The Five Stages of My Life

Kenko’s Essays in Idleness, Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees and my coming to Ithilien have led me to reflect broadly upon my life. And upon reflection, I have divided my existence to this point into five distinct periods: the Time of Childhood, the Time of Tumult, the Time of the Fixed Ambition, the Time of the Wanderings and this new period, the Time of Quiet Solitude.

The Time of Childhood (Birth to age 13)

The Time of Childhood was a time of Chaos Paradisiacal. Very little was ordered, determined, fixed or even definitively felt. But ah! What a power this time has still upon my imagination! This is what e.e. cummings must have meant in “Chansons Inoccents I” (“In Just- / spring”) by ‘mud-luscious’ and ‘puddle wonderful’ and by ‘eddieandbill’ and ‘betttyandisbel’. If not a time entirely innocent, Childhood was certainly a time more innocent than now, when the world was bounded as a playground and ‘around the block’ was an adventure, when the monsters kept safely to my dreams and dragons could be slain by a virtuous knight.

But Childhood did not last, could not last. The Awakening comes, comes like the ‘goat-footed / balloonMan’ whistling ‘far and wee.’ And we do come running. Yes. We come running from hop-scotch and marbles and jump-rope and piracies.

The Time of Tumult (ages 13 – 17)

Then came like a barbarian onslaught the Time of Tumult. A time of fear and foolishness. A time of Chaos Unbound. A time without boundaries or borders or maps. A time lost in the woods, when the crows have eaten the crumbs. A violent time. A time of clowns – clowns with sharp eyes and cigarettes. The time of the ‘balloonMan’. The frantic time. There is no narrative purpose or structure to this time. Vague, fantastic images dominate my memory of it. First but unfulfilling loves. Geometry. Basketball. A few fights. My first kill. My first kiss. Video arcades. The Mall. The Catcher in the Rye. That time behind the school. Wads of gum beneath the bleachers.

And then, slowly, a time of something like a settling in – reason gaining sway.

The Time of Fixed Ambition (ages 17 – 25)

Out of the Tumult arose the Time of Fixed Ambition. This was the time of Chaos Defied. This was the time of plans and purposes.

Somehow, despite the Tumult, I had distinguished myself. I was gifted. I was going somewhere: valedictorian, student body president, not the captain of the team but not on the bench either, most likely to succeed. I was going somewhere, so I at least needed to know where that was.

The Fixed Ambition had three sequential iterations – the political, the religious, and the intellectual. The political was brief lived and based upon little of substance. The religious set in a little more deeply and lasted a little longer. I would go to seminary. I would save the world. I would dispense the body and blood. I would take the reigns of the Kingdom of God and we would bring it to earth.

Finally, realizing that my future did not lie along that path, I turned with real resolve and conviction to the final iteration – intellectual conquest.

I finished my undergraduate studies one year early. Graduate school came easy. I finished my Masters Degree in literature and entered a PhD program at a respected university. I completed my coursework with many accolades and several publications. Ah, to see my name in print! What intoxication!

I prepared to write my dissertation. It was to be an interdisciplinary masterpiece. The launching point for a stellar academic career. Faculty from several departments and even separate colleges were brought in for advice. I rented a small house in the suburbs several miles from the university. Eight months of rigorous study, including traveling abroad to prestigious libraries. Six months of disciplined writing. A carefully directed revision. It was brilliant. I prepared for my defense.

And then … the Crisis.

If I completed the defense of my dissertation, if I sought a tenure-track position at a major university, if I stopped renting and put my name to a mortgage…

Something would die. Something would die forever.

Had I never realized this, I could have gone forward and not looked back with much regret. But I did realize it. I realized it clearly. And this something, this something that lived in me but would die forever if I continued on my path … I simply could not kill it. Not knowingly. I would never have been able to live with myself.

I slipped a note of apology into my advisor’s mailbox, found a fellow graduate student to pick up my lease, sold my car and left without providing anyone with a forwarding address.

The Time of Wanderings (ages 25 – 32)

The Time of Wanderings was a strange time, an odd mixture of all the previous epochs of my existence. Chaos … perhaps … Chaos Recognized. Like childhood, but not. Like adolescence, but not. Sharing something with the spirit of my ambitions, but without a definite aim and certainly without an address.

First I traveled the United States for a year and a half – on foot, by bike, in a car when I could get one and until I needed to sell it to eat. I spent a year in California (it was then that my mother died) followed by a year in Idaho and Montana. I went to Europe and the Near East for two years.

Wherever I was, I worked whatever job was available when I needed money. I worked in machine shops, coffeehouses and cattle yards. I picked fruit for day wages. I helped alfalfa farmer buck his hay. I worked in a library one summer.

I slept on the beach, on benches, under bridges, in the homes of kindly Rooted Folk, in the temporary flats of other Seekers-Errant.

Finally, returning from Israel, I rented an upstairs studio apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota.

And somewhere during that time in St. Paul, the spirit of the Wanderings gave up its ghost.

The Time of Quiet Solitude (32 - ?)

I suppose coming out here to Ithilien is probably considered by anyone who still thinks they know me to be yet another wandering. But I know that’s not the case. So would Mr. P, Jonah, Cyrus, Graham and any of the others. Maybe even Camilla. They would recognize the difference. It doesn’t feel the same and I am not in the same phase of my existence. In fact, even during the Wanderings, I did not have in me the true spirit of a Seeker-Errant. I was following the Quest, yes, but I never found in Seeker-Errantry an actual calling, a profession – as others I know did. I think I was always looking for Ithilien.

Can I say I will be here till I die? No.

Can I say how long I will be here? No.

Can I say that I won’t finally end up a Seeker-Errant or join the brothers in St. Godric’s or even become one with the Rooted Folk? No.

To answer 'Yes' to any of those questions would be to kill that something in me that I sought to keep alive when the Wanderings began. How can I know what I will be in five years? How can I know what five years will have taught me about questing and wisdom and awakening and mission and purpose? And how can I know that at the end of five years I won't have to leave to keep that something alive? To say I could know would be to renounce myself.

But this is the Time of Quiet Solitude. For however long it lasts.