Three mornings into Bloganuary I’m starting to reevaluate the merits of this challenge. Today’s prompt is less open-ended than ideal for inspiring creative responses. But then I remembered a post I’d begun drafting (and eventually abandoned) this past summer. That 6 month old seed — quick to germinate, quick to stall — came to mind as a whisper. Audible. But barely. “College, collage, kismet…”
A sucker for alliteration, curious what connections might lurk herein, and hoping to give Bloganuary’s prompt conjurers the benefit of the doubt, I’m pushing forward.
What colleges have you attended?
Two tidy answers for me, and two tidy answers for my bride. Susan attended Hamilton College for her undergraduate degree and New York School of Interior Design about a decade and a half later. I attended Georgetown University for my undergraduate degree and St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico for an MA in classic humanities.
A pretty closed-ended response to a pretty closed-ended question. But perhaps I judge prematurely. What about kismet?
Curious About Kismet
Kismet, a term apparently first used in 1828, refers to the sense that a force beyond our own individual will is actually guiding events. It’s that curious inkling when a chance experience seems as if it were *meant to be* in some subtle, inexplicable way.
We borrowed kismet from Turkish in the 1800s, but it ultimately derives from the Arabic qisma, meaning “portion” or “lot.”
(Source: Merriam-Webster)
Although an Arabic via Turkish etymology accounts for the exotic cluster of consonants, kismet conjures a more science fiction context in my mind. Must’ve been an early association.
Here’s a more precise definition with some helpful synonyms.
Definition: a hypothetical force or personified power that determines the course of the future events
Synonyms: circumstance, destiny, doom, fate, fortune, lot, portion
(Source: Merriam-Webster)
I don’t pretend to credit fate or destiny with any sort of reliable consistency, but the inkling I’ve described above isn’t altogether unfamiliar to me. I tend to reference the “singing underneath” or circumstances in which the universe rhymes.
Sometimes the universe rhymes, and in that moment I could hear the singing underneath, connecting these nominally connected dots…
(Source: Epiphany on Epiphany)
So how might kismet be a sort of connective tissue between college and collage?
College Kismet
Is there a sense in which kismet might appear to have informed our college choices? Susan’s sister and father both attended Hamilton before she did, so there might’ve been some predetermination in her case. I’d better leave that judgment up to her. And my mother graduated from Georgetown almost 3 decades before I did. So, at some level, I followed my mother’s college trajectory, and Susan followed her father’s college trajectory.
But is that kismet? Hhhmmm…
My decision to apply for graduate school admissions was rooted in a 2-day stay at St. John’s College’s Annapolis campus during my junior or senior year of high school. I was intrigued by the undergraduate program, but more than anything my visit convinced me that a school, like Georgetown would suit me better as an undergraduate. But some mysterious force led me back to St. John’s. It’s the only place I applied. Once accepted, a combination of curious factors, guided me to their southwest campus:
- The encouragement of my mother, who grew up in Denver, Colorado, played a role.
- A fortuitous experience in Santiago, Chile a couple of years prior had planted a seed of interest in Santa Fe and Georgia O’Keefe’s New Mexico.
Looking back more than a quarter century it’s not impossible to perceive some guiding force outside of my own free will and self-absorbed agency. Sometimes the universe rhymes!
Conclusive evidence of college kismet? Hardly. But it’s compelling to meditate on the what’s and how’s of our life decisions. And college experiences tend to have an outsized impact on the trajectory of our lives. To what extent does this allude to a prevailing path of destiny or fate? Who knows.
Looking backward across my life (and across the smaller subset that I’ve resided at Rosslyn) I find fragments coalescing into a collage. Sometimes I’m certain that I’m the guiding force. Other times I wonder if it could be kismet.
Collage Kismet
I realize that I’m offering more questions than conclusions. Sorry if that discomfits you. You’re welcome to find the nearest offramp. No hard feelings.
In fact, as I careen toward the close of this post, I’m already aware that I’ll be offering no real closure. No conclusion. No answer. Just inquiry. Wondering. Wandering. An adventure abbreviated. No arrival.
So, you’re now forewarned. Caveat lector.
At the outset I referenced an orphan post originally conceived last summer but neglected and eventually abandoned. I was essaying to understand a meaningful (and Rosslyn-relevant) but ultimately elusive connection between collage and kismet. The inspiration for that initiative was several-fold:
- “The XX Factor”, a July/August 2023 Architectural Digest article by Christine Lennon
- Redacting Rosslyn, an enduring effort to map this meandering mashup, to make sense of our Rosslyn relationship, and to alchemize bricks and mortality into words and/or art and/or…
- A sneaking suspicion that collage (and braiding and joinery and integration and cohesion) may be better guided by kismet than by my own volition, ergo ego needs to make way for humility and receptivity.
So this, patient reader, brings me to collage kismet…
Lennon article was a stumble-upon. Early morning reading, as I sipped tea with my dog, waiting for the sun to rise, so that I could head out on a bike ride. The magazine was on the table. I had the time to poke through it. This article found me. Pure chance? Probably. Or kismet. An unanticipated find when and where I was least expecting to find it.
“the find confirmed the feeling of kismet she had from the beginning… it all felt undeniably meant to be.”
— Christine Lennon, “The XX Factor” (Source: Architectural Digest, July/August 2023)
This excerpt comes late in the article.
From the outset, this article felt familiar. It was describing another house, another locale, another historic rehabilitation, and yet the otherness blended into our Rosslyn poetics of place.
“The well-preserved seven-bedroom Colonial with formal gardens… was in an atypical style…”
— Christine Lennon, “The XX Factor” (Source: Architectural Digest, July/August 2023)
Familiar fragments began coalescing in a collage.
“across two centuries, [this historic home] is vibrantly updated for modern living”
— Christine Lennon, “The XX Factor” (Source: Architectural Digest, July/August 2023)
Was I reading these phrases? Imagining them?
“refresh and reimagine, a vintage gem…”
— Christine Lennon, “The XX Factor” (Source: Architectural Digest, July/August 2023)
Had my quest become so self-referential that I was losing the ability to see otherness for what it is?
“help breathe new life into the residence”
— Christine Lennon, “The XX Factor” (Source: Architectural Digest, July/August 2023)
So many questions as this collage emerged and evanesced before my eyes. Like a mirage. Leaving only a faint memory, a fading echo.
The well-preserved Georgian-Federal meets Greek Revival waterfront home… prominently perched on Merchants Row in Essex… across two centuries.., organic gardens and orchards… three historic outbuildings… nearly 70 acres of sprawling grounds…
A whisper. Audible. But barely. “College, collage, kismet…”
What do you think?