Time Passages

By Michael Nicolella

Physical memory sometimes seems the most enduring sort. Diesel fumes, rain, coffee, songs, humid summer days and such things mark the passage of time, through their constancy and a certain immutability. I find myself looking back over a year distinguished by personal conflict, a year when I graduated from a small rural University and moved to Manhattan. The sorts of things I now do every day have introduced me to a wonderful variety of people. Interacting with the actions and half-formed thoughts of people has been a change from reading and discussing the encodings of typeface on a page, usually while camping or fishing.

I have remained involved with current faculty and students of my alma mater and have taken an interest in some alumni affairs. Like many places, my old school seems stuck in time, but in several conflicting ways: living there for four years I have known conservative trustees, students defined by ambition, a strong science and engineering program, a faculty as individualistic as the humanities fields currently are throughout America. The school is in central Pennsylvania, where substantial numbers of the local population are Mennonite, Amish, or other Brethren of the Plain Sects, and campus life features lovely old buildings that reflect the history of Pennsylvania, modern learning equipment, expensive jeeps, and the sort of social life that one would expect. My time there oscillated between optimism and ennui and I remain surprised by how much that small place does not actually seem much apart from my other experiences.

A thought I often have while hiking in the woods, or when frustrated, or while satisfied with something, is, "Does the fire count its coals?" It is not the sort of question that demands an answer but it remains interesting to me. During long beer-fueled conversations about the nature of knowledge I would ask, "Well regardless of what you just said, is it knowledge when you burn your hand? While expecting it? Not expecting it?" People's reactions to this question always seem indicative of their temperament. The question could probably be asked several ways.

My current involvement with the University has exposed me to several conflicts having to do with the various mindsets that are involved with the institution. Theme parties, social organizations, teams and societies all frame for themselves various ideas about their situations, ideas that can be called myths, or prejudices, or worldviews, or values, or some such specification, and these are all continually adapting to each other without anyone realizing it. Arguments and agreements hinge on things that often seem arcane, mysterious, or whimsical; people there always seemed bound by a common inchoate discontent, amongst other things.

I cannot give sole credit to myself for this question of the fire and its coals, for it is influenced by a poem I have committed to memory, Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare.

That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie.
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed by that which it was nourish'd by. 

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

It is odd that this poem about loss, written along with the other sonnets to a lovely youth of indeterminate sex, should be my strongest memory or association with that place that looked beautiful in all sorts of weather. But, perhaps when I smell coffee, I think of the place, and begin to think of other things.

About our correspondent:

-Michael Nicolella studied literature and studio art while in college.