FROM WHENCE WE COME

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 22, 2020

Klaus Writes:

As far as I know we don't know if there is a god. A famous person said that what we exist in is a large hologram.

My Response:

But, Klaus, that is the point. We don't know because it is beyond our senses.

Yet we spend an inordinate amount of time proclaiming "the idea of a deity" one way or another, and I say this not being a famous person.

Consciously or unconsciously we are attracted like a magnet to people who have the same doubts or convictions. There is nothing wrong with this until it becomes an obsession. Obsessions steal our will and frames a false picture of what we perceive.

My Irish Roman Catholicism rescued me as a little boy when I suspect if I had been born today I would have been thought to be autistic, because I lived within my head and was mainly unresponsive to the outside world in traditional ways.

Catholicism terrified and intrigued me (see MY FIRST CONFESSION) but opened me up to the wider world, living as a small boy, not through the hallucinogenic world of Walter Mitty comic book figures, although I did read such comics, but through THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS. I listened to the radio every Friday with my mother to "The Ave Maria Hour" in which the lives of saints were profiled.

You should know if anyone does, given I have been bombarding you with my ideas for some ten to twenty years, that my ideas, flawed as they may be, are my ideas. I captured some of them in a book that took me ten years to write.

From 1993 to 2003 when IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE was published, I made the 1300 mile trip from Florida to Clinton (Iowa) between 12 and 15 times to walk the places I walked as a boy, and to interview some 100 or more Clintonians still living from the era of the book which was from 1942 to 1947.

Before I knew what a family was, I lived with my maternal great aunt (Annie Dean) as a four and five year old in a tenement house she and my Uncle Mart owned on Second Street, which was kitty corner from the CLINTON COUNTY COURTHOUSE (see attached).

This cathedral mesmerized me as I would climb the stairs of the tenement house to the roof to be awed by its magnificent head, which was a four-sided clock that struck on the half hour, and which could be seen from practically any point in this city of 33,000 as if it were God.

From the age of eight until college, I lived a half block from the courthouse where I discovered I had natural talent as an athlete with "The Courthouse Tigers" (see attached - I am in the back row, far left, at age 11 or 12).

On one of the trips back to Clinton to do research, I parked one day in front of the Clinton County Courthouse on Sixth Avenue North, and wrote this:

In The Shadow of the Courthouse...

If I were a poet...

James R. Fisher, Jr.

Summer ©1995

I have never lost my affection for this edifice. It was like a parent that never wavered, never changed. I am sitting here now, reflecting on the fact that it is forty long years since I have spent any time with my old friend.

If I were a poet, I would give it metaphorical significance, like a giant knight, standing ever at attention to protect my neighborhood from itself and from the dangers outside.

If I were a poet, I would see it as a Greek god, an Adonis, a Zeus, a mighty warrior who never falters from its vigilance.

If I were a poet, I would sing the praises of this frozen music this enchanting melody which never varies in my head, this quiet dignity, this sculptured perfection, this sensible grace as common as a pair of old shoes.

If I were a poet, I would wonder why we could have such stability, such reasoned continence against the harsh reality of tumultuous change, as it has not varied for me one iota from what it was a half century ago.

If I were a poet, I would declare that time and psychology are frozen like magic into the majesty of this cathedral in the stop time of my mind.

If I were a poet, I would tell the world that it has been important in this fumbling, stumbling, bumbling individual called "me" to realize the mystical nature of one’s roots.

If I were a poet, I would exalt its unique character with Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" to dramatize how the earth around may change, but the spirit within remains forever constant.

If I were a poet, I would note that men live and die, but that this structure is immortal because it exists in one’s spirit beyond nature.

If I were a poet, I would sit here and wonder as I am now, over the happiness I feel for having the opportunity to once again ponder the regard I hold for it. And finally,

If I were a poet, I would want the world to know of the many lives that this edifice, this sentinel has influenced in the course of one’s fleeting life. How many young who are now old have been given succor and sustenance, and semblance of order in their lives because they have lived In the Shadow of the Courthouse.

Jim

PS In the then Senator John Edwards' book, HOME, THE BLUEPRINT OF OUR LIVES (2006), his editors asked permission to include my description of my home IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE to be included (the home display was given four pages) with others who included writer Isabel Allende, Senator Bob Dole, General Thommy Franks, Astronaut John Glenn, Actor Danny Glover, Boxing Champion Sugar Ray Leonard, Hollywood producer Steven Spielberg, NFL football coach Barry Switzer, et al.