Boston to Berkeley 180

May 22, 2010: A view from the other side. Boston Esplanade, Boston, MA A counterpoint to the post from May 5, 2010.

May 21, 2010: The platform of the MBTA’s Green Street Station, Jamaica Plain, MA. The closest visual cognate the MBTA has to the London Underground. Like much in this city, it’s amazing how many things are splendid when you cast your gaze upwards.

As police officers are fond of saying at the site of an event’s taking-place: “Move along, nothing to see here.” What cruelty.

May 19, 2010: The near-daily walk down the Winter Street concourse between the Park Street and Downtown Crossing T stations, Downtown Boston. One of the best things to do is to race the passengers of the red line train by foot from one station to the next. The walk through the concourse is always faster, especially if you start from the first car in the train set.

May 18, 2010: Statue of St. Ignatius Loyola, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA

That Monday took on something of a somber tone after hearing via facebook from an old classmate of mine that one of our professors, a Jesuit priest by the name of Joseph Flanagan, had passed away at the age of 83, and that calling hours were that night. I promptly changed my plans, and spent the remaining part of the day in subdued, sometimes melancholy, reflection. As one of the first people to write a dissertation on the work of his fellow Jesuit, a philosopher, theologian, and economist Bernard Lonergan, SJ, Fr. Flanagan spent over four decades at Boston College’s philosophy department. While there, he chaired the department, helped create a doctoral program that has had figures such as Gadamer and Habermas as professors, created celebrated undergraduate programs, and headed the Lonergan Institute.

When I first started at Boston College twelve years ago as a Lonergan Masters Degree scholar, he guided me through Lonergan’s 700-plus page opus “Insight”, an experience that had taught me how to read more deeply. More importantly, though, Fr. Flanagan’s course helped cultivate an attitude that encouraged his students to be on the lookout for wonder when it struck.

As director of the Lonergan Institute at Boston College, his work helped set up the very scholarship that paid the tuition of a rather lost and clueless 22-year old having just arrived from Los Angeles, so I owe my arrival to Boston twelve years ago, in part, to his efforts. It’s easy say that Fr. Flanagan had assumed a rather influential hand in my life. So when I went to his vigil, it was important to give thanks and pay my respects.

Afterwards, I took a very short stroll around the Chestnut Hill campus, in part to bid farewell to the place, but to also find a picture. And the picture found me, with the sculpted statue of the Jesuits’ founder, St. Ignatius Loyola, which was never there during my time as a student, staring out into the rainy night with equal measures of determination and suffering.

A number of years on, the course of my intellectual interests and personal concerns has changed dramatically. But it’s undeniable that the education I received from Jesuit institutions have influenced my subjectivity, in many ways. Having returned to Boston College (a place which I have held with mixed emotions for many years) on Monday was a goodbye of sorts: to that school, to that prolonged chapter in my educational and personal development, and to Fr. Flanagan himself. It also helped me realize in much more vivid relief the change that is taking place by heading to Berkeley in August. Frankly, it’s very exciting.

May 17, 2010: Oftentimes during a bike commute, I come across markers of some recently-occurred tragedy: ghost bikes, harrowing accident scenes, and makeshift memorials. This particular shrine on the basketball court in Jamaica Plain’s Bromley-Heath housing complex (the very projects from whence came one of the first African-American members of the Boston Ballet, Tony Williams), marked the sorrowful place where a fourteen-year old boy was shot to death and his companion injured while on their way to buy Mother’s day presents.  Jaewon Martin’s death on the Bromley-Heath basketball court during the afternoon of Saturday, May 8 has caused a tremendous amount of consternation throughout the city.  Nine days later, the memorial still stands, candles burning, flowers laying out, and stuffed animals keeping watch over center court. 

This court, which I pass by whenever I travel along the Southwest Corridor to or from Boston, is rarely so somber.  When it is, it’s truly sobering.

May 16, 2010: Sunset at Jamaica Pond during a break from the rash of chores that consumed the day.

May, 15, 2010, Hatfield, MA: The Meteorite piñata awaiting its pummeled fate at the hands of ravenous four and five year old would-be astronauts. Alas, the blue space oddity proved rather resilient.

May 14, 2010: Dinner at The Daily Catch in Boston’s North End. This served-on-the-skillet Vongole Neapolitan was exactly what was needed to end the work week.

There was no picture on this particular day, with no particular reason for doing so. I wish I could say it was out of superstition, but that would definitely be false.