A year ago on Round and Square (12 May 2013)—Flowers Bloom: Bloom's Emile I
In the spirit of the graduation season, I am posting the remarks that I gave, as a tag-team production with my colleague Ann Davies, over eleven years ago, at the 2002 Baccalaureate Ceremony. It has everything to do with "do-overs," as this series is called. Ann and I both spoke of the way graduation comes 'round every single spring in a never-ending cycle. Our "lecture" was a team effort, and Ann made clear that, although we loved having "you," it was time for you to go. This is not as terrible as it sounds, she argued. These remarks are my own follow-up and I echo her sentiments. In a nutshell, it goes like this: "We love you...and it's time to leave (but in a good way)." The specifics come from my spring seminar that year. It was called "The World in Miniature," and investigated Daoist ideas of living in tiny gourd worlds—trust me. The handout is now lost, but use your imagination when it comes to toad vapors and ascetics in gourds. Really. That is what college is all about—living in a little gourd world and reappearing in the big cosmos to do great things.
In the (Heart) Mind’s Eye
Reflections on Spiritual
and Academic Intensity,
Space , Place, Learning,
Invention, and Memory
(Not to Mention Seasonal
Migration and Lifelong Peregrination)
Baccalaureate Remarks
Beloit College
11 May 2002
As Ann Davies and I discussed our baccalaureate remarks over the last few weeks (and with renewed
urgency yesterday morning at Bagels and More), I kept returning to images from my own writing
and teaching—the world of early Chinese thought. The first thing I realized was
that in Chinese philosophy, the character xin (心) means both heart and mind,
interwoven. Thinking and emoting are one. My remarks, then begin with my
personal title—In the (Heart) Mind’s Eye.
Two more images came to mind as I
thought about our four years together here...and your impending departure. Early
Daoists spoke of, wrote about, and painted sheltered spaces, worlds in
miniature—enclosures where they would be safe to ponder.
That’s what we have
been doing here in many ways. We have been living in our own little gourd
world, as you can see from your handout, but now you are ready to move on. The
image the early Daoists would give is that you are about to sprout feathers and
fly off to the island of Penglai in the eastern seas, where you will live among
the immortal bird people forever and ever. The actual location for you may be Chicago, Richmond,
Terre Haute, or Fargo but, at least from Beloit’s perspective, you have
achieved a similar kind of immortality.
I spent a good deal of time
thinking about these matters, as I am wont to do, and I made a number of
connections between your graduations and my spring seminar on worlds in
miniature as expressed by French scholars of China. The intrepid seniors who
took the class will immediately recognize these themes, but I hope that I can show the rest of you
several ways in which French and Chinese scholars have already anticipated your
graduation, and our desire always to keep you in our (heart) mind’s eye. Beloit
is our little gourd. Ann has, quite perspicaciously, spoken of “receptivity” and “capaciousness” as the
best that we offer in our educational experiences.
Take the whole world (and,
with the range of educational opportunities here, we do “take the whole world”)
and compress it into a small space. Voilà—a miniature. It could be a gourd; it
could be our little college. You have, perhaps, been the happy little Daoists
in your illustrations. But, as Ann told you just moments ago, it’s time for you
to leave. We have others coming. How do we reconcile these two ideas? How do we say that we loved sharing our
little gourd with you, but the pattern is going to start all over again this
autumn, and you’re not invited?
It sounds brutal, but it’s
not, really. It requires a paradigm shift of sorts to see how it works, and how
we can love you all but then give that love to others in a kind of academic
cyclicality. Some of the world’s best articulators of these rhythms of movement
and emotion happen to be named Marcel. The French social theorists Marcel Mauss
and his good friend Marcel Granet, writing in the early twentieth century,
spent a good portion of their lives trying to understand these ideas. In their
writings, the concepts of lieux saints and temps saints are key—spiritually charged
places and times. Not all times and spaces are equal, and few are more charged
with intensity than those you will occupy (and pass through) today and tomorrow.
Space, place, memory, and imagination—your self-inventions, your “successes,”
your “failures”—all merge into one at this most “spiritually” intense time in
the academic world.
But it is not enough to
create “charged” spaces in isolation. It must, as any good French scholar of
China would note, be recreated, better yet, reinvented. Marcels Mauss and
Granet weren’t satisfied that such events as our baccalaureate were in
themselves charged. A single event never can be. It is only through their
repetition every spring. Every spring we reshape time, space, and memory. Let
me set the scene. The Chinese word for “society” is shehui (社會), literally
“gathering at the grain shrine.” It
combines the ideas of gathering and repetition to create a deeper kind of
communal bond. We bring these powerful themes together as we gather each spring
at the chapel on Saturday and again at Middle College (middle is the fifth
direction to the Chinese) on Sunday. Every graduation weekend.
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| [g] Gourd Entrance RF |
Through such rituals we
recreate our connections and reshape both time and space. Time begins again
every graduation weekend. To our Marcels, every spring you will be back, as
something bigger…even immortal…in our little academic gourd world. In this
sense, you will always be twenty-two—every spring, year after year. It has ever
been thus, at least since 1846…or the beginning of time. What we are doing, in
short, is dependent on individual connections, those you and we will remember
throughout our lives.
It’s much more than that, though. There will always be
teachers and students gathering at this great grain shrine on the stateline,
and we are a part of that in powerful ways that go beyond any single experience
in our lives. So, it’s not just about “us.”
We reinvent ourselves and our college every spring in a kind of
emotional, intellectual, and cosmic rhythmicality. Lest you worry about your
individuality being lost in all of this cosmic replication, let me assure you
as well that you won’t be forgotten. How much better that we will also remember
and are remembered as spring begins to merge into summer every single year.
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| [h] Toad Vapor RF |
*** ***
If you look at the
illustration at the bottom of the page, you will see my wishes for you. If you
look carefully on the left, you will see a Daoist, with a cane, carrying off
his gourd as he journeys. On the right, you will see a three-legged toad
breathing immortality vapor onto our Daoist. May both of those things come
together in your lives. Carry your gourds with you as you walk in the vapors of
longevity toads. Every spring, you will all graduate again, and you will remain
forever in our (heart) mind’s eye.
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| [i] Ich bin ein Be-Gourder RF |
