Autumnal Thoughts

As a college sophomore (Warren Gamaliel Harding was president, I think) I read this poem by Stephen Crane. It helped to define my world view as few pieces of literature have been able to:

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
“A sense of obligation.”

I thought of those lines the other day, on the Sunday of the great football victory over the Colts, as we walked to an appointment. The sky was deep blue with cirrus wisps and puffs of cotton, floating; the breeze merely a gentle disturbance of hair; leaves swirled downward, beautiful in their death pirouettes, bestrewing lawn and sidewalk with vivid autumnal hues. It was a good-to-be-alive day.

We walked resolutely to meet our guide, sure that we had to take this journey, uncertain as to its results, dreading its implications. We came early to the gate, but there he was, patiently waiting, knowing with a certainty that we would arrive. Though it wasn’t necessary, we got into his car and drove along the paved paths at a funereal pace, as was right and proper, to the new Jewish section. For years my wife and I had strolled the lanes of Swan Point, lamenting that it wasn’t a consecrated Jewish cemetery. The only Jewish cemetery in Rhode Island is half an hour away by car (a vast distance in the minds of locals, of which we have become two) but this place is within walking distance of home; many of its graves are guarded by ancient trees, shading in summer, colorful in autumn, stately, almost magisterial, all year round. But not for us who wanted a Jewish funeral. Then, last year, my synagogue bought land in Swan Point surrounded by a road and declared it acceptable for congregants. So, there we were to look at what might be our permanent abode, within walking distance of the home we’ve lived in for a mere 30 years.

It’s a vast field inhabited now only by two people, their graves so recently occupied as to be not yet ready for headstones, but soon enough they will be joined by others whose plots were spoken for. “Who’s reserved already?” we enquired. “X and Y and Z whom you know,” we were informed. “Where’s X?” I asked. “Where’s Z?” she inquired. “What’s the best view?” In the end we made no commitment. Not yet, anyway. But we’ve reached the age where we have to start looking. Walking home in the still brisk morning, the sun shining on our faces, breathing the air that scattered the leaves and rustled our hair, we talked of inevitabilities, returning to the foolish human questions: What’s the view, who are the neighbors for all of eternity?

In the end none of it matters, of course. The view won’t be enjoyed by us (but we hope that if anyone ever visits they, at least, will find it pleasant). As to whom the neighbors are, do we really expect an eternal koffeeklatch? I don’t. I expect that once dead, I’ll be pretty much … dead. Heaven? Hell? Do they exist? I don’t know (but I doubt it); I’m a Jew. What matters to me is perfecting this world, not entering one already perfect. I live my life here, I protect my children, I love my wife, I teach my students.

So rather than concentrate on the issue at hand—to buy or not to buy and if to buy where and when, I thought of Crane’s poem and realized its flaw. The universe might not care about us, but we do. We have things to say, things to teach, lessons learned, memories treasured in secret mental vaults that ought not to die with us. Someday in retirement I think I’ll open a business. I don’t know yet what I’ll call it but it will give the living the chance to communicate with the universe, to reverse the poem’s cynicism, to allow people to shout “Not only do I exist, but I matter. This is who I was; this is what I’ve learned; this is me!” and I’ll write it down and smooth it out and present it to the speaker as a work in progress to be amended and refined over time and in the end given to his family as a gift as lovely as an autumn day in New England, but more permanent, like those majestic trees in Swan Point Cemetery.