Idle Themes
Solitude has taken up residence in our dwelling in the precious minutes before the children and the hound are awake. My husband drove off to work while the sun still dreamed, leaving me free to wander through memory’s halls as the water trickles happily in the fountain behind me.
The unmistakeable feeling of day’s beginning walks abroad. There were days in the London of long ago where I would stride forth in the crisp morning air; mind full of all the lessons and marking to be done at school that day. Later in Manhattan, we would walk through the impossible elegance of the Upper East Side. Our son would scamper up the steps of the brownstone to his school, now shuttered and no more. I would run and join the stream of joggers around the Jackie Onassis Reservoir. With its views of the city skyline it never failed to steal my thoughts; even now the memory causes my breath to hitch a little.
In subsequent years the time and the tempo dragged (to bastardise the bard of Hibbing) and I pounded the streets of Huntington Beach, which were far from mean, with our daughter and hound in tow. As the bars were washed free of the previous night’s entertainment and the nodding donkeys busied themselves about their work, I repeatedly sought any trace of our former urban existence amidst the deafening Californian quiet with a desperation that sometimes grew so strident I could hear little else.
Nowadays I no longer look for the scenes in which we once played our parts but I feel and remember their power. With a trip to Europe on the imminent horizon, I feel every day the siren song of home. My mind, stranded in the coma of the New World, is beginning to awaken and remember its bearings. With almost twelve years spent in this country, it has dawned on me gradually that it is impossible to rest easy with the insatiable culture which envelops us, always looking for a new victim to swallow whole. Only through remaining uncompromisingly faithful to our origins is there hope of survival here, for one such as me at least. It is a lesson which has been a long time in the learning; the process of fortification against the treacherous terrain has required a somewhat painful reorientation of an entire host of imprints. As the teachings say, there is nothing that does not become easier with practice!
My husband and I took time on Memorial Day to see Tom Cruise’ latest offering, Top Gun Maverick. As the opening credits rolled and the theme tune played, the years vanished and I was back with my childhood friend, snuggled up and watching the original movie, dreaming of America. It is impossible to express how disconcerting it was to be sitting in a packed theatre watching the sequel some thirty or more years later, now a citizen of the land of the free. Rather like one dream colliding with another; you wonder in which one you were truly awake.
A feeling of pure happiness and nostalgia washed over me which lasted for the entirety of the film. The version of America being sold on the screen is one I have long had affection for. It is only with time that I have come to understand it is no more real than one of Puck’s shadows. The truth is something else entirely, but that is a post for another day. At any rate, if you are of the generation that saw the original, its well worth seeing this one. The scene between Val Kilmer, an actor I have considerable respect for and Cruise was genuinely moving, as was the theme of ageing and the father- son dynamic between Cruise’ character and Rooster, played by the always excellent Miles Teller. A thoroughly enjoyable piece of escapism, an arena in which the USA enjoys unparalleled excellence.
As the minutes have ticked by so has the early morning. The business of the day gallops apace. Both son and daughter are staring down the barrel of examination week commencing Monday with varying degrees of trepidation and my teacher’s hat beckons. Can it be possible that we are coming to the end of two years of home education I sometimes wonder. I suppose it says something about the state of modernity that such a dramatic move was necessary. O tempora, o mores indeed.
