SATURDAY MEMORY
November 23, 2024

This memory visited me this week. I’m not sure why. I have written this up before (see “Some Strange and Weird Experiences” in Words As Eggs). It’s in two parts.

Part 1. Back in 1963, I was a bit late for my analytic appointment with Marvin Siegelman at his Beverly Hills office. I was a bit out of breath from rushing as I went into the lobby and pressed the elevator button. My attention was called to an old man who was hand-painting a sign on the window. Unaccountably,  I ignored the open elevator door and went over to the old man. He turned to me and said, “You will want to know this is a dying art.” He told me he was the only one in the area doing it the old way. It was all mechanical now. He said, “No one wants to pay the price for this work. I spend a lot of time at, just like Ghiberti. You know, he spent 50 years working on his doors. That’s love. But who has time to love anymore.” I was so affected by this old man’s words that I walked out of the building. Halfway down the block, I remembered my appointment and now I was quite late. Still, the old man’s words stay with me and seem ever more relevant as I become an old man, like the sign painter.

Part 2. Five years later, I was in my university office working on final preparations for a trip the next morning. I was to present a paper at the World Congress of Psychiatry in Milan, Italy. I answered a knock on my door. It was a man about my age wanting to know if my colleague Professor Lovejoy was around. We searched and called but Lovejoy could not be found. The man had just stopped by on the off chance of connecting the with professor. He was on his way to Los Angeles to return to Europe the next day. A few days later, I flew from Milan to Pisa. It was madness at the airport because of a power failure and all the lights were out. Retrieving one’s baggage in the dark with only flashlights to assist was very tiring. By the time I got on the bus to Florence, I was exhausted. About halfway to Florence, the bus pulled over and stopped by the side of the road. I was not amused by this delay. A car had broken down and the driver had hailed the bus. When the man had got on the bus and came down the aisle where I was sitting I was shocked to see that it was the man that had knocked on my door a few nights earlier looking for Professor Lovejoy. He recognized me as well and sat with me and we discussed the potential meaning of such a strange and weird experience. He said, even though we were both tired, that walking around the streets of Florence at midnight was called for. He said we must go to the Cathedral and see the Bapistry of St. John and there we could see Ghiberti's doors.

Ghiberti. Taking time to love. Lovejoy. Strange and weird. You never know what or when psyche will gift us.