the presence of greatness

Last week I wrote about being born in the right (or wrong) time, but this week I'm going to write about place. Where you are, anywhere you are, that place is sacred. Just look around you...

I used to think I was going to find what I was looking for somewhere out there in the world, somewhere far from home. I wasn't sure what I was seeking, but I knew I needed to gain experience if I wanted to write, to be a writer. And what I sought surely wasn’t here. It couldn't be nearby. It had to be out there. Here: I had a to-do list, my routines, my usual worries. Out there: I’d be free of my routine, free of my rote thoughts, free of my every day blinders. Out there: I’d have epiphanies and think in new ways and let go of all the little unhelpful things that occupied my mind. I knew, just knew, that to be creative I had to go far from home.

So, right out of college I moved to LA. When that wasn’t far enough, I went to visit my brother in Switzerland. It was sitting lakeside in Lucerne, and reading non-Catcher-in-the-Rye Salinger, and knowing that I had certainly gone far enough, when I realized I was never going to go far enough to become a completely different person. Oh, the Places You'll Go had lied to me, sort of. My issue: wherever I went, me and my brain tagged along. Don't get me wrong, traveling can be fun, and even illuminating, but it wasn't where I personally was going to find the answers I wanted.

After almost a decade on the hunt, life called me back to good ol' Pittsburgh.

After all my travels I ended up back in the city where I started. Like Odysseus seeing Ithaca again, I was what changed and I saw my hometown with fresh eyes. Maybe this place I had been born into, been gifted, had been special all along. I wasn't yet convinced.

While reading The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro just the other day I stumbled on this nugget of truth:

And yet tonight, in the quiet of this room, I find that what really remains with me from this first day’s travel is not Salisbury Cathedral, nor any of the other charming sights of this city, but rather that marvelous view encountered this morning of the rolling English countryside. Now I am quite prepared to believe that other countries can offer more obviously spectacular scenery. Indeed, I have seen in encyclopedias and the National Geographic Magazine breathtaking photographs of sights from various corners of the globe; magnificent canyons and waterfalls, raggedly beautiful mountains. It has never, of course, been my privilege to have seen such things at first hand, but I will nevertheless hazard this with some confidence: the English landscape at its finest – such as I saw it this morning – possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess. It is, I believe, a quality that will mark out the English landscape to any objective observer as the most deeply satisfying in the world, and this quality is probably best summed up by the term ‘greatness’. For it is true, when I stood on that high ledge this morning and viewed the land before me, I distinctly felt that rare, yet unmistakable feeling – the feeling that one is in the presence of greatness. We call this land of ours Great Britain, and there may be those who believe this a somewhat immodest practice. Yet I would venture that the landscape of our country alone would justify the use of this lofty adjective.

And yet what precisely is this ‘greatness’? Just where, or in what, does it lie? I am quite aware it would take a far wiser head than mine to answer such a question, but if I were forced to hazard a guess, I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it. In comparison, the sorts of sights offered in such places as Africa and America, though undoubtedly very exciting, would, I am sure, strike the objective viewer as inferior on account of their unseemly demonstrativeness.

Okay. It's a matter of with what eyes you choose to see a place. And how much attention you pay to it. Makes sense. The greatest lesson I ever learned about this was when I became enamored with the paintings of Andrew Wyeth. He lived outside of Philadelphia, in Chadds Ford, for much of the year, and then he went and summered in coastal Maine. And over a career that spanned decades, this is what he painted, over and over: the small moments, the places and people he knew. I love his work, his transcendent, minimalist realism, if I could be so bold to define it. The byline from a Philadelphia Enquirer article about Wyeth:

The artist could have gone anywhere to paint anything. Instead, he spent a lifetime contemplating the Kuerner Farm less than two miles from his childhood home.

These various examples convinced me that place is everything. It doesn't have to be your hometown; it just has to be where you are and you have to be willing to notice it. Some places may offer up their "greatness" more readily, but each is sacred in their own way. As I discovered once back in Pittsburgh.

Early on, I complained, in my head, about the apparent downgrade I was experiencing from the natural beauty of the west coast to this stretch of Western PA. Even getting my kayak wet in the Allegheny River came with a touch of sadness. I was doing what I wanted to be doing, but wouldn't it be better to be kayaking somewhere more "amazing?" After I accepted where I was, and kept kayaking, I started to notice the greatness of the two-mile stretch of the Allegheny right down the hill from where I lived: sycamores and willows and cottonwoods, a heronry at the tip of the island closest to the cement lock and dam, bald eagles and gulls and kingfishers. The daily changes of current, river height, wind and sun. This place started to feel special.

Then, one day, as I paddled, a few tree swallows playfully dove and flew around me, performing loops and corkscrews. One of them skimmed across the glassine surface of the river and opened its beak. It cut the water like a scalpel, leaving a faint, shallow stripe of disruption. It had taken a drink while on the go. It probably did this so many times each and every day, but I was there to witness it just this once. Now what about that moment, that place, isn't sacred?

indoor animal is curated by a human: Tim Papciak. On Mondays, he shares one link to one music video to help spark creativity in himself and in other creative types. On Thursdays, he recommends a book, movie, show, art piece, or link to some dusty corner of the internet that he believes either 1.) adds to the human experience, or 2.) serves as a coping mechanism in the year 2025. Note: this is not, and never will be, self-help content.