So it's two days before the presentation at the library and I'm putting the talk together. Today I've been working on the powerpoint, developing it from an earlier presentation that was not as focused as this one, so tightening it up, taking out quite a lot of "trip" stuff as opposed to "journey" stuff and incorporating much of the material that I've included in this blog. And I find myself conflicted and a bit dissatisfied - maybe it's because I've been working on it all day and I'm feeling a bit drained, but I'm concerned that I neither take what is a simple but profound idea and make it complicated and inaccessible nor take something that is subtle and sophisticated and oversimplify it - make it facile. There is always a real danger in all of this of over-simplifying or over-complicating. I'm also concerned to get the balance right between providing enough of the story of the journey to enable people to connect with it but not so much that it becomes a series of travelog anecdotes; at the same time I want to provide sufficient academic and literary depth without making it heavy and inpenetrable. I suspect the balance will be achieved in the presentation rather than the preparation, but it's a concern as I look at the powerpoint as it evolves - the right balance between pictures and words; the right pictures and the right words!
And I'm asking myself: where is it going? How do I end it? What is the conclusion? In many ways the whole outlook of the journey can be summed up in the Leuty Lifeguard picture - or rather what that picture means to me. But there's so much more to it than that - in the pictures/visions of the journey and in the experiences along the way and since then in the processing of it. The recurring theme is about a "new way of seeing" - that is not really new at all, maybe it's a continually "renewed" way of seeing; opening our eyes to see as if for the first time; to see with freshness - with possibility (open to the gift within) - with purity of heart. It's about making the connection between a way of seeing and a way of being in the world - and I'm still not sure which comes first: an outlook bringing about a way of being in the world; or a way of being in the world changing how we see. It is about the connections between inner and outer - which in part is where the journey began: exploring the connections between inner and outer journeys - physical journeys and spiritual pilgrimages - the distinction between the "trip" and the "journey" as Elizabeth pointed out very early on in a comment on by blog.
This connection between inner and outer is something that I want to bring to the fore, and probably where this presentation should be ending up, as well as where it begins. There are some other things about inner/outer and above/below that I still want to include; and I can never go too far with this theme without running into Merton's "Thou art that" from his time on the northern California coast - where I once again visited on the way home with Christine at the end of the journey. My experience of this journey, and the visions I have seen, bring me to a deeper understanding that what I see before my eyes reflects who I am on the inside because of the way I look, the way I see the world. "I" disappear as a new identity appears. This links into what Merton says at the end of the quote I have cited repeatedly about "Purity of heart" being corelative to a new spiritual identity - "the 'self' as recognized in the context of realities willed by God."
I'd like somehow to connect this with my time in the desert, though I'm not sure how it fits. I'm also wanting to say something about Kerouac and how all this relates to him - seeing as this journey in a way (a big way) is because of him. How do I square the tragedy of his life, and the hell he went through at Big Sur, with the paradise that is before our eyes. Maybe he had to live it in order to show us the truth of the golden eternity that is always there - though as soon as I say that, or say anything in fact, I have that feeling of becoming facile again.... Maybe it's enough to quote the very end of his own Big Sur: "Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There's no need to say another word."
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