Last night we watched "The Trouble With Harry" a Hichcock film. I've seen it over thirty times, maybe more since I am 67 and I think I first saw it around age twenty five. That first time I saw it, I was living in Minneapolis, and my parents were living in a condo downtown. My father had chosen it to rent and watch. I can remember the four season porch we sat in, the tile floor with Swedish rugs, the two Westies in my lap, my father's pipe...and of course I remember loving the movie and it's quirkiness. I'm sure my mother had prepared delicious food as food was central to all Dunn gatherings no matter how small.
Martyn and I have some ritual movies we begin to rewatch each fall, into the holiday Christmas season. We usually start with the Harry movie in the fall. Here we are, living in New England and we are currently surrounded in fall color just like the movie. I remember that first time I saw it in Minneapolis, I yearned to be back in New England where I'd spent four years and then some in college. I could just feel the autumn of the region as I watched, and could remember autumn walks at college, or on trips up to Vermont.
Last night one of the sensations I had was being able to feel the freedom of the little boy-so well acted by a then 5 year old Jerry Mathews. He tramps all over the country side with his air gun hunting rabbits without a phone or an entourage of people guarding over him. I grew up like that too-sans the air gun but always on the look out for rabbits [to hold of course]. I also remember starting out as an artist in my twenties, and loving the scenes where John Forsythe takes his paintings out to the food stand and a millionaire from NYC drives by and discovers them. I remember thinking maybe that could really happen to me if I moved to a small town.
Anyway, I wrote this because I was thinking as I did chores, why do we rewatch movies over and over? I decided it is because of the shared memory, but also becasue in the familiarity there is comfort. The memories of my parents, of college...and now the familiarity I'm lucky enough to share with Martyn. It's like you sit there watching it together, and you both have this shared secret, you know how the movie works. It's kind of like that shared experience you have with someone when you go on a wonderful trip and only the two of you really know the details.
The familiar gives us bearings, and groundings, and memories of past which helps guide what's next. The child that has the same household to come home to each night has a different confidence than the one who doesn't. As the east wing was destroyed, we see an example of a familiar landmark destroyed, vanished by the choice of the few. It wasn't nature that knocked it down, it is one man's ego and tiny, misshapen penis. A ballroom is a good idea, but as someone who grew up with an architect father, and who also worked as a young woman with the number one architecture firm in the area, I am so disturbed, and angry, by how it was, and continues, to be handled. No thought or planning. no accountability. Of course his minions love it-it doesn't matter if he destroyed the entire White House- in their eyes, it is the fact he stuck it in their faces-those people-the others- and just did it.
So, watching that movie last night, with the backdrop of a place I love and respect [even when it had people in it I disagreed with] being torn down and made into golf course fill...the movie was even more comforting. It's not about being blind and thinking we 'can go back to the good old days'. It's not that he wants a ballroom-it's his arrogant let them eat cake attitude as neighbors lose their SNAP benefits. I
As we go forward I'd like some road maps, signs, and stable compasses...no mater which route I take or which tug boat captain is steering.
There's no tug boat captain right now. Just pirates.
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