Today I gave a talk at my Alma Mater (Tufts). It's more than twenty years since I have left, and I have returned far less frequently (but recall) than I would have expected, especially given how much I love visiting Boston, and given how significant the area's universities are.
I was not surprised by the fact that I was more nervous than ordinarily when I present. Now these days my nerves before presenting tend to be the kind that help me focus at the task at hand; I shot everything else out and get into a zone that is more lively and attentive to detail than I otherwise would be. Before I started talking, while listening to the introduction, I counted four former teachers in the room; I did not want to disappoint them. After the introduction by George Smith had ended, I promptly forgot to tell me rehearsed joke [I am pleased to be back, and any mistakes in my talk should be blamed on the teachers present], and ad libbed the memory of my first meeting with Tom Kuhn (by way of an introduction by George Smith). I caught myself just before I would share other memories of my undergraduate years, and turned to the talk.
After my talk had ended, I walked around campus. I had about ninety minutes to kill, and I was enjoying another lovely Fall day on an idyllic New England campus. It's hard not to fall into clichés.
I had enjoyed myself during my lecture and the subsequent Q&A, and I regretted it was already done. I walked over to the international center to pay a courtesy visit to one of the non-academic mentors, Jane Etish-Andrews, who enriched my undergraduate experience. Sadly she was out of town at a conference. I felt silly not having contacted her ahead of time. I was just leaving her office when a gallery of pictures caught my eye. There I was, or wasn't I? I recognized the other people in the picture, so I double-checked and saw my name.
All day I had been having simultaneous visions of past and present, bumping into former teachers, while noticing that familiar buildings had new purposes. If they hadn't been so vivid, it would have felt like being in a dream world where the familiar has been displaced in subtle ways (not unlike a David Lynch movie). Face to face with my former self, the past seemed very distant. As it happens, in the picture I am in the very back not entirely in focus. I recognized that the day's conversations had provided me with oblique glimpses of myself, but this photographic image unsettled the composite I had drawn in my imagination. I know that self-identity is thought trivial by metaphysicians, but not for the first time I sensed that in self-reflection one also remains (recall) elusive, even, so to speak, out of reach.
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