When tricycling this morning in my usual solitary manner about our recently cleansed subterranean garage floor, and while reflecting as is my wont upon life in general, it occurred to me that it is all about circles. While you may think this spiral image was propelled by the repetitive act of orbiting the garage to fulfil my daily Olympic zeal of 30 minutes back and forth, the intellectual nutrition – granted not a great less humdrum by any account – was instead derived from other sources within my ambling and unbiased thoughts.
Years ago while studying Philosophy at Glendon Hall I saw the movie The Magus with a prep school colleague at the Toronto-Dominion Centre. We attended the movie on a gloomy Saturday afternoon in November. As we were in the financial district the normally frantic streets were void of traffic. The huge theatre was near empty.
The Magus is a 1968 British mystery film directed by Guy Green and starring Michael Caine (who said it was one of the worst films he had been in because nobody knew what it was about), Anthony Quinn, Candice Bergen and Anna Karina. The screenplay was written by John Fowles based on his 1965 novel of the same name.
Plot: Eventually, Nicholas (the lead actor who stumbles on Conchis, a wealthy Greek recluse) realises that the psychological games are re-enactments of the Nazi occupation and Conchis is suspected of having collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
It is reported that when Peter Sellers was asked whether he would make changes in his life if he had the opportunity to do it all over again, he jokingly replied, “I would do everything exactly the same except I wouldn’t see The Magus.” My sentiments are similar. But what I more favourably recall of the film is the theme that we must leave what we know to discover whence we have come.
All my life I have been leaving places then returning to them. I would be reluctant to assert that I have ever maintained one domain in particular (as much as I cautiously hope the present is the last). As a child it involved moving in tow with my diplomat father as he and my mother skipped across oceans and about the planet. Going to and from boarding school at holidays and during the summer meant both curricular and circular alterations. Then followed the holiday cycloidal changes at undergraduate university (home and back), later law school in another province (Nova Scotia to Ontario), then articling in one city (Ottawa) and bar admission in another (Toronto). And even when at last settled in one town in the country to work for 40 years, I moved between three houses and two apartments on both sides of the river.
Yet overall I have returned to the same place, completing the circle. I am optimistically hopeful never having to recycle hereafter. Movement involves struggle which at my age and declension is taxing. The only family I have is predominantly within shouting distance (though once my family was 6,000 Kms away). The only friends I have remaining are similarly located (though they too have circled the globe).
Meanwhile I am discovering that apart from the physical aspect of cycling (bouncing to and from the identical point), my psychological bent is similarly inclined. The extraordinary feature of completing a circle is the inherent complication of erasing one’s prior indicia or experience. In effect the return to the point of commencement is a dilution or evaporation of what previously existed. This is of course a natural consequence of circular mobility; that is, the view changes as the cycle repeats (but not completely without the influence of the other).
In the process of completing a circle there is critical transformation; viz., elimination, evaporation or reconsideration. Call it what you will, there is change. And while change is “as the saying goes “ a good thing, it predicts the curious by-product of return to one’s initial perceptions and predominant psyche, one’s inner persona or subconscious mind. Now while I acknowledge this is getting spookily close to the melodramatics of The Magus, the intention is nothing more overt than acceptance that whatever we are will never change, that we are (as some have tragically opined) compelled to “travel the suburbs of our own mind” incapable to board a ship to take us away from ourselves. The less miserable though more fortuitous rendition of the adage is that we trim the sails of our craft, that we change course and embrace a wind from another direction, that we abandon the erstwhile objective and instead are homebound. Resilience I have found comes from trusting one’s instincts and being satisfied with the result notwithstanding whatever turmoil may hover about In its own superfluous and supercilious circles.