<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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In the autumn of 2000, iron straps corseted the\ntower at Pisa to prevent its collapse at the middle. Huge lead weights\nstraddled the north base; guy wires attached to the top story went off in three\ndirections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a smaller tower than I expected, a little\nsquatter, but not less graceful. Even in its rehab suit, I liked it. Five weeks\ninto retirement, conflicted feelings challenged my ongoing value as a person\napart from work. I had announced my intention to become a writer, with little\ntraining and hardly a track record. My family wanted a more specific\ndescription of how my time would be spent. Travel and golf seemed short-lived,\nfrivolous, escapist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Restoration in process by the authorities, said\nthe plywood signboard, involved extraction of cores of earth from beneath the\nfoundation. Their plan aimed to prop the tower back up to its tilt of three\nhundred years ago, when the degree of lean was relatively static. At that point\nthe supporting apparatus would be taken off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Will it be\nlike someone\u2019s fractured limb, I wondered, from which cast and traction have\nbeen removed? Will it be thinner, weaker? Will it have to learn to lean all\nover again? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What if I turned out to be no good at writing?\nMaybe I had done the wrong thing, leaving the working world without a re-entry\nplan. If I failed to deliver on my promise that retirement would be a new\ncareer, what would my friends and family think? Was my estimation of success or\nfailure going to match their expectations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Had the tower never leaned, there would be no\nmagic in it. People have watched it lean for centuries against thin air,\nperhaps sharing a secret hope of being there when it actually goes over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remembered a story about Galileo dropping\nweights from its top, measuring the speed of falling objects. From this he\ndropped the weights? Couldn\u2019t he find something taller? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
No, perhaps not then. Perhaps not even now,\nactually. Nothing in Pisa is very tall. And the tower does lean. <\/em>Still, I had in mind a height matching its iconic status. I\nenvisioned something like the Washington Monument, maybe. Now if that<\/em> began to lean\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For me, standing there confused in an autumn\nafternoon, the tower demonstrated the value of persistence, of resolutely\nhanging on. It proved that being out of kilter does not necessarily mean you\nwill go down completely, that people will still love you if you are a little\ncrazy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Should I have hung on longer at my job? Should I\nbe comfortable with my decision, realize that others would feel good about it\nif I did, recognize that learning a new skill would not be different in\nretirement from before?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is probably for the best that they will not\npull it up to vertical. Its value as a tourist attraction would be nil straight\nup. It would need some practical use, maybe as a destination climb for tourists\nto view Pisa and the surrounding countryside. Entertaining, but not the same.\nQuirkless, like other towers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We walked back to the station through narrow Pisa\nstreets and found seats on the train to Florence. A little wait, then a gliding\nsensation, then a clacking of rails as the train picked up speed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I took out my journal and began to write. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the autumn of 2000, iron straps corseted the tower at Pisa to prevent its collapse at the middle. Huge lead weights straddled the north base; guy wires attached to the top story went off in three directions. It was a smaller tower than I expected, a little squatter, but not less graceful. Even in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-essays"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pahwNU-aZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":684,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions\/684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}