The Village of Beautiful Gates
"'A Village of Pretty Houses'," Rubob said this morning, quoting a headline in the previous day's New York Times. "Can you guess which village George Washington was referring to when he said that, Tine?"
"I don't know," Tine said. "But it reminds me of the book we have about our village, "The Village of Beautiful Homes."
"The Village of Beautiful Homes, "
by Arthur L. Brandegee and Eddy H. Smith
"Yes, it is like that, come to think. Look, Tine," he said, holding up the Travel section of the Times, which featured Tine and Rubob's village as the Connecticut "Day Trip."
"Well, I'll be," Tine said. "The world at large has discovered us, Rubob."
"It would seem so," Rubob said. "Listen, Tine: 'Farmington, Connecticut, looks like a rich but sleepy suburb where nothing much happens."
Tine looked at Rubob with raised eyebrows.
"That's fine with its preppy residents, who would just as soon not be noticed," Rubob read. "'The rapper 50 Cent found it and joined its mansion-owning crowd in 2004. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis knew her way around the place, too as did her sister, Lee Radziwill, and her White House social secretary, Letitia Baldrige ... all of whom attended Miss Porter's, the fancy girls' boarding school that occupies much of the historical village center.'"
"Well, I declare," Tine said, "it sounds like a perfectly horrible little village. Its 'preppy residents' and 'fancy girls' boarding school'? How all very pert. We won't be taking a day trip there, will we?"
"But we live here, Tine," Rubob said.
"Do we really?" Tine said.
"And behind Farmington's prosperous-looking facade of tree-lined residential streets and sedate-looking buildings, there are discoveries for the casual visitor," Rubob droned on.
"Hmmphh -- it doesn't sound like our village at all," Tine said. "The Times' roving reporter must have taken a wrong turn, maybe in Greenwich or Westchester County. We can be thankful for that."
"You're in a bit of a state this morning," Rubob said, chortling over his newspaper.
"Let me see that story," Tine said, snatching it out of Rubob's hands.
"Preppies dozing off behind their 'prosperous-looking facades' -- what poppycock," Tine said. "People see what they want to see, don't they? Why do you suppose George Washington didn't describe it as "the village of sedate-looking buildings'? Tell me that."
"Things weren't quite so sedate in Revolutionary times," Rubob said.
"Or maybe he just saw things for what they were, without all the high-blown hogwash. He would have known what was fit to print, too," Tine said, slinging the paper in the recycling basket. "It feels musty in here with all this newsprint scattered about. A little fresh air would do us good. Would you be up for a walk?"
"Sure, Tine," Rubob said, rising from his chair.
"I'd like to check on the mysterious case of the missing gate at Oldgate. It worries me," Tine said. "We can't have 'casual visitors' wandering around with gates missing, can we?"
Tine hurried outside and waited at the bottom of the driveway for Rubob, who dawdled over his shoes in the hallway and then over a bag of trash that he was carrying to the shed.
Tine busied herself looking at a hollow at the base of a hemlock tree. "I wonder who lives in there?" she thought.
A group of women, out for a walk, passed by Tine's house.
"I hope they're not more 'casual visitors,' drawn by the story in yesterday's Times," Tine thought. Eve was just the first of many, Tine feared, thinking of Eve Glasner, the Times reporter who wrote the "Day Trip" story. But the women seemed to know their way around, heading toward the steep, narrow road up Diamond Glen, where 'casual visitors' wouldn't be inclined to exert themselves.
Rubob caught up with Tine, and they headed down Hatter's Lane.
"In 350 years, how much do you suppose the price of a fine house in Amsterdam, right on the canal, has gone up in price, when you factor in inflation, Tine?" Rubob asked.
He was often absorbed with numbers, and this morning he was particularly focused on house prices, after reading the "Real Estate Issue" of the New York Times Magazine.
"I don't know," Tine said. "A lot, I imagine." She stopped to look at two dogs watching her from a front yard. "Who let the dogs out/ Who let the dogs out," she sang to herself.
"No, not a lot -- you're wrong about that," Rubob replied. "It doubled in value. Can you imagine that? Think of how much an investment in the stock market would have risen over the same period."
"Doubled?" Tine asked. "Why's that? Is it a hovel?"
"No, it's a beautiful red-brick, Renaissance-style home," Rubob said. "But over the centuries, house prices haven't risen in Amsterdam as much as one might expect."
"This is going to be about the Housing Bubble, isn't it?" Tine said warily. It was one of Rubob's favorite topics on their walks together.
"Yes, as a matter of fact," he said. "A professor in the Netherlands did a study of houses along the canal, called the Herengracht index."
"The who's 'n' what index?" Tine asked.
"Herengracht -- it's the name of the canal," Rubob said.
Blauwburgwal with Herengracht.
http://www.grachten.nl/indexeng.html
"Of course it would be, wouldn't it?" Tine said, borrowing a line from her uncle, Mr. Derek.
"The study found that the real value of the houses hasn't climbed all that much over long periods of time," Rubob said.
"And outside of Amsterdam?" Tine asked.
"The story says Amsterdam might have a more turbulent history than other cities," Rubob said -- "what with the plague, tulipomania and the like -- but the general conclusion, that bubbles don't last, applies elsewhere. In fact, the Dutch professor concludes that the commonly held idea that real estate rises significantly in value over time is a myth."
"Not to worry; values might keep going up here in the village because of yesterday's story in the Times," Tine ventured.
"That's right -- I hadn't thought of that," Rubob said.
"We're on the map now, Rubob."
They turned onto the main thoroughfare at the hatter's cottages, passing a Raveis "Open House" sign on the corner, and headed toward Oldgate -- to investigate, as it were.
"Why do you think housing prices go up?" Rubob asked. "Is it because of the scarcity of land or because of government regulation?"
"A bit of both, I imagine," Tine said.
"Well, here's another study," Rubob said: "A Harvard professor found that 95 percent of the land in this country is undeveloped. And let's say that every American received a quarter acre to build a house on. How much land would that take up in the United States?"
"Ummm," Tine said, thinking hard.
"Less than half the land in Texas," Rubob said, with a note of triumph. "So, you see, it's not a scarcity of land. It's something else. "
"Government regulation?" Tine volunteered, wondering at the same time why everyone chose to live in Texas.
"Exactly," Rubob said. "All sorts of complex regulations needlessly restrict the development of housing. And this in turn leads to ..."
"The Housing Bubble," Tine interjected.
"Precisely," Rubob said.
"It all comes down to that, doesn't it?" Tine said. "Do you see the village only in terms of real estate, Rubob?"
"Not at all, Tine," Rubob said. "It's just that I've been reading all the real estate stories in the Times magazine."
"The Village of Historically Overpriced Homes -- that's what George Washington might say if he visited it today," Tine said. "Look, here's Julia's house," she said, pointing to Oldgate.
"Well, I'll be," Tine said, standing before the gateway. "The gate's not gone at all. It was just open all the way and hidden. They must have opened it for the snowblower after the storm."
"How about that?" Rubob said. "That's a relief, isn't it?"
"I've been worried about it," Tine allowed.
"It was much ado about nothing, wasn't it?" Rubob said -- "a tempest in a teapot, or a tempest in a threshold or portal. A symbol of security, seemingly gone, now restored."
"Gates really do represent security, don't they?" he added. "Portals and ports -- it makes me think of Dubai Ports World, and the whole hullabaloo over security."
"Not that topic again, I hope," Tine said. They'd visited the issue on a walk earlier in the week.
"This gate means so much more than security," she said, heading off a discussion of Dubai. "For generations, the family has left it partly open as a sign of welcome. And there's the design on the gate, meaning peace and prosperity."
"But gates -- not just this gate but all gates -- are symbolic in other ways, aren't they?" she added.
"How so, Tine?" Rubob asked.
"Well, I'm thinking of Japanese gates. The son of that friend of mine in Canterbury, a student at Oxford, spent a year abroad studying gates in Japan. Now there's an 'academically rigorous institution,' like Miss Porter's School," Tine said, referring with a chuckle to another one of the Times reporter's comments.
"I talked with him a little about gates," Tine continued. "In Shintoism, a gate, a "torii," separates our world from the world of spirits -- the spirits of natural things like wind, rain and trees. The gates are protected by two guardians on each side, two animals, like those dogs on Hatter's Lane. They must have abandoned their posts."
Gateway to Shinto shrine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto
"It reminds me of the lions at the Red Lion in Stockbridge, Tine," Rubob said.
"Happy times, Rubob. That's an agreeable village, too, isn't it?" Tine said. "Anyway, when you pass through a Shinto gate, you step into a place where you see the beautiful things in life, the important things -- not unlike the Red Lion Inn, come to think. At a Shinto shrine, you commune with the 'kami,' the sacred spirits representing the natural forces at work in the world. I suppose the kami are like Plato's forms in a way, like looking past the shadows of things in nature and seeing the beautiful ideas behind creation."
Itsukushima Shrine in Miyajima, Japan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto
"Interesting, Tine," Rubob said. "You've opened a gateway on another world."
"Shintoism's all very far removed from us, though, isn't it?" Tine said. "It's outside our little world of the village. But there are Japanese gardens here -- like at the house where Ann Howard used to live on Mountain Road. In Japanese gardens, gates are like you said, the thresholds to another world. We put aside our daily cares and walk into another realm, a place of peace and natural beauty."
"At Oldgate, I suppose, we could cross that threshold and walk back into the world of Julia Cowles in the 18th century," Tine said. "Do you remember the garden stretching back for a block behind the house, when we went on the village garden tour?"
"It was like being transported into another world, wasn't it, Tine?" Rubob said as they walked toward the corner of Main Street and Meadow Road. "Who would have guessed that there was so much to see behind the houses, behind the facades?"
Former Cowles Tavern
"Look," he said, pointing to the old white colonial that was once a tavern. "Part of the fence has fallen down. How about that. It must have happened in Thursday's snowstorm."
"The 'prosperous-looking facades' are in disrepair," Tine said, recalling the Times article. "But there's more on the subject of gates, Rubob."
"OK, finish what you were saying," Rubob said distractedly, no doubt eager to return to his ruminations on the real estate market.
"In Japanese gardens, some things are partly hidden so they slowly reveal themselves," Tine said. "There's a word for it: 'miegakure.' I have no idea how to pronounce it, but it means something like 'conceal and reveal.'"
"The gate helps conceal and reveal; it's part of the idea of 'miegakure.' Once you step through the gate, the garden is revealed. You see it completely, as a whole, even become one with it. That's when you can appreciate it for what it is."
"A fence that needs mending, Tine," Rubob offered.
Tine sighed and said, "Yes, that's it, Rubob. It's too bad you didn't bring along your post hole digger."
"We see what we're prepared to see," she reflected, thinking again about the article on the village in the Times and its "sedate-looking buildings." In contrast, she thought of Washington's "village of pretty houses."
Bicentennial Quit,
Farmington Library
The two headed down toward Garden Street, stepping through snow, mud and sand. "Look at the mess on the sidewalk," Rubob said. "It's not good at all -- filth, in fact."
"Scofflaws," Tine said. "They didn't clear their walk."
"Scofflaws -- that's what the Indian leaders are for refusing to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty," Rubob said. "And yet the U.S. is treating them as friends." He'd lapsed into his thoughts on the news of the day, and he had on his mind President Bush's agreement to nuclear technology and fuel with India.
"They should be treated as outlaws," he said, "but instead they'll get help with their nuclear weapons program. The Administration rewards its friends and punishes its enemies. That's what it's all about."
Tine looked up into the branches of the trees, seeking release from the issues of the world at large.
The two passed the gate at the Millstream Manor on Garden Street.
"At least Pakistan didn't get a similar deal," Tine said, endeavoring to pick up Rubob's thread.
"Different countries with different needs and different histories," Rubob said. "That's the line, but neither one of them should have gotten a deal."
"For all we know, the gate was left partly open with Pakistan, too," Tine said. "This Administration conceals more than it reveals."
"Back to gates, Tine?" Rubob said. "Is that the theme of today's walk?"
Tine smiled, and said, "We're investigating gates."
"I wonder what that house is selling for," Rubob said, pointing to a modern home behind a fence. He reached over the fence to a box with handouts giving all the details on the house.
"It's 2,530 square feet," Rubob said. "They want 650,000 for it."
"At least double what it was worth in 1650," Tine said.
"Multi-zone heat," Rubob read. "It's economical."
"And conveniently near the Pearly Gates," Tine said, as they passed the cemetery -- "or as Mr. Derek says, 'the girly pates.'"
"Our friend Heidegger has something to say about gates, Rubob," Tine said.
"Of course he would, wouldn't he?" Rubob said, and Tine laughed.
"I think he probably has something to say on just about everything one finds on walks," Tine said. "In an essay called 'The Fieldpath,'" he said, "The knowing serenity is a gate to the eternal."
"He wrote about something very similar to the Japanese idea of concealing and revealing, too," Tine said. "I know you were fascinated by the idea of 'miegakure' in Japanese gardens. Well, here's another word for you: 'aletheia.'"
"It must have something to do with German Heideggerian gardens, right?" Rubob asked as they turned up Maple Street, back in the direction of home. "Didn't he have some sort of home in the Black Forest?"
Martin Heidegger's Die Hütte, Todtnauberg,
http://www.freewebs.com/m3smg2/cottage.htm
"In Todtnauberg," Tine said -- "a small cottage overlooking the little mountain town below. He took daily walks at his cottage. "
"But aletheia isn't a German word; it's Greek for 'truth,'" Tine said. "Heidegger interpreted it to mean 'unconcealment.' Things on the path at Todnauberg are concealed, and they can't be known unless they're unconcealed. That's clear enough. But here's the enigmatic part, the riddle wrapped in the enigma, shall we say: Unconcealment has within it concealment."
"How's that, Tine?"
"I didn't think you were listening, but I thought a smattering of Churchill might get your attention,," Tine said.
"That's not exactly what he said," Tine, Rubob said.
"Oh?"
"He actually said 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,'" Rubob said. "He said it in a radio broadcast in 1939."
"Whatever," Tine said. "But unconcealment: Tangled up within it is concealment -- and 'tangled' is one of the words Heidegger uses. The reason is that when something is revealed, it's unconcealed only in a certain way. The other ways are not disclosed."
"Heidegger uses the example of a pair of peasant shoes in a painting by van Gogh. Sitting on a doorstep, they might appear to be nothing more than a pair of old shoes. We see them as well-worn shoes, wearing away into uselessness. 'A pair of peasant shoes and nothing more,' Heidegger wrote. That's how they're seen at first, in all their ordinariness. And yet the painting reveals so much more, he said."
"Heidegger wrote about the 'richness of the soil on the leather,' the ripening grain in the field, the peasant woman trudging through the furrows, her lonely path on the way home, stretching out under the soles of her shoes."
"A Pair of Shoes," by Vincent van Gogh
"In the beat-up pair of shoes, he found something beautiful, and it wasn't based on some abstract notion of beauty. The shoes' beauty is revealed in their their rugged heaviness, their thick leather soles and dark, worn insides. Beauty, he wrote, is part of the unconcealed truth of things."
"That's what he was really getting at: not just the beauty of the shoes, but the truth of things -- the shoes' essence, their being." Art is 'one way in which truth occurs as unconcealedness,' Heidegger said. In art, we see the truth and beauty that all too often isn't apparent in ordinary things. He looked at van Gogh's work and was struck with wonder at what it disclosed about the nature of things -- all things, not simply the peasant woman's shoes."
"Heidegger's word for wonder was 'Thaumazen,' a 'radical astonishment of being.' It's with that wonder that Heidegger's philosophy begins, when truth begins to disclose itself. Aristotle, too, said that 'philosophy begins with wonder.'"
Rubob's boot.
Rubob was silent, and Tine didn't know whether he was listening or not.
"Getting back to that house of yours in Amsterdam," she said, casting a line back over toward his dark pool of thoughts -- "that inventory of homes along the canal, the Herlihy index -- it's fascinating in its own way -- and useful -- isn't it?"
"Herengracht index," Rubob corrected.
"Whatever," Tine said. "I won't be able to think of the canal now without thinking of houses doubling in value over the past three centuries. It's revealing, but it's just part of the truth of things. Wouldn't you like to get a look inside that house?
"It's interesting that you say that, because the story gets into a bit of that," Rubob said. "The house was built by a carpenter who lived during country's golden age, when Holland grew to become an empire. The writer of the story says the few available details about the carpenter indicate that he was contented, that he lived beyond his years, surrounded by family. Here was a man who saw the tall-masted ships return from the East Indies and who 'walked the streets with Rembrandt.'"
"Imagine that," Tine said. "It makes one think that the reality of life in the houses along the canal was something more than real estate agents counting up the dollar value of properties in their counting houses," Tine said.
"Yes, Tine," Rubob said. "The house is in one of your books on Farmington. And the red roof -- how could I miss it? I'd have to be blind."
"Well, you get what I mean," Tine said. "And, come to think, it's like Eve Glasner with her sedate little town. It's not the village that we walk in every day. It's not the village revealed to us, though I'm sure she saw things we've never seen, too."
"She certainly has, Tine," Rubob said.
"Like what?" Tine said, taken aback.
"The plaque on the pew donated by Jacqueline Bouvier to St. Patrick's Church," he said. "Do you want to go in and see it."
Tine and Rubob were right outside the church on the corner of Main and Maple streets.
"Why not?" Tine said, amused that Rubob had remembered such a thing from the piece in the Times.
The two went into the church, which was empty except for a man sitting quietly in a pew at the front.
"You find it. I don't want to disturb his praying," Tine said.
Rubob marched busily up the aisle, looking at each plaque on the pews.
"Here it is, Tine, right up here on the front pew," he called out loudly.
Tine tiptoed up the aisle, and before she sat in the pew opposite the "Miss Bouvier" plaque, she genuflected before the altar and made the sign of the cross. "When in Rome," she thought to herself.
"Well, I'll be," she thought, looking at the plaque.
The man praying in the pew pushed off, disappearing into a side doorway.
"He can't be doing with 'casual visitors,' "Tine thought, "or God forbid, I made the sign of the cross backwards."
Tine and Rubob walked back down the aisle, a little more at ease now that they had the church to themselves.
When they were back outside, Tine said, "You don't generally see that in Congregational churches -- "I mean a man praying like that, or just sitting there meditating before the altar. Why is that?"
"I don't know, Tine," Rubob said. "Maybe they have more money in Congregational churches and don't need to pray."
Passing a gate outside the Cowles place -- the home shown on the title page of "The Village of Beautiful Homes," Tine thought of Holman Hunt's painting at Keble College, Oxford, "The Light of the World." The painting is shaped like an arched doorway, and Jesus, holding a lantern, knocks on a door.
The Light of the World, Holman Hunt,
http://www.orthodox.clara.net/christ_the_light.htm
She stopped to look at the gate to the Old Burying Ground across the main thoroughfare.
"Mr. Derket's girly pates," Tine said. "The gate seems so brightly lit today, standing there in the noon sun. The whole village is sparkling today, in fact."
"A 'lichtung' -- that's what Heidegger calls it: a 'lighting,'" Tine said.
"Uh-oh," Rubob said.
"Just one more illuminating thought," Tine said.
"When we look beyond the gate and things are disclosed, it happens in a specific place," Tine said. "Aletheia, the unconcealedness of beings, occurs somewhere, Rubob. Do you know where that is?"
"The field path in Todtnauberg, how about?"
"Yes, I'm sure it does there," Tine said. "But more specifically, Heidegger wrote that it happens in a clearing, which is another way of translating the 'lichtung,' the 'lighting.' It's a clear space in which things are disclosed. It encircles us and is in some way beyond us, greater than us, and yet as human beings -- what he called 'Dasein' -- we're in it. It's a region in which we're open to the world around us, a place of 'gelassenheit,' or 'responsive openness."
"Bless you, Tine," Rubob said.
"Heidegger wrote that when thinking opens out on the path, we stand in the lichtung, the clearing," Tine said. "It's an illuminating place, a place in which the nature of things is revealed. And yet here's the enigma again: In any given circumstance, we're always limited by what we can see, even in the lichtung. Within the unconcealedness of the clearing, there's always still concealment."
"Shame, really," Rubob allowed.
Heidegger seemed to find a way out of that predicament in art and poetry -- in van Gogh's pair of shoes, in a Greek temple -- in works of art in which things reveal themselves more completely. But I don't know. We can't put ourselves in his shoes, can we?" Tine said.
"Maybe there's room in the clearing for any number of vantages on the world -- your Harkenback index, my gates, your ruminations on the news of the day, my Heidegger," she said.
"Herengracht, Tine," Rubob said.
"I thought it harked back to the golden age, before the bubble collapsed," Tine said. "But what I mean to say is that any way of viewing things is part of an approach to the world, a vantage point. It's all part of the path that each of us takes. Heidegger's path was more demanding than most. He was asking the big question -- something he called 'beingquestion,' 'Seinsfrage.' It's the question in 'Being and Time': 'What is Being?' But we can start small with our own questions and come upon our own clearings, our own 'lightings' on the way. An investigation of gates opens out into an inquiry on paths, doesn't it? What do you think?"
"That you're dawdling again, Tine -- that I'm going to be late," Rubob said. "The big question is what's the Time. We'd better be getting home."
"I wonder whether it's gone up in value much since our departure," Tine said.
"What, Tine?"
"Home," Tine replied.
"Probably down," Rubob said, "but all the fluctuations are eventually evened out over the centuries."
"That's reassuring at least," Tine said.
As she walked up the driveway, Tine checked again on the property at the base of the hemlock tree. It appeared to be doing well, maintaining its value in a volatile seasonal market.
When Tine got back in the house, she retrieved the "Day Trip" article to check on something the Times reporter had written.
"Look at this, Rubob," she said said: "'A brass plaque reading "Misses Bouvier" remains on the pew.' But the plaque said 'Miss Bouvier.' I wonder whether she even saw it. The church was probably locked when she visited, and sensibly so. "
Later that evening, Tine picked up a weighty volume she'd found at the library, "Farmington Town Clerks and Their Times," by one Mabel Hurlburt.
"What the heck are you reading that for?" Rubob asked.
"I think you'd enjoy it," Tine said. "Listen here:
"Absolutely fascinating," Rubob said.
"It's all based on one's perspective, isn't it? Aren't the town clerks' views of the village as revealing in their own way as Eve Glasner's?"
"Eva who?"
"The reporter for the New York Times," Tine said. "But it's not as a dry a book as you might imagine."
Tine leafed through the pages and came across this:
"What, Tine?"
"That all in all, it was a very pleasant walk."
"I don't know," Tine said. "But it reminds me of the book we have about our village, "The Village of Beautiful Homes."
"The Village of Beautiful Homes, "
by Arthur L. Brandegee and Eddy H. Smith
"Yes, it is like that, come to think. Look, Tine," he said, holding up the Travel section of the Times, which featured Tine and Rubob's village as the Connecticut "Day Trip."
"Well, I'll be," Tine said. "The world at large has discovered us, Rubob."
"It would seem so," Rubob said. "Listen, Tine: 'Farmington, Connecticut, looks like a rich but sleepy suburb where nothing much happens."
Tine looked at Rubob with raised eyebrows.
"That's fine with its preppy residents, who would just as soon not be noticed," Rubob read. "'The rapper 50 Cent found it and joined its mansion-owning crowd in 2004. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis knew her way around the place, too as did her sister, Lee Radziwill, and her White House social secretary, Letitia Baldrige ... all of whom attended Miss Porter's, the fancy girls' boarding school that occupies much of the historical village center.'"
"Well, I declare," Tine said, "it sounds like a perfectly horrible little village. Its 'preppy residents' and 'fancy girls' boarding school'? How all very pert. We won't be taking a day trip there, will we?"
"But we live here, Tine," Rubob said.
"Do we really?" Tine said.
"And behind Farmington's prosperous-looking facade of tree-lined residential streets and sedate-looking buildings, there are discoveries for the casual visitor," Rubob droned on.
"Hmmphh -- it doesn't sound like our village at all," Tine said. "The Times' roving reporter must have taken a wrong turn, maybe in Greenwich or Westchester County. We can be thankful for that."
"You're in a bit of a state this morning," Rubob said, chortling over his newspaper.
"Let me see that story," Tine said, snatching it out of Rubob's hands.
"Preppies dozing off behind their 'prosperous-looking facades' -- what poppycock," Tine said. "People see what they want to see, don't they? Why do you suppose George Washington didn't describe it as "the village of sedate-looking buildings'? Tell me that."
"Things weren't quite so sedate in Revolutionary times," Rubob said.
"Or maybe he just saw things for what they were, without all the high-blown hogwash. He would have known what was fit to print, too," Tine said, slinging the paper in the recycling basket. "It feels musty in here with all this newsprint scattered about. A little fresh air would do us good. Would you be up for a walk?"
"Sure, Tine," Rubob said, rising from his chair.
"I'd like to check on the mysterious case of the missing gate at Oldgate. It worries me," Tine said. "We can't have 'casual visitors' wandering around with gates missing, can we?"
Tine hurried outside and waited at the bottom of the driveway for Rubob, who dawdled over his shoes in the hallway and then over a bag of trash that he was carrying to the shed.
Tine busied herself looking at a hollow at the base of a hemlock tree. "I wonder who lives in there?" she thought.
A group of women, out for a walk, passed by Tine's house.
"I hope they're not more 'casual visitors,' drawn by the story in yesterday's Times," Tine thought. Eve was just the first of many, Tine feared, thinking of Eve Glasner, the Times reporter who wrote the "Day Trip" story. But the women seemed to know their way around, heading toward the steep, narrow road up Diamond Glen, where 'casual visitors' wouldn't be inclined to exert themselves.
Rubob caught up with Tine, and they headed down Hatter's Lane.
"In 350 years, how much do you suppose the price of a fine house in Amsterdam, right on the canal, has gone up in price, when you factor in inflation, Tine?" Rubob asked.
He was often absorbed with numbers, and this morning he was particularly focused on house prices, after reading the "Real Estate Issue" of the New York Times Magazine.
"I don't know," Tine said. "A lot, I imagine." She stopped to look at two dogs watching her from a front yard. "Who let the dogs out/ Who let the dogs out," she sang to herself.
"No, not a lot -- you're wrong about that," Rubob replied. "It doubled in value. Can you imagine that? Think of how much an investment in the stock market would have risen over the same period."
"Doubled?" Tine asked. "Why's that? Is it a hovel?"
"No, it's a beautiful red-brick, Renaissance-style home," Rubob said. "But over the centuries, house prices haven't risen in Amsterdam as much as one might expect."
"This is going to be about the Housing Bubble, isn't it?" Tine said warily. It was one of Rubob's favorite topics on their walks together.
"Yes, as a matter of fact," he said. "A professor in the Netherlands did a study of houses along the canal, called the Herengracht index."
"The who's 'n' what index?" Tine asked.
"Herengracht -- it's the name of the canal," Rubob said.
Blauwburgwal with Herengracht.
http://www.grachten.nl/indexeng.html
"Of course it would be, wouldn't it?" Tine said, borrowing a line from her uncle, Mr. Derek.
"The study found that the real value of the houses hasn't climbed all that much over long periods of time," Rubob said.
"And outside of Amsterdam?" Tine asked.
"The story says Amsterdam might have a more turbulent history than other cities," Rubob said -- "what with the plague, tulipomania and the like -- but the general conclusion, that bubbles don't last, applies elsewhere. In fact, the Dutch professor concludes that the commonly held idea that real estate rises significantly in value over time is a myth."
"Not to worry; values might keep going up here in the village because of yesterday's story in the Times," Tine ventured.
"That's right -- I hadn't thought of that," Rubob said.
"We're on the map now, Rubob."
They turned onto the main thoroughfare at the hatter's cottages, passing a Raveis "Open House" sign on the corner, and headed toward Oldgate -- to investigate, as it were.
"Why do you think housing prices go up?" Rubob asked. "Is it because of the scarcity of land or because of government regulation?"
"A bit of both, I imagine," Tine said.
"Well, here's another study," Rubob said: "A Harvard professor found that 95 percent of the land in this country is undeveloped. And let's say that every American received a quarter acre to build a house on. How much land would that take up in the United States?"
"Ummm," Tine said, thinking hard.
"Less than half the land in Texas," Rubob said, with a note of triumph. "So, you see, it's not a scarcity of land. It's something else. "
"Government regulation?" Tine volunteered, wondering at the same time why everyone chose to live in Texas.
"Exactly," Rubob said. "All sorts of complex regulations needlessly restrict the development of housing. And this in turn leads to ..."
"The Housing Bubble," Tine interjected.
"Precisely," Rubob said.
"It all comes down to that, doesn't it?" Tine said. "Do you see the village only in terms of real estate, Rubob?"
"Not at all, Tine," Rubob said. "It's just that I've been reading all the real estate stories in the Times magazine."
"The Village of Historically Overpriced Homes -- that's what George Washington might say if he visited it today," Tine said. "Look, here's Julia's house," she said, pointing to Oldgate.
"Well, I'll be," Tine said, standing before the gateway. "The gate's not gone at all. It was just open all the way and hidden. They must have opened it for the snowblower after the storm."
"How about that?" Rubob said. "That's a relief, isn't it?"
"I've been worried about it," Tine allowed.
"It was much ado about nothing, wasn't it?" Rubob said -- "a tempest in a teapot, or a tempest in a threshold or portal. A symbol of security, seemingly gone, now restored."
"Gates really do represent security, don't they?" he added. "Portals and ports -- it makes me think of Dubai Ports World, and the whole hullabaloo over security."
"Not that topic again, I hope," Tine said. They'd visited the issue on a walk earlier in the week.
"This gate means so much more than security," she said, heading off a discussion of Dubai. "For generations, the family has left it partly open as a sign of welcome. And there's the design on the gate, meaning peace and prosperity."
"But gates -- not just this gate but all gates -- are symbolic in other ways, aren't they?" she added.
"How so, Tine?" Rubob asked.
"Well, I'm thinking of Japanese gates. The son of that friend of mine in Canterbury, a student at Oxford, spent a year abroad studying gates in Japan. Now there's an 'academically rigorous institution,' like Miss Porter's School," Tine said, referring with a chuckle to another one of the Times reporter's comments.
"I talked with him a little about gates," Tine continued. "In Shintoism, a gate, a "torii," separates our world from the world of spirits -- the spirits of natural things like wind, rain and trees. The gates are protected by two guardians on each side, two animals, like those dogs on Hatter's Lane. They must have abandoned their posts."
Gateway to Shinto shrine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto
"It reminds me of the lions at the Red Lion in Stockbridge, Tine," Rubob said.
"Happy times, Rubob. That's an agreeable village, too, isn't it?" Tine said. "Anyway, when you pass through a Shinto gate, you step into a place where you see the beautiful things in life, the important things -- not unlike the Red Lion Inn, come to think. At a Shinto shrine, you commune with the 'kami,' the sacred spirits representing the natural forces at work in the world. I suppose the kami are like Plato's forms in a way, like looking past the shadows of things in nature and seeing the beautiful ideas behind creation."
Itsukushima Shrine in Miyajima, Japan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto
"Interesting, Tine," Rubob said. "You've opened a gateway on another world."
"Shintoism's all very far removed from us, though, isn't it?" Tine said. "It's outside our little world of the village. But there are Japanese gardens here -- like at the house where Ann Howard used to live on Mountain Road. In Japanese gardens, gates are like you said, the thresholds to another world. We put aside our daily cares and walk into another realm, a place of peace and natural beauty."
"At Oldgate, I suppose, we could cross that threshold and walk back into the world of Julia Cowles in the 18th century," Tine said. "Do you remember the garden stretching back for a block behind the house, when we went on the village garden tour?"
"It was like being transported into another world, wasn't it, Tine?" Rubob said as they walked toward the corner of Main Street and Meadow Road. "Who would have guessed that there was so much to see behind the houses, behind the facades?"
Former Cowles Tavern
"Look," he said, pointing to the old white colonial that was once a tavern. "Part of the fence has fallen down. How about that. It must have happened in Thursday's snowstorm."
"The 'prosperous-looking facades' are in disrepair," Tine said, recalling the Times article. "But there's more on the subject of gates, Rubob."
"OK, finish what you were saying," Rubob said distractedly, no doubt eager to return to his ruminations on the real estate market.
"In Japanese gardens, some things are partly hidden so they slowly reveal themselves," Tine said. "There's a word for it: 'miegakure.' I have no idea how to pronounce it, but it means something like 'conceal and reveal.'"
"The gate helps conceal and reveal; it's part of the idea of 'miegakure.' Once you step through the gate, the garden is revealed. You see it completely, as a whole, even become one with it. That's when you can appreciate it for what it is."
"A fence that needs mending, Tine," Rubob offered.
Tine sighed and said, "Yes, that's it, Rubob. It's too bad you didn't bring along your post hole digger."
"We see what we're prepared to see," she reflected, thinking again about the article on the village in the Times and its "sedate-looking buildings." In contrast, she thought of Washington's "village of pretty houses."
Bicentennial Quit,
Farmington Library
The two headed down toward Garden Street, stepping through snow, mud and sand. "Look at the mess on the sidewalk," Rubob said. "It's not good at all -- filth, in fact."
"Scofflaws," Tine said. "They didn't clear their walk."
"Scofflaws -- that's what the Indian leaders are for refusing to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty," Rubob said. "And yet the U.S. is treating them as friends." He'd lapsed into his thoughts on the news of the day, and he had on his mind President Bush's agreement to nuclear technology and fuel with India.
"They should be treated as outlaws," he said, "but instead they'll get help with their nuclear weapons program. The Administration rewards its friends and punishes its enemies. That's what it's all about."
Tine looked up into the branches of the trees, seeking release from the issues of the world at large.
The two passed the gate at the Millstream Manor on Garden Street.
"At least Pakistan didn't get a similar deal," Tine said, endeavoring to pick up Rubob's thread.
"Different countries with different needs and different histories," Rubob said. "That's the line, but neither one of them should have gotten a deal."
"For all we know, the gate was left partly open with Pakistan, too," Tine said. "This Administration conceals more than it reveals."
"Back to gates, Tine?" Rubob said. "Is that the theme of today's walk?"
Tine smiled, and said, "We're investigating gates."
"I wonder what that house is selling for," Rubob said, pointing to a modern home behind a fence. He reached over the fence to a box with handouts giving all the details on the house.
"It's 2,530 square feet," Rubob said. "They want 650,000 for it."
"At least double what it was worth in 1650," Tine said.
"Multi-zone heat," Rubob read. "It's economical."
"And conveniently near the Pearly Gates," Tine said, as they passed the cemetery -- "or as Mr. Derek says, 'the girly pates.'"
"Our friend Heidegger has something to say about gates, Rubob," Tine said.
"Of course he would, wouldn't he?" Rubob said, and Tine laughed.
"I think he probably has something to say on just about everything one finds on walks," Tine said. "In an essay called 'The Fieldpath,'" he said, "The knowing serenity is a gate to the eternal."
"In the seasonally changing air of the Fieldpath the knowing serenity, whose expression often seems melancholy, thrives. ... Nobody gains it, who does not have it. Those who have it, have it from the Fieldpath. ..."
"The knowing serenity is a gate to the eternal. Its doors swing on hinges which were once forged from the riddles of existence by a skilful smith." -- Martin Heidegger
"He wrote about something very similar to the Japanese idea of concealing and revealing, too," Tine said. "I know you were fascinated by the idea of 'miegakure' in Japanese gardens. Well, here's another word for you: 'aletheia.'"
"It must have something to do with German Heideggerian gardens, right?" Rubob asked as they turned up Maple Street, back in the direction of home. "Didn't he have some sort of home in the Black Forest?"
Martin Heidegger's Die Hütte, Todtnauberg,
http://www.freewebs.com/m3smg2/cottage.htm
"In Todtnauberg," Tine said -- "a small cottage overlooking the little mountain town below. He took daily walks at his cottage. "
"But aletheia isn't a German word; it's Greek for 'truth,'" Tine said. "Heidegger interpreted it to mean 'unconcealment.' Things on the path at Todnauberg are concealed, and they can't be known unless they're unconcealed. That's clear enough. But here's the enigmatic part, the riddle wrapped in the enigma, shall we say: Unconcealment has within it concealment."
"How's that, Tine?"
"I didn't think you were listening, but I thought a smattering of Churchill might get your attention,," Tine said.
"That's not exactly what he said," Tine, Rubob said.
"Oh?"
"He actually said 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,'" Rubob said. "He said it in a radio broadcast in 1939."
"Whatever," Tine said. "But unconcealment: Tangled up within it is concealment -- and 'tangled' is one of the words Heidegger uses. The reason is that when something is revealed, it's unconcealed only in a certain way. The other ways are not disclosed."
"Heidegger uses the example of a pair of peasant shoes in a painting by van Gogh. Sitting on a doorstep, they might appear to be nothing more than a pair of old shoes. We see them as well-worn shoes, wearing away into uselessness. 'A pair of peasant shoes and nothing more,' Heidegger wrote. That's how they're seen at first, in all their ordinariness. And yet the painting reveals so much more, he said."
"Heidegger wrote about the 'richness of the soil on the leather,' the ripening grain in the field, the peasant woman trudging through the furrows, her lonely path on the way home, stretching out under the soles of her shoes."
"A Pair of Shoes," by Vincent van Gogh
"In the beat-up pair of shoes, he found something beautiful, and it wasn't based on some abstract notion of beauty. The shoes' beauty is revealed in their their rugged heaviness, their thick leather soles and dark, worn insides. Beauty, he wrote, is part of the unconcealed truth of things."
"That's what he was really getting at: not just the beauty of the shoes, but the truth of things -- the shoes' essence, their being." Art is 'one way in which truth occurs as unconcealedness,' Heidegger said. In art, we see the truth and beauty that all too often isn't apparent in ordinary things. He looked at van Gogh's work and was struck with wonder at what it disclosed about the nature of things -- all things, not simply the peasant woman's shoes."
"Heidegger's word for wonder was 'Thaumazen,' a 'radical astonishment of being.' It's with that wonder that Heidegger's philosophy begins, when truth begins to disclose itself. Aristotle, too, said that 'philosophy begins with wonder.'"
Rubob's boot.
Rubob was silent, and Tine didn't know whether he was listening or not.
"Getting back to that house of yours in Amsterdam," she said, casting a line back over toward his dark pool of thoughts -- "that inventory of homes along the canal, the Herlihy index -- it's fascinating in its own way -- and useful -- isn't it?"
"Herengracht index," Rubob corrected.
"Whatever," Tine said. "I won't be able to think of the canal now without thinking of houses doubling in value over the past three centuries. It's revealing, but it's just part of the truth of things. Wouldn't you like to get a look inside that house?
"It's interesting that you say that, because the story gets into a bit of that," Rubob said. "The house was built by a carpenter who lived during country's golden age, when Holland grew to become an empire. The writer of the story says the few available details about the carpenter indicate that he was contented, that he lived beyond his years, surrounded by family. Here was a man who saw the tall-masted ships return from the East Indies and who 'walked the streets with Rembrandt.'"
"Imagine that," Tine said. "It makes one think that the reality of life in the houses along the canal was something more than real estate agents counting up the dollar value of properties in their counting houses," Tine said.
"The world is not the mere collection of the countable or"The guilder value of things, Tine," Rubob corrected.
uncountable." -- Martin Heidegger
"And the $650,000 guilder house back there on Garden Street," Tine said. "When it's just a dollar value you put on it, it's not what the architect had in mind, with the low-pitched roof, the geometrical patterns and all. Did you notice those things?""The humanness of man and the thingness of things dissolve into the calculated market value of a market which not only spans the whole earth as a world market." -- Martin Heidegger
"Yes, Tine," Rubob said. "The house is in one of your books on Farmington. And the red roof -- how could I miss it? I'd have to be blind."
"Well, you get what I mean," Tine said. "And, come to think, it's like Eve Glasner with her sedate little town. It's not the village that we walk in every day. It's not the village revealed to us, though I'm sure she saw things we've never seen, too."
"She certainly has, Tine," Rubob said.
"Like what?" Tine said, taken aback.
"The plaque on the pew donated by Jacqueline Bouvier to St. Patrick's Church," he said. "Do you want to go in and see it."
Tine and Rubob were right outside the church on the corner of Main and Maple streets.
"Why not?" Tine said, amused that Rubob had remembered such a thing from the piece in the Times.
The two went into the church, which was empty except for a man sitting quietly in a pew at the front.
"You find it. I don't want to disturb his praying," Tine said.
Rubob marched busily up the aisle, looking at each plaque on the pews.
"Here it is, Tine, right up here on the front pew," he called out loudly.
Tine tiptoed up the aisle, and before she sat in the pew opposite the "Miss Bouvier" plaque, she genuflected before the altar and made the sign of the cross. "When in Rome," she thought to herself.
"Well, I'll be," she thought, looking at the plaque.
The man praying in the pew pushed off, disappearing into a side doorway.
"He can't be doing with 'casual visitors,' "Tine thought, "or God forbid, I made the sign of the cross backwards."
Tine and Rubob walked back down the aisle, a little more at ease now that they had the church to themselves.
When they were back outside, Tine said, "You don't generally see that in Congregational churches -- "I mean a man praying like that, or just sitting there meditating before the altar. Why is that?"
"I don't know, Tine," Rubob said. "Maybe they have more money in Congregational churches and don't need to pray."
Passing a gate outside the Cowles place -- the home shown on the title page of "The Village of Beautiful Homes," Tine thought of Holman Hunt's painting at Keble College, Oxford, "The Light of the World." The painting is shaped like an arched doorway, and Jesus, holding a lantern, knocks on a door.
The Light of the World, Holman Hunt,
http://www.orthodox.clara.net/christ_the_light.htm
She stopped to look at the gate to the Old Burying Ground across the main thoroughfare.
"Mr. Derket's girly pates," Tine said. "The gate seems so brightly lit today, standing there in the noon sun. The whole village is sparkling today, in fact."
"A 'lichtung' -- that's what Heidegger calls it: a 'lighting,'" Tine said.
"Uh-oh," Rubob said.
"Just one more illuminating thought," Tine said.
"When we look beyond the gate and things are disclosed, it happens in a specific place," Tine said. "Aletheia, the unconcealedness of beings, occurs somewhere, Rubob. Do you know where that is?"
"The field path in Todtnauberg, how about?"
"Yes, I'm sure it does there," Tine said. "But more specifically, Heidegger wrote that it happens in a clearing, which is another way of translating the 'lichtung,' the 'lighting.' It's a clear space in which things are disclosed. It encircles us and is in some way beyond us, greater than us, and yet as human beings -- what he called 'Dasein' -- we're in it. It's a region in which we're open to the world around us, a place of 'gelassenheit,' or 'responsive openness."
"Bless you, Tine," Rubob said.
"Heidegger wrote that when thinking opens out on the path, we stand in the lichtung, the clearing," Tine said. "It's an illuminating place, a place in which the nature of things is revealed. And yet here's the enigma again: In any given circumstance, we're always limited by what we can see, even in the lichtung. Within the unconcealedness of the clearing, there's always still concealment."
"The clearing in which beings stand is in itself at the same time concealment." -- Martin Heidegger"That's how things stand, Rubob, even in the lichtung," Tine said.
"Shame, really," Rubob allowed.
Heidegger seemed to find a way out of that predicament in art and poetry -- in van Gogh's pair of shoes, in a Greek temple -- in works of art in which things reveal themselves more completely. But I don't know. We can't put ourselves in his shoes, can we?" Tine said.
"Maybe there's room in the clearing for any number of vantages on the world -- your Harkenback index, my gates, your ruminations on the news of the day, my Heidegger," she said.
"Herengracht, Tine," Rubob said.
"I thought it harked back to the golden age, before the bubble collapsed," Tine said. "But what I mean to say is that any way of viewing things is part of an approach to the world, a vantage point. It's all part of the path that each of us takes. Heidegger's path was more demanding than most. He was asking the big question -- something he called 'beingquestion,' 'Seinsfrage.' It's the question in 'Being and Time': 'What is Being?' But we can start small with our own questions and come upon our own clearings, our own 'lightings' on the way. An investigation of gates opens out into an inquiry on paths, doesn't it? What do you think?"
"That you're dawdling again, Tine -- that I'm going to be late," Rubob said. "The big question is what's the Time. We'd better be getting home."
"I wonder whether it's gone up in value much since our departure," Tine said.
"What, Tine?"
"Home," Tine replied.
"Probably down," Rubob said, "but all the fluctuations are eventually evened out over the centuries."
"That's reassuring at least," Tine said.
As she walked up the driveway, Tine checked again on the property at the base of the hemlock tree. It appeared to be doing well, maintaining its value in a volatile seasonal market.
When Tine got back in the house, she retrieved the "Day Trip" article to check on something the Times reporter had written.
"Look at this, Rubob," she said said: "'A brass plaque reading "Misses Bouvier" remains on the pew.' But the plaque said 'Miss Bouvier.' I wonder whether she even saw it. The church was probably locked when she visited, and sensibly so. "
Later that evening, Tine picked up a weighty volume she'd found at the library, "Farmington Town Clerks and Their Times," by one Mabel Hurlburt.
"What the heck are you reading that for?" Rubob asked.
"I think you'd enjoy it," Tine said. "Listen here:
"We see here that the finances of the town were rapidly becoming alarming, and that the answer here was not in an increase in ... taxes. In the next few years we will follow the efforts of a few clear-sighted men who lifted the town, by its own boot-straps, out of its debt, gave notes for the indebtedness and reduced the amount of taxes."
"Absolutely fascinating," Rubob said.
"It's all based on one's perspective, isn't it? Aren't the town clerks' views of the village as revealing in their own way as Eve Glasner's?"
"Eva who?"
"The reporter for the New York Times," Tine said. "But it's not as a dry a book as you might imagine."
Tine leafed through the pages and came across this:
"Washington's journeys through Farmington are extensively recorded and repeated. If he stopped here at all, as he might well have done for refreshment, it could have beeen at the inn of Solomon and Martha Cowles at the corner of Meadow road and Main street, it being the first one he would have found in the village on his way from Litchfield .... ""We might have been walking in the footsteps of Washington today, Rubob," Tine said. "And you must agree ..."
"What, Tine?"
"That all in all, it was a very pleasant walk."
posted by Tine at 5:23 PM
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