Cambridge XII

June 30, 2010

Fabulous dream before waking. We had gone camping in a great stony wilderness beside the sea. In places the stone was carved into grottoes and convolutions by the water; in places humans had driven tunnels and even left sculpture behind to be re-fashioned by the waves. I don’t remember who all was there, but I think a large company of my friends, including DJ and Peg Downes. It was very rough, and the landscape was so irregular it was hard learning your way around, but very beautiful. When you went out on an expedition, the stone would be dry sometimes, sometimes filling with the tide. I could run very fast over the stones and through the gathering waters. I noted this because I have never run fast in the waking world. Above the rough coast was a sort of parkland, where the less adventurous dwelt. We were in a huge grotto, cool and echoing, just above the tide. One evening coming back through the parkland, I saw a disturbance. I thought a kestrel was attacking a little red dog, but as I watched, the dog fled away for its life, and revealed that it and the kestrel both had been attacking a grouse. The kestrel had it to itself now, and was stabbing it with long claws. As it did, baby grouse scuttled away from where they had been hidden in their mother’s feathers.

Second trip to the Fitzwilliam, and second clash with the door guards. As before, we triumphed, though if by defiance the first time, but subterfuge the second. I sent part of the group ahead, so they were in before we were detected. When they sent us around to the other entrance to book with the group supervisor, we again spread ourselves out so we didn’t look so many, aided in our caper by a couple dozen rowdy Italian students who appeared at the same moment. The important thing, in any case, is not to do what one is told. The Fitzwilliam has an important collection, but the guards behave like six year olds determined to rule their corner of the playground. Found the Rothschild gallery, full of almost unimaginably beautiful things from the Middle Ages. Found “Orpheus Charming the Birds and the Beasts.”

Cambridge is forty feet deep in the perfume of the lime trees. It is an altogether blessed thing. Because of the way their blossoms cascade, they look jittery when you glance at them, like an old fashioned TV whose picture will not stop rolling.

Hiked for old time’s sake to 134 Milton Road. The journey seems less than the winter I had to make it twice a day. Much has changed, whole buildings, whole blocks, and though there were hints of old feelings, the nostalgia quotient was low, and I suppose that was well. My winter in Cambridge forty years ago was revolutionary. It wrenched me from whatever path I had been on and set me–rightly-- on the one that led to this spot and this time. I have always done things very gradually, or so it seems to me, and most of the life that started one night when I crossed Jesus Green by starlight manifested slowly, to many invisibly. My parents thought the term likely a waste of money, I talked about it so little and so guardedly. But I know what happened and what the consequences were. I do regret not moving faster, harder, with less compromise, but given the circumstances of my life, it’s hard to see how that could have been done without major upheaval and explanations beyond my willingness to explain. Who knows what actually has come of it? If it was all a futility, it was at least a futility more genuinely my own than what I had been headed for at my birth.