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Preston Lee

Professor Lisa Hale

ENGL 311

16 February 2018

Here Already

Nights I feel I’ve lost something find me wandering campus, but after the professors and

the administrators and the humble students - after each has hung up his cap and gown for the

night, so also do the buildings, exposing a promising landscape of forbidden nooks and crannies.

I hunt for the best ones, my many nights spent this way having taught me where to search and

what comprises the good spots.

The first criterion is obviously that they be uninhabited; Second, that they be quiet; Third,

comfortable; fourth, beautiful; fifth, inspiring; sixth, seventh and so on. These are not so much in

order of importance, but rather how observable and concrete. In fact, there is no telling how long

the list really is. Number thirty seven may indeed be the most necessary and quintessential

characteristic of a good hiding spot but, considering it’s ​that​ far down the list, is likely totally

beyond my ability to articulate. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say this is what I’m looking

for. It’s the reason I often abandon the most appealing hideouts without even trying them; I only

learn by looking, and once I’ve found the spot, there is no more need to look. You’re already

here.

So I wrench on doors, peek around corners and in shadows, listening to muzak and letting

my thoughts wander further than my feet. When I know it’s time to go home, it isn’t because I

have found ​it,​ but because I’m able to feel like I’ve lost ​it​ a little less. I’m not disappointed. This
  
 
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scene has played out enough times to temper my expectations. My purposes were to gather my

thoughts, explore a new place, get my blood pumping with a brisk walk, maybe even see the odd

elusive night creature, but never to find​ it.

Then imagine my surprise when I did.

***

Every staircase begs the question of what lies in wait at the top. If there weren’t

something interesting up there, they would have stopped building it earlier. And the longer the

staircase, the better the prize, for it’s a lot harder to build the 8th flight of stairs than the first.

Climb enough steps and you will find this half nugget of wisdom: Don’t build eight flights of

stairs unless you have something worth climbing eight flights of stairs to put up there.

The most stairs I ever climbed at once were the 1300 steps up a small mountain to see

and touch the golden Tiger Temple in Krabi Thailand. Miles off I spotted its glint in the morning

sun, daring me to brave its heights, conquer it, a call to adventure - a call it seems which could

only​ be heard from a great distance. The closer I got the more I lost it in the din of the

surrounding jungle. I wouldn’t say the temple was ​disappointing​ up close, but to stand at arms

reach frankly didn’t add much beyond what could be gained with binoculars from the bottom. It

was no more beautiful up close than it was less beautiful from far off.

But the view! For days in all directions it stretched beyond language into the sea. There

are pictures in little travel guides and brochures, but they miss the point even more than words.

Aching muscles, shortness of breath and the fear of falling off are as integral to that view as the

distant ocean. It couldn’t be any other way. 1300 steps later I found the other half of the nugget:

Staircases will often justify themselves if you let them.

  
 
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***

That I only had to climb three flights of stairs was as unexpected as was my finding ​it ​at

all. Yet here ​it​ was, in an upper room dimly lit with floor lighting. I was on the second level, the

balcony, peering down into a small lecture hall. Though especially ordinary in every apparent

material respect, the dull classroom inexplicably filled me with awe. Every fixture and old oak

desk, every bookshelf and bust and all the gentle gradients of light draped across the walls

invited me to sit and contemplate. Who was I to refuse? The concerns of a world of people

clearly did not apply here.

Every room I have ever been in has demanded something from me. Pay attention to its

professor, read its books, meet its people, follow its rules. Clearly this room was capable of such

demands. Students made their daily pilgrimage here to subject themselves to the weight of new

ideas, their mental anguish inspiring no mercy, for mercy would have robbed them of growing

pain, a vital step to the view they sought. Instead, rare mercy was granted to unrepentant me.

And what was it like to stand on sacred ground? What happened in the Holy of Holies?

Nothing. A cherubim would have adulterated the knowing silence that room and I shared. No

angel appeared because no angel needed to appear, and this is precisely what characterized the

texture of the air there: Nothing needed to happen. No action, no plan, no goal. You’re already

here. ​There must be some obligation hiding in the shadows waiting to spring itself on my back!

But the shadows were too soft to hide anything here. I sat and waited for a long time or a short

time. It didn’t really matter. Doors transformed into just indents and color patches on the wall.

The world beyond didn’t cease to be, it simply never was. Though the thought never occurred to

me that this room was content to merely exist, the feeling of it did.
  
 
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***

That room doesn’t exist now, for it was defined as much in time as in space. Still I longed

to experience ​it​ again - craving not to crave. When I inevitably found myself knocking at the

threshold once more, the way was certainly shut and gone. Only I was not alone in my rejection.

A small body guitar, with a case too thin to protect it from anything, sat tucked away atop the

three flights of stairs. It’s owner had stashed it for safe keeping with the obvious hope of it

remaining hidden, but we found each other nevertheless. What a pathetic thing it was in my eyes.

He had also been denied entry to the feast of the bridegroom - and no wonder. Wood and glue all

but caving under the tension of strings stretched too far. Tuning was futile. Turn the pegs and

listen close until the subharmonics melt into a union. The second string tuned to the first, then

the third to the second and by the time you arrive at the sixth, the first string has swung flat

already. Any prospective player can’t help but strum with trepidation; the whole contraption

threatens to crack in the thick of a strained and brittle note. Tangled strings and a chipped

headstock avered the only treatment this instrument had received was the harsh and clunky

strumming of unskilled hands.

While no virtuoso, I am dedicated in my study of classical guitar. Maybe I could give

what his owner never could: the forbidden fruit of a thoughtful melody. After all it was my duty

to do what I could for the poor creature. My hands adjusting to the unfamiliar fretboard easily

enough, I started in on a simple standard in the classical repertoire. The guitar groaned and

recoiled at the unfamiliar tune, yet I continued, not wanting him to miss out on his only chance at

real music. How could I communicate the gravity of what was absent from his daily four chord

walloping? I doubt he even knew what a minor seventh chord was before I got a hold of it. When
  
 
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I was through the guitar would surely look back fondly on this night and long for the taste of one

more arpeggio. Such an instrument was never built to sing the clear tones or sustain the rich

vibrato my technique was meant to elicit, but I maintained it anyway. Free strokes, rest strokes,

trills and tremolo - the pieces became more and more complicated as my hands warmed up. I

became so focused on the precise movements required to execute that I could hardly hear the

wretched lute begging me to stop. He trembled under my importunate drive to finish the next

note, the next phrase, the next movement; I was mocking and torturing with music far beyond his

capacity to comprehend. Still I rationalized his suffering away - a necessary sacrifice. But even

then this offering was far from the first of my flock, and against my will I knew it. Only when

the final notes had faded and the lump of wood slipped back into its feeble case was my air of

self righteousness shattered by the acute awareness of what I had done:

In my vanity, I had sinned against the instrument and against the music I revealed to it.

***

I used to be totally skeptical of people with claims to esoteric and unspeakable

knowledge. Either they were making it up or their special knowledge was actually quite

mundane and to speak it forth would reveal it to be so, but to know to keep quiet is also to know

it is probably ordinary. Thus they delude themselves. Now I can sense a third option. While door

number three is rarer than the first two, it holds the real possibility the person withholds the

information because it is bigger than you, maybe even bigger than you will ever be, and it would

be a crime against God for them to crush you with it.

Carl Jung warned, “Beware of wisdom you didn’t earn.” My persecution of the little

guitar reflected the Promethean theft in my initial visit to that upper room. Three flights of stairs
  
 
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was not nearly enough. More than anything I was lucky the unexpected sanctuary treated me as

well as it did - that the outside world reappeared when I opened the door to leave, that it denied

me entry the second time instead of swallowing me whole. I didn’t find this room; it found me,

and it found me lacking. But God’s hand was stayed. Judgment day remains tomorrow’s

tomorrow though why I cannot say. Through the uncertainty, though, this is clear: to waste my

new fire would be the greater sin. So I toil on in the eternal everyday.

Today will be neither the first nor the last of many four chord days, but there is no need

to pine for music I can’t comprehend. I still wander campus, but I don’t look for hiding places

anymore, and I don’t care what makes a good one, and above all I don’t look there for any ​it.

Why look for ​it s​ omeplace else? You’re already here, and Heaven is up there waiting for you,

staircase or no.