Going Back to Princeton, Forty-Five Years Later

                    Journal: Going Back to Princeton, Forty-Five Years Later   

                                                12/22/15

    I recently traveled to New Jersey with Tina and Kelly as a pre-Christmas visit to my Mother-in-law, Che.  I do love the gritty reality of New Jersey: the dry brown leaves swirling in the cold December air on gray, cracked sidewalks and brown lawns.  No artificially manicured venues  here.   I would have a hard time finding even one leaf out of place in our new, green North Carolina neighborhood.  Even the dirt is different, a wet brown as it should be.  The tortuous back roads on Princeton Pike, away from the diesel smelling racing Route One, inexorably  wind down to a one-lane ancient stone bridge.    Next to this bridge stands a tall crumbling brick wall that reaches down to the trickling creek, the  upper part of the wall in tatters, roughly a third of its top gone, worn by the passage of time, leaving ancient mortar and wind blown gray-brown bricks, probably reaching back hundred’s of years.  The trees, black barren sticks that scratch at the cold gray immutable clouds above call me back in time.  ‘Ineluctable modality of the visible’...and thoughtful days reading literature at Princeton forty-five years ago.  I now feel that I was just playing with my philosophical journey then, toying with time and existentialism.  Abstract concepts to calmly mull over and discuss dispassionately.  With aequanimity unearned.   Hours lounging  with new found best friends at 3 a.m. never believing that I would someday visit these empty silent dorm halls almost a half a century later.  

   My routine the I eagerly await is the same on these infrequent visits.  I get up early, attentive and expectant,  and travel the Princeton campus alone.  It is my own private Walden.  I am not fooled by the stately buildings and architecture, the occasional passersby.  This place, this foundation, is my Walden Pond, a spiritual lodestone that leads me to the deeper, solid parts of my soul; my nature, my sky, my thoughts reaching to the stars. The solid slates of gray stone on the sidewalks that connect the Philosophy with History departments, English with Math, poetry with biology, make me feel invincible, unchanged, strong  as I slowly stride ahead.  I open the heavy oaken door and enter a lecture hall.  

     I am thankful that it is a Monday as I slowly climb the long, winding, monumental stone stairs of McCintosh 1.  I  absorb every treasured smell, every dim shaft of light from the colored windows where baren trees call to me.   The vaulted oaken paneled walls are dusky in the Winter’s light.  I hear incongruous  loud hip hop music coming from the lecture hall one hundred feet above as two other students, teenagers in hooded sweatshirts, run past me up the stairs. I move down the sloping aisle and I sit midway on the right, in front of a lean young  girl with long red hair tied behind her head.  She has a quiet tender smile for me.   A freshman I guess with a large backpack, a thick worn notebook opened in front of her.  She is intently taking notes, copious and nonstop.  There must be over a hundred students scattered throughout the lecture hall, all informal, all quiet, all taking notes with a heart-breaking seriousness and intensity to me.  I wonder what they will remember of this experience decades from now; the professor in his suit and tie, his confident tone of authority as he matter-of-factly states idea after idea, datum after datum, theory after theory;  his scholarly, thorough approach; the feel of the gray atmosphere, the musty smell of history laden stone, the emotional bond, the connection with their classmates as they strive to know.  There is no laughter or frivolity; all is calm attention and absorption.  To my surprise, there is not one lap-top computer present.  They seem calmly pensive as they digest and record the rapid fire lecture.  The topic?  I turn and look at the freshman girl behind me.  We both smile.  

“What course is this?”  

She leans forward and says quietly, “American History since 1974.”

I tell her, “That’s the year I graduated from here.  I sat right here forty-five years ago.”  She laughs, a smile of compassion on her face.  What I didn’t say but remembered was that all those years ago, I was in this room at a philosophy lecture the evening before I had to defend my thesis in philosophy.  On stage stood the Chairman of the Philosophy Department who would be one of the professors questioning  me the next day.  Next to him stood Angela Davis, a philosopher, existentialist and female activist who had just finished her lecture.  I stood behind her.  Then I asked him something about Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, the topic of my thesis.  Shortly thereafter, I would not be talking about philosophy any longer. 

     I got up and left.  I went to the next lecture hall and stood  sheepishly outside the doorway as a professor expounded on the use of pronouns in Hamlet.  He wanted them to know.  He had much to tell them.   Wandering down the hallway, I passed small preceptor groups, one middle aged balding professor speaking vehemently to the small group who seemed mesmerized, again quietly absorbing his energy and thoughts.  The next lecture hall was on epidemiology and statistics, as far as I could tell.  The black board was filled with a long equation.  I recognized mathematical signs of calculus signs, with many variables written in Greek letters.  A young, vibrant Chinese professor, nonchalant and talkative, smiling, was posing questions to the students about what they would do with this equation.  How about this variable?  The small room seated about forty students.   I made note of the ethnic make-up of the group , proud of the new Princeton that seemed to have started in the 70’s.  There were three African-American students in the second row, two women and one tall man with bushy hair.  They were among the most intent students there and the man raised his hand and posed an intricate question to the professor, who laughed and posed one back at him.  I saw several Asian students, some Latino’s, men and women equally divided, a red haired Caucasian who looked like a lacrosse player as he took notes.

    The last lecture was my favorite, as a philosophy major.  A young man in his thirties with an open collared shirt, baggy gray pants and loafers, a constant smile and an even, kind voice with an Austrian accent was lecturing on the stoics.  He gave historical background to these “powerful, fluent theories” from Chryssusis, one of the leading stoics and  “top ten philoosphers of all time” in his opinion.    He talked of the inertia inherent in emotions according to the stoics, how this contrasted with the thoughts of Plutarch.  He then discussed Plato and Socrates.  He then said, “With that background, let me discuss in detail the arguments that the stoics so amazingly put forward.”  It was getting late and I got up and left.  

     I went down to the Princeton Inn, where I had spent my third and last year at Princeton, holed up in a single room, writing my philosophy thesis .  I went into the downstairs lounge and went into the back room.  It was here I remembered lying on the carpet with friends in the early a.m., talking about philosophy and life before going to see the sun rise.  I had been trying to smoke a pipe, loving the aroma and the professorial look I guess (it lasted one week).  I was talking to one other sophomore girl with long black hair who admired my quest.  She was soft spoken, funny and had an incisive intellect.  I was too naïve to be in love but, looking back, it was pretty close.   She had looked at me and said, “You are going to do so well in life.  I can tell that you are not afraid of people.”   She had borrowed and read my well-worn copy of Walden and handed it back to me with a smile, saying “I read all your “ha’s”…”   which I dotted the entire book, marking the poignant quotes the permeated the whole work.  I found out after Christmas break that she had died in a car accident, her Mother showing up in January, heart broken, grief stricken, weeping, asking us, almost begging us, to talk about her daughter, to share stories of her life.  The opening of the heart, I now realize, is a slow process that unfolds almost imperceptibly.    I absorbed  these moments, almost in deep meditation, as I looked at the couches, the rug, the piano, the windows,  sitting  meditatively in this precious study, almost half a century later.  

    The last thing I did, almost a ritual with me on my infrequent visits to the campus, was to go back to the lecture hall.  I found a blank black board looking out calmly at the empty ancient empty seats, so attentive.   I slowly wrote out the last two stanza’s of my favorite Shakespearean sonnet:

    This though remembers that makes thy love more strong

    To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

        I signed it with my name, class of ’74, and I walked out of the room, the wooden floor sighing, singing under my feet. 

                                                 Glenn Feole