Deep Time and the Running Stream
“Genius is from Heaven, Learning from man.”
“Libraries gave us power.”
The kind graces of Oxford University and the Bodleian Library have permitted me access to their research libraries.
The afternoon heat is tempered by a slight breeze as I sit at a weighty oak desk, decorated with carvings, a mahogany leather inlay, and faded gilt.
Now and then, the sounds of an orchestra float into the room, rehearsing in stops and starts. The quality of place is one of stillness—and the gentle patter of laptop keys.
What is the Field Note from the Bodleian Library today?
A few weeks ago the reminder came in ally work to submit the application to the library. A recurring image in the practice at the time had been doorways—doors as a passage, between this world and the imaginal.
After my application was approved the registrar handed me a guide to the libraries—on its cover a collage of doors. A reminder that when we turn inwards in ally practice, we are met in the outward.
As the phrasing went in an ally work session: when we walk through the door to the imaginal, the ally walks into our world.
I would not say that ally work as a practice is any better when conducted at an oak desk in the Bodleian Library than at a crowded cafe. But all places have their qualities. I am often remembering Orland Bishop’s words, to the effect: Where do you think history goes? Do you think it disappears? No, it goes into the earth.
This place, no doubt, is a place of histories. Stained glass, old spires, bound manuscripts prohibited to the touch.
Who am I in this place? Who is the ally in this place?
You can see this room, in which I write, in clips on Youtube. It serves as a stand in for the school library in the filmed adaptation of a famous series of children’s books. One of the actors, later in life, entered Oxford University as a scholar. You wonder if filming in such a setting—in its historical resonance—made an impression.
I’ll come back here later this year, when the days are shorter, and the air is cooler. I will be glad to be in the warmth of its environs. Its qualities, almost sacred. Perhaps there is a history that still speaks here—prior to this place of learning, this university, this city. From neolithic time. From primordial time. In eternal time.
If all of history goes into the earth, and if ally work is an embodied practice, then mayhap we listen not just to the ally in our practice, but also to the symphonic echoes of history, abounding in our places on earth.
