From the commonplace book

of

Dii Hunter Hammond

 

5a The Littoral

A path through the dunes.

 

(Idle thoughts from a cliff path above Aberrheidol,  January 2022.)

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My father was a 20th century man, and was born and died within its boundaries, his life bracketed by the jazz age and the dawn of the computer age. His cultural prime was the 1950s. After that, societal, cultural, and political change ceased to be exciting and energising to him, and became instead unnerving and hostile. He railed against it and joined futile campaigns against the inexorable and unstoppable shifts of history, spending his last years depressed and miserable, shouting into the wind.

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The cultural zeitgeist of each new century has been a rejection of that of the previous century -and so it goes with the current one. Unlike my father, many born in the 20th century felt trapped by its intolerances, brutalities and destructiveness. They stepped into the 21st century world with a sense of release. I was born in 1963 and so (probably) half my life was in the 20th and half will be in the 21st century.

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Now, like my father before me, I find myself in a milieu I find variably distasteful, dangerous, or merely risible -a social media-driven milieu fertilised by the cultural phenomena of wokery, gender fluidity, cancel culture, terf-shaming, cis-labelling, trolling, etc., etc.

 

Should I, like he did, rail against them, rage against them: throw up dykes of saturated sand against them?

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Should I shout into the wind?

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The situation calls for an overworked metaphor:

I am a mariner survivor from the shipwreck, far out at sea, of the 20th century. After many days I am washed up on the deserted, sandy shores of the 21st. There is a path from the beach, through the dunes, to the town and the native society. But I have wandered the beach gathering up flotsam from the wreck. I have built myself a beach hut of bleached driftwood, old planks, vinyl records, newspapers, magazines, and analogue devices. It is a crude and unattractive hut –though warm and congenial inside. It shelters me. My wants are few and provided by what the lapping waves still wash up. There’s enough to keep me going.

But I have a son; a boy who sometimes shares my beach hut, sitting by the fire or wandering the littoral. I try to teach him only what I hope will be useful to him. But he will grow, and when he does, I shall want –I shall expect- him to take that path through the dunes for, as my father was a wholly 20th century man, so my son will (probably) be a wholly 21st century man. It is there that he must dwell, make his life, make a contribution.

It is the duty of age not to impede or overly mock the spirit of the times –but also the privilege of age not to have to hitch along for the ride!

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I have no desire to take the path through the dunes.

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Happy days to all my 21st and 20th century friends!