Sanctuary!

We are only two weeks into 2021 and already I am missing 2020. There are two words that I fervently wish never to hear again: Covid and Trump, not necessarily in that order.

Worldwide these are the only subjects and back in my country ‘tis no better.

In my close-to-reckless-way I decided to go to Lima for the holidays. As has been often the case I got in and out in the nick of time, before another curtain of restrictions came down on the unending nightmare that Covid has inflicted upon us.

It was summer and the city was grey, cold and clammy, and “heavy, hot and humid” at the same time; I know it doesn’t sound possible. Everything was drab and sad, everybody pretending to be happy, joy absent from life. Were it not for touching base with those closest to my heart, it would’ve been a total write-off. But that is not the point here. The point, dear reader, is to find solace in these barbaric times, to find sanctuary like men did in olden times.

After a solid ten-month-diet of Netflix, I turned and returned to my first passion, a place forgotten but still there waiting patiently on the shelf like an old love: books.

I was lucky to chance upon one extraordinary re read and one new author.

The re read is Christopher Hitchens “Mortality” of which Graydon Carter, his close friend, in its post-mortem introduction says: “Christopher was the beau ideal of the public intellectual. You felt as if he was writing to you and to you alone. To all of us, his readers, he will be remembered for the words he left behind –a product of his great turbine of a mind. These last ones, free as they are of sentiment or self-pity, are among his last. They are also among his best”.

He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Upon learning that he writes, “In whatever kind of a race life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist”. Courage under fire. He goes bald after chemo and adds “The chest hair that was once the toast of two continents hasn’t wilted yet.” Grace under extreme circumstances.

Strangers and well-wishers encourage him to embrace religion a theme he has rebuked all his life. Hitchens, a confirmed atheist, cites Voltaire who on his deathbed, when friends begged him to abjure the devil, said: “This is no time to be making new enemies”.

The new author is the other Elizabeth Taylor. Sir Kingsley Adams a notoriously cranky man goes on to define her as “One of the best novelists born in this century”.

John Keates of The Spectator declares: “How skillfully and with what peculiar exhilaration she negotiated the minefields of the human heart”.

And Elizabeth Jane Howard adds this poignant review:” How deeply I envy any reader coming to her for the first time”.

These books have provided sanctuary, an escape from the horrors around us, watching men fighting like beasts over a carcass with total disregard for the hard-earned aspects of civilization; men abandoning public debate -in the intelligent and informed way men employ to discuss passionate ideas- and instead unleashing the dogs of war.

I am not angry; I am deeply saddened because we are turning our backs on centuries of hard-built walls that kept us from tumbling into the abyss.

Some of them erected only after WWII.

I remember my father saying that in the Thirties he had supported Mussolini -he always despised Hitler for his anti-Semitism- “because the option was Communism”.

I don’t want us back living in those times, having to choose between a rock and a hard place.

This century is, with a few exceptions, one of unabated greed. Of 20-year old billionaires who use the power of social media to sell smoke –or lip enhancing creams- to the idle rich but also to the poor and the disfranchised; the culture of perception of beauty versus beauty with integrity. For four years we have witnessed the absence of art and culture in the house of government. No artists came to perform, no great music echoed inside its walls. Culture was kicked to the side of the road like an old can during an administration that elevated golf to a cult and paid homage to the 50k jacket. We’ve had to survive without humor, grace or wit.

Is it surprising then that with no example at the top, the bottom fell off?

Countries need growth; cities need safety and communities need common aspirations. The main one is to be better people. The economy is important, but if we stop looking for the voice of reason, for the musicality of poetry then we are only beasts of burden bound for the slaughterhouse.

Cannon fodder.

We need to find mutual sanctuary not only to shelter our souls and minds but to share the joy of being together at this time on this planet, our home.