Home of the brave

Independence Day celebrates, among other things, America's repulsion of the alien. Today the land of the free and the home of the brave is often nurse to a great deal of force and fear, and 235 years on from its declaration, the cherished independence is still threatened by the alien.

One such alien was Gilbert Keith Chesterton, who was characteristically amused by the form he had to fill in to gain entry to the US in 1921. He recorded the incident in “What I saw in America.”

One of the questions on the paper was, “Are you an anarchist?” To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, “What the devil has that to do with you?” ... Then there was the question, “Are you in favor of subverting the government of the United States by force?”Against this I should write, “I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour and not the beginning.”... But among many things that amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with a beautiful gravity, “I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you.” Or, “I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into your President at the earliest opportunity.” There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists... are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies.

I doubt whether this touching naivete obtains in contemporary US customs officials, but the questions come out of an enduring disquiet about America's natural predators. More than 30 years from the end of the Cold War, the communist is still a dreaded bogey. The word “socialism” makes grown men quake. There is much to admire about what America has meant and won in the world, but I'm afraid their tight grip on freedom will finally choke it. FDR told them they had nothing to fear but fear itself; I don't think they heard him.

Old salt

I'm having a love affair with salt. Recent salty interludes include discovering spaghetti with olive oil and rock salt, sprinkling pink salt from the Murray River on my calamari at Circular Quay, savouring Koko Black's new salted caramel truffle, and pledging undying devotion to Lindt's dark chocolate with sea salt - or fleur de sel, as they more gallicly call it. (Seriously, go and buy some right now). I've been eating salt since I started on solids - otherwise I'd be dead by now - but I don't remember ever noticing it before, ever enjoying it as a flavour rather than simply a category of flavour.

Salt has a fascinating world history, which is amply canvassed in Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A world history. Bill Bryson's history of private life At Home also details some of salt's story: together with pepper, no condiments in human history have caused more toil and bloodshed. For the ancients it was so valuable that it was used as currency: hence 'salary,' and the colloquial 'worth his salt.'

It figures in the Hebrew scriptures as a cleanser, purifyer, preserver, and destroyer. The book of Job contains the first known reference to salt in recorded literature. Salt was part of religious rituals and ordained feasts; conquered lands had their fields strewn with salt to make them unfruitful; the Dead Sea is also the salt sea. Salt, famously, was what Lot's wife became when she looked back at the destruction of Sodom. In the New Testament, Jesus memorably calls his followers 'the salt of the earth'. Later, Paul tells the early church to season their conversations with salt, and fill them with grace, as though the two were counterparts.

Salt is elemental, primitive, powerful, ubiquitous; able to kill or to keep. Too much or too little is lethal for us. Spilling it is bad luck; throwing it brings good. Salt is not food, but it is the grace of every repast. It also has a mysterious affinity with the sacred. And you wouldn't eat your chips without it.

Mmm, sacralicious.

To watch you sleeping

For Canada Day, here's Margaret Atwood's “Variation On The Word Sleep.” I don't think it's a great poem qua poem - it's a bit too much like randomly broken up prose - but I do like the imagery, the invocation of classical myths. And I like the way, without saying that's what it's doing, it describes love. 

I would like to watch you sleeping,

which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and as you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

The knuckled shadows of the western wind

The winter solstice has passed, and today is one of those Canberra days of rare and perfect beauty.  Ali has a lovely poem this week by Amy Carmichael, better known as a missionary but a dab hand at poetry too. Given that I'm looking at bare hills and rich colours instead of snowy wastes, I chose an Australian, Thomas Shapcott, and a poem not strictly solstic; instead, "Winter Westerlies."   

The knuckled shadows of the western wind
strike and stumble on our little hill
and leave a mark as visible and chill
as broken glass in all the air – you mind
your fingers on such mornings! Strong, unkind,
the winter vandal tweaks and worries till
he makes the country quick as razors; still
he cuffs, and all the land is roused and shined.

On days like these, these are the cleared-eyed days,
that wind is rogue, is brave, to slap the back
and snap the lock and strike and break and crack
the lazy comfortable town all ways
at once. And when, his three days done, he dies,
the whole town settles deep again, and sighs.

Down Under

Ours is “a country that is at once staggeringly empty and yet packed with stuff. Interesting stuff, ancient stuff, stuff not readily explained. Stuff yet to be found.” So said Bill Bryson in Down Under, which he wrote more than ten years ago, and which I've just finished. The book itself is packed with stuff, and yet curiously empty. Bryson's certainly not an extreme tourist. He follows a fairly monotonous pattern - drive to place, find motel, have a gander at local museum, have too many beers at motel, reflect warmly, drive on - but he manages to squeeze in a tremendous amount of history, science, sociology, arcana and trivia, and also be uproariously funny. His descriptions of cricket, parliament, and other Australian curiosities, are outstanding, and I enjoyed just as much his self-deprecating descriptions of his attempt at bodysurfing, and of his embarrassing sleeping habits. In fact the latter's too good not to quote:

I am not, I regret to say, a discreet and fetching sleeper...I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. My legs fall apart in a grotesque come-hither manner; my knuckles brush the floor. Whatever is inside - tongue, uvula, moist bubbles of intestinal air - decides to leak out. From time to time...my head tips forward to empty a quart or so of viscous drool onto my lap, then falls back to begin loading again with a noise like a toilet cistern filling. And I snore, hugely and helplessly, like a cartoon character, with rubbery flapping lips and prolonged steam-valve exhalations. For long periods I grow unnaturally still...Then I shriek once or twice in a piercing and effeminate manner and wake up to find that all motion within 500 feet has stopped. 

His descriptive powers are admirable, and as an Australian I couldn't help but enjoy his bemusement, wonderment and affection for the place. I found myself wanting more thoughtful analysis and searing commentary, a more purposeful sojourn; but that's not really what he sets out to do. He's taken funny field notes in the places he happens to wind up, and then generously shared them. The book is a product of just that meandering good nature which is content to stumble on a beer and a bit of local colour. Not having read his other books (yet) I don't know if that's Bryson, or if that's simply what he found down under.