May 27,2024
MEMORY LANE
…is a dark alley
“Unlike his family, for whom flight is a means to an end, Jonathan treats it as a spiritual quest, and he gradually comes to live by the mantra: “The only true law is that which leads to freedom”. As he flies at ever increasing speeds, he learns: “the gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly.” (Paula Bardell-Hedley, Feb. 2, 2020)
We have a resident seagull, an elderly one, I assume, due to its snowy white plumage and somewhat bulbous shape, though that could just be because it’s now comfortably huddled on top of the outdoor heat lamp looking warily in the direction of our windows, as if knowing one of us will soon come charging through the sliding doors and “run it off the property”. This morning I can’t be bothered, though yesterday we hosed down the heater’s metal shade on a thoroughly rainy day, to rid it of the unsightly remains of the seagull’s “latrine”. Initially I had left it alone thinking a seagull wouldn’t poop in its own roost. I was wrong.
What kind of a mixed message am I sending that our seagull, dubbed Jonathan after his famous antecedent, can watch me watching him while not stirring to chase it from its roost? It’s as if I’m granting it permission to stay as long as it wants. At any rate, having named it Johnathan I’ve anthropomorphized it into something like the little fox’s rose in St. Exuperay’s The Little Prince, and now I’ll have to reread Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, not to find out why a seagull has come into my life, (that’s easy, we have a convenient, solar heated perch from which it can survey its world), but to remind myself of the iconic book that defined the mindset of the ‘70s.
For those of you who don’t know of it: “Jonathan Livingston Seagull is an allegorical fable in novella form written by American author Richard Bach and illustrated with black-and-white photographs shot by Russell Munson. It is about a seagull who is trying to learn about flying, personal reflection, freedom, and self-realization.” Wikipedia
That’s a lot to ask of a seagull. Even the publishers were surprised that the humble novella captured the imagination of several generations, and has sold over 44 million copies since its publication in 1970.
That said, having now finished rereading it, I tend to agree with Bardell-Hedley:
“Jonathan continues to represent for many the consummate symbol of an individual seeking to take control of his or her destiny, leaving behind the hegemonic, narrow-minded community from whence they came. With this I would agree. While I found the experience of rereading Jonathan Livingston Seagull a rather less profound experience than I did in adolescence, it still gladdens my heart, and it served to remind me that the tribe, while ostensibly offering safety and reassurance, can often be petty, cossetting and cruel to those who deviate from the norm.”
What gladdened my heart were the fond memories I recalled of the ‘70s that were perhaps seeded by my recent visit to the iconic Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, founded in 1971, within a year of Bach’s book being published, which I consider quite the coincidence. I could go down a rabbit hole thinking this too is a sign, and I’m sure it is, of something. If nothing else, it comes as I’m reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that my grand-daughter is now the age about which I’ve been reminiscing; she poised to embark on an exciting new life chapter, while I mull over the suggestion of “unfinished business” that may just be at the root of these compelling memories.
This suggestion stops me in my mental tracks. I find myself consuming about a pound of pistachio’s (raw, unsalted, which is why I know they’re a distraction) as I tread carefully over misty memories that are time-altered and subjective. Coming to terms with illusions is a tender business. Though it may once have been “dream worthy” as per the Mamas and the Papas, California is not now the land of milk and honey I believed it to be in the ‘70s. In fact, it never was. For starters, the Beach Boys never even surfed. While Jonathan Livingston Seagull was waxing esoteric, Berkeley students were protesting the Vietnam War, racism, and the subjugation of women. To name a few.
Suffice to say, I’m better off making peace with whatever unfinished business is shading my perception of the present than harboring illusions about how my life coulda, shoulda, woulda been. That strikes me as a good way to go nowhere, slowly.
And, with our ten year old grandson’s baseball game starting shortly, I do have places to go, things to do, and people to meet. Lucky me.