On all sides of the dining hall figures of importance bore down upon us, robed men, former scholars,wardens, sirs, bishops, and ‘Jacob Hall—rope dancer and acrobat’ who was more our thing.
At Cambridge, Steve Casey was pointing with his fork when suddenly the doors to the dining hall were flung over and in marched a dozen male students. They formed a line on the far side of the hall and then turning to face us, raised three loud cheers and each drank down his pitcher of beer, banged them down empty, and, like that, left the hall in a tidy line, their faces filled with accomplishment.
What was all that about?
The Professors looked up from the table or wherever they had turned their thoughts for the duration of the episode and plied us with polite and easy questions—
where were we from?
how were we enjoying England?
had we seen Buckingham Palace?
A thin-faced Classics Professor cracking open a hard-boiled egg with the back of a teaspoon, turned to O’Sullivan: ‘Ah, yes, your war dance. Are you aware that it bears an uncanny likeness to Achilles’ war cry, you know, in the opera,
Priam?’
O’Sullivan did not know that.
But that wasn’t all that we didn’t know. At Oxford and Cambridge there were inscriptions with Roman numerals that we could not decipher, bits of ancient language chipped out of rock that we did not recognise, statues, busts, columns, and life-like figures from stories that we either did not know or had only half-heard.
Our industry was football and experiments with space.
What we knew
what we understood
had no beautiful language at its service
lacked for artists and sculptors
what we knew was intimate
as instinct or memory
Our knowledge hinged on the word ‘like’.
We could say that, that tree there
is like
our beech
or that woman’s eye
caught between secrecy
and full disclosure
is sloped
like
a fig
Or we could say ‘like’
when we needed time to think
what it was exactly
that needed explanation
‘Like’ was the hinge
on which unknowingness swung into light
we could say ‘like’
when we meant ‘imagine this’
For example, Billy Stead describing our ‘pleasure principle’ to a newspaperman—
to glide outside a man is
like
pushing on a door
and coming through
to a larger world
a glorious feeling
like
science
sweet
immaculate
truth
Space was our medium
our play stuff
we championed the long view
the vista
the English settled for the courtyard
The English saw a thing
we saw the space inbetween
The English saw a tackler
we saw space either side
The English saw an obstacle
we saw an opportunity
The English saw a needle
we saw its mean eye
The English saw a tunnel
we saw a circular understanding
The formality of doorways caused the English to stumble into oneanother and compare ties
while we sailed through like the proud figureheads we were
The English were preoccupied with mazes
we preferred the lofty ambition of Invercargill’s streets
Billy Stead laughed up at the ceiling. He’d been making these points to the newspaperman and had just thrown in Invercargill to see if he could get the hometown into the Cambridge newspaper. Now, at the behest of the reporter, he set about describing the various character of space—
the come-hither appeal of that space between the Plimsoll and the ever-flattering surface of the ocean
the upturned wagering ends of the turf between Billy Wallace’s sprint for the corner flag and the diagonal run of Billy’s opponent desperate to shut down the space
there was the dare of the tightroper who of necessity imagines air to be solid
there was the fox outside Cambridge which he’d seen turn and run this way and that, in and out of the hounds pursuing it—a life-saving understanding of space instantly lost to memory
there were the trails of a life spent in a valley
and the distance travelled between obscurity and fame
FIVE
There were idle moments
such as
the hour after
At Cambridge, Steve Casey was pointing with his fork when suddenly the doors to the dining hall were flung over and in marched a dozen male students. They formed a line on the far side of the hall and then turning to face us, raised three loud cheers and each drank down his pitcher of beer, banged them down empty, and, like that, left the hall in a tidy line, their faces filled with accomplishment.
What was all that about?
The Professors looked up from the table or wherever they had turned their thoughts for the duration of the episode and plied us with polite and easy questions—
where were we from?
how were we enjoying England?
had we seen Buckingham Palace?
A thin-faced Classics Professor cracking open a hard-boiled egg with the back of a teaspoon, turned to O’Sullivan: ‘Ah, yes, your war dance. Are you aware that it bears an uncanny likeness to Achilles’ war cry, you know, in the opera,
Priam?’
O’Sullivan did not know that.
But that wasn’t all that we didn’t know. At Oxford and Cambridge there were inscriptions with Roman numerals that we could not decipher, bits of ancient language chipped out of rock that we did not recognise, statues, busts, columns, and life-like figures from stories that we either did not know or had only half-heard.
Our industry was football and experiments with space.
What we knew
what we understood
had no beautiful language at its service
lacked for artists and sculptors
what we knew was intimate
as instinct or memory
Our knowledge hinged on the word ‘like’.
We could say that, that tree there
is like
our beech
or that woman’s eye
caught between secrecy
and full disclosure
is sloped
like
a fig
Or we could say ‘like’
when we needed time to think
what it was exactly
that needed explanation
‘Like’ was the hinge
on which unknowingness swung into light
we could say ‘like’
when we meant ‘imagine this’
For example, Billy Stead describing our ‘pleasure principle’ to a newspaperman—
to glide outside a man is
like
pushing on a door
and coming through
to a larger world
a glorious feeling
like
science
sweet
immaculate
truth
Space was our medium
our play stuff
we championed the long view
the vista
the English settled for the courtyard
The English saw a thing
we saw the space inbetween
The English saw a tackler
we saw space either side
The English saw an obstacle
we saw an opportunity
The English saw a needle
we saw its mean eye
The English saw a tunnel
we saw a circular understanding
The formality of doorways caused the English to stumble into oneanother and compare ties
while we sailed through like the proud figureheads we were
The English were preoccupied with mazes
we preferred the lofty ambition of Invercargill’s streets
Billy Stead laughed up at the ceiling. He’d been making these points to the newspaperman and had just thrown in Invercargill to see if he could get the hometown into the Cambridge newspaper. Now, at the behest of the reporter, he set about describing the various character of space—
the come-hither appeal of that space between the Plimsoll and the ever-flattering surface of the ocean
the upturned wagering ends of the turf between Billy Wallace’s sprint for the corner flag and the diagonal run of Billy’s opponent desperate to shut down the space
there was the dare of the tightroper who of necessity imagines air to be solid
there was the fox outside Cambridge which he’d seen turn and run this way and that, in and out of the hounds pursuing it—a life-saving understanding of space instantly lost to memory
there were the trails of a life spent in a valley
and the distance travelled between obscurity and fame
FIVE
There were idle moments
such as
the hour after
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