The nursery rhyme goes ‘Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clements.’ But in Menton, France, lemons come first. With the annual lemon festival kicking off last weekend, the city’s central garden is decorated with large figures made of lemons and oranges. This year’s theme is outer space, featuring an astronaut (French, of course), spaceships and aliens while lively parades bring traffic to a halt.
I’m aware that I’m enjoying this traditional fete more this year than in previous years. I don’t think this has anything to do with rockets, space beings and sparkling dancers. This has been about partaking in a tradition and allowing myself to be entertained, passive and receptive. I wonder if this is escapism, pretending that life goes on as normal despite what is happening in America, despite the consequences that have us here in Europe shaken and nervously waiting for the next move by our world leaders.
On the one hand, I’m buying into normalcy bias. Carole Cadwalladr explains in her blog what this means: ‘There is an inability to process, accept and confront the dangerous new reality we are in and to focus on the big picture and the pivot of history that’s occurred in the last two weeks.’ She was criticising the New York Times for not reporting on the coup of the tech billionaires that has taken over the White House. She has a point. Cadwalladr’s conclusion offers some hope: ‘It’s a coup. And the international order is collapsing. We aren’t helpless but we need to cycle through the denial part to get to the bit where we start fighting back and take immediate steps to protect ourselves.’
My other hand is not in denial and is all too aware of the history-making events of the past ten days. While the streets of Menton were filled with tourists and shops promoting all things lemon, the US president was slinging cruel and falsely based insults at Volodymyr Zelenski that sounded like they were written by Putin and full of warped narratives. Worse still, this current US government is engaged in so-called ‘peace talks’ where neither the Ukrainians nor the EU have been invited. (This reminds me of the adage that I heard again this week – if you’re not at the table, your on the menu.) Such actions shift the balance of power, making more fragile the international organisations set up to protect democracies and their citizens. This is where another bias comes in – recency bias, where we tend to think of recent events as being far worse than anything in the past. I’m clearly experiencing this and wondering if we are on the brink of WWIII, coupled with financial collapse resulting from trumpanomics.
I’ve run out of hands to refer to, and so, I’m back to contemplating citrus fruit and festivals to get through the winter months, traditions that go back to medieval times as we are living in a world not too different. If I put both hands together, I can pray.
What I’ve been reading
As The New Yorker is celebrating its centenary, I renewed by subscription – for a while at least. Every few years I take advantage of some special offer and subscribe for three to six months. This 100th anniversary edition is a real treat. For me, the highlights have been two brilliant essays and a surprising poem. Tara Westover, author of Educated – a powerful memoir about growing up in a deeply religious and anti-education family – writes on being estranged from her parents and how a friend tried to lend her his mother. Being estranged from most of my dysfunctional family, I can identify with Westover’s need to feel connected despite all that has happened and despite the patent benefits of estrangement. The other essay appealed to my science nerdiness. Dhruv Khullar provides a sobering account of why it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, for humans to live on any planet or space station outside the earth’s orbit – basically, it will make us ill. Really ill.
The poem comes from Robert Frost and is surprisingly not a reprint from a New Yorker of decades ago. This is from a recent discovery of an unpublished poem entitled ‘Nothing New.’ It has been authenticated by scholars, including Jay Parini, who writing for The New Yorker, puts the poem into the context of other works by Frost. Parini comments that ‘Frost’s unique gift was to write poems that burn a hole in your brain. You never forget his best lines. They stick with you—and they change your life.’ So true. I still remember lines from Frost that I learned in primary school.
Hence, I’ll conclude with reprinting the poem here. I’m sure other Frost fans and societies have already posted this all over social media, and well they should, especially in times like these, wintery in both season and perspective.
Nothing New
(Amherst 1918)
One moment when the dust to-day
Against my face was turned to spray,
I dreamed the winter dream again
I dreamed when I was young at play,
Yet strangely not more sad than then—
Nothing new—
Though I am further upon my way
The same dream again.
—Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Paola Trimarco 