Thursday 11 January 2018

Excising a Piece of a Life.

I discovered tonight that my old high school was demolished a few years ago and rebuilt as a modern academy. I was a little shocked, a little saddened, and the sadness soon turned to indignation.

Willfield High School holds a seat at the top table of my memory bank. My recollections of things which happened there are plentiful; I can envisage all parts of it clearly; I can still smell the aroma of cooked food wafting invitingly down the main corridor at lunchtime; I can see the copy of Hess’s painting The Battle of Tarutino hanging self-importantly over one of the stairwells; I can feel some remnants of the sense of inspiration, excitement and fulfilment which was occasionally evoked there. And I remember the occasional incidence of corporal punishment very vividly indeed. That school was a significant part of my life, and so with its demolition it seems that part of my life has ended and faded into history.

Is that a reasonable way to feel, I ask myself. The several and greatly diverse factors which coalesce to make up a life must include the concrete things like the paths on which we walked, the playing fields on which we competed, and the floors on which we stood for morning assembly. So when those concrete markers, which seemed so permanent and inviolate at the time, are crushed and come to dust, does it mean that part of our life has now ended? I don’t know, but that’s how it feels.

And as my mind ran over the memories, the senses and the mental pictures, they began to turn darker and assume the mantle of something faded and festering. This isn’t quite bereavement, but it seems to belong in the same field of perception.

5 comments:

An Dreoilín said...

It’s strange - I experienced it as well when I realized our family’s crumbling home (and surrounding beautiful land) in Achill was put up for sale by my cousin, who was facing financial hardship at the time. A place our family has called home for as far back as anyone knows - each of The Who-know-how

An Dreoilín said...

(Sorry, Tippercat has discovered that computer keys are fun...but only when the humans are using them, oddly.)

....Who-knows-how-old ruins remnants of shelters to us, our animals. How many generations of us walked those hills or tended those fields? I’m still working on forgiveness and understanding, as well as coming to grips with letting something that feels so sacred go, or at least not take so much of me with it.

JJ said...

This could prompt some deep - and probably unresolvable - existential rambling. Is life only the present moment, the past being gone and the future not yet created? But what about the argument that there is no such thing as the present moment since time flows continuously? Or is a life a complex tapestry, built up fabric by fabric from birth to death? And what about those who say that there is no such thing as time, that all existence - past and future - is already in place and we merely perceive ourselves walking through it? And is the reality we think we perceive not real at all, but a kind of illusion or virtual reality game which we can't see beyond?

But no, the post confined itself to the conventional view, and you and I seem to have something in common as usual. And maybe it's as well that we take such a view, because then we can have classically cutesy delights like Tippercat to appreciate.

An Dreoilín said...

Naturally I don't have the answers to any of those - nor do I ever expect to have it - but I like what they ask, and what they make me consider. Maybe that's the point in itself.

JJ said...

One of the classes of people with whom I have a great problem is the type who is convinced that they do have the answers, and then preach their 'knowledge' ad nauseum or even commit the most unspeakable acts in the name of it.