A Village Under The Sky
I was driving yesterday. Through the pink evening of an unfolding Los Angeles sunset. Driving at times like these, the magical dimension of the place appears. It’s not to be found when walking; the filthy concrete sidewalks and loud discordance of jumbled buildings sullenly refuse to give it the time of day. Somehow though, when behind the steering wheel, one step removed from the detritus of the city, you can feel it. A sense of benevolent space within time, the contentedly still point of a fulcrum. Blink and you’ll miss it but the contentment is there, if you can slow down enough to touch it.
I’ve written before about the magic that I think this city is capable of. My views haven’t really altered, despite the inevitable frustrations and dissatisfactions that come with living in a metropolis that seems to be mismanaged with a wilfull blindness. I do wonder sometimes if things can be taken to a point from which there is no return. Then I walk with the ocean and forget about such worries for a while as the water laps at my feet in gentle ripples.
Contentment has been consistently present in our house since we arrived back from Europe at the beginning of September. With our children finally freed from the frustrations of the American school system I find the role of schoolmistress a source of deep satisfaction. There are stumbling blocks and difficulties to be sure; nobody ever said that having a teenager working from home alongside a Kindergartener would be easy! However, watching our son move forward through his studies with discipline and fortitude whilst coming to understand and develop our daughter’s academic abilities first hand is an experience which I will never forget.
In a wonderful way, the hive of activity which we have created within the home has caused a village to spring up around us. When we are not busy with lessons we are at other activities and with other people. From the strange shared experience of the past several months, new bonds and friendships have formed with an immediacy that would not have been possible before. As I pause to reflect, I realise that this is simply a demonstration of the best of our human nature. Our ability to turn toward others drawing strength from shared connection, rather than to allow fear to usher us into shuttered compartments with tightly drawn blinds, is what will lead us into the light.
Of course, as it’s Sunday afternoon now, we are some forty miles south of home on Huntington Dog Beach. As I stand on the sand, surrounded by all the blue magnificence of the Southern Californian ocean, I think happily about family; of our new niece Daphne who has lived for only a few days in this bright world of ours. I hear these words from one of our favourite children’s books which we read to our son many moons ago and more recently have read to our daughter....
‘And she gazed at the sky, the sea, the land
The waves and the caves and the golden sand,
She gazed and gazed, amazed by it all
And she said to the whale “ I feel so small” ’ The Snail And The Whale by Julia Donaldson
