epiphanies, we must continue on, and see what other wonders nature has in store for us. We are given “A…little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the water...and with its soft touch [comes] instant oblivion. For this is the last best gift…the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives" (Grahame).
SOURCES
Blake, William. “Auguries of Innocence.” 1863.
Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. 1943.
Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. 1908.
Homer. The Iliad. circa 800 BC.
Hesiod. Theogony. Circa 700 BC.
Pater, Walter. The Renaissance. 1868.
Sexson, Michael. Everyday Genius. January-May 2010.
Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. circa 1600.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Circa 1601.
Shakespeare, William. Midsummer Night’s Dream. Circa 1596.
Snyder, Gary. “An Autumn Morning in Shokoku-ji.” 1959.
Socrates. The Three Theban Plays. Circa 492 BC.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. 1982.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. 1892.
Wordsworth, William. “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.” 1798.
TITLES:
Voice of the Hidden Waterfall: T.S. Eliot
Nature Worth Knowing: Henri Poincare
Memory Be Green: William Shakespeare, Hamlet
The Last Best Gift: Kenneth Grahame
