Time warp

The farm where I grew up in (what was then) Rhodesia. The people in the photo were (L-to-R): one of my aunts, my mother and my youngest brother (killed in an accident in 1975)

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Time warp

I’m driving west from the Blue Mountains, over the divide to Bathurst and out onto the western slopes. I’m on my own because Diana is in Bermuda, doing her grandmotherly duty for Judy, who is travelling. It’s been a good season. After years of drought there’s been good rain across the country areas; the grass is an un-Australian, vivid green and canola crops in flower paint some paddocks blinding yellow in a perfect, cloudless spring afternoon. Tanks are full and cattle graze leisurely or stand unmoving in the sun.

The roads are quiet and, along the route I am using, there’s a blessed absence of the heavy trucks that make driving an ordeal on so many Australian roads. I have the music of my era on my iPod playing through the car audio system: Kris Kristoferson singing ‘Me and Bobby McGee’; Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand with ‘You don’t bring me flowers’; Kenny Rogers and ‘The Gambler’; Sammy Davis junior, Frank Sinatra, Glen Cambell and, more modern but of the same genre, John McCutcheon with songs like ‘Dancing in the street’. And so on – lots of songs; not a sophisticated taste in music but I react to it with visceral pleasure. It would be good to be able to bottle this feeling, these moments that must be called happiness. Not deep, exciting happiness; just quiet pleasure. Some of the music stirs memories of people and places and events from long ago and far away; sometimes I just ‘go with the flow’ – in a good car on a quiet afternoon, with a long way to drive, I can allow myself to indulge in the time warp, to let the years slip away and remember when we always looked forward, when there were always things that needed doing, goals to aim at.

There’s an aphorism about life being wasted on the young, who are profligate of the good times, of their health and energy and exciting relationships. They always want a future filled with the reality of present dreams – they want more excitement, more success, more ‘things’, more sex (certainly in the case of males). But there’s another aphorism about finding time to watch the flowers grow, and that’s important too. ‘Carpe diem’ – seize the day. It’s all you have and however long you live, that will always be the case. I guess ‘carpe diem’ means what you want it to mean, but in my view it means ‘appreciate what you have right now – ‘bottle it’ mentally and emotionally. Life is the sum of our experiences, but it’s also – and primarily – the here and now, so if we seize the moment, the day, savour the good things, come to terms with the bad, then when we allow ourselves to drift into a time warp we will rekindle some of what we felt back then – it will be worth revisiting the past.

I think, for most people, life’s rear view mirror tends to have a rosy tint; it’s easy to remember the good times and if we remember them as better than they really were, well, there’s no harm in that. We usually choose not to remember, at least we don’t dwell on, the mistakes we made, the times we embarrassed ourselves, the worries and troubles and boredom – those are the memories that come back when we’re feeling down; they’re not good for our self-respect and will make us feel worse. ‘Vain regrets’ are always sterile, although very difficult to avoid. Frank Sinatra sang “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention…”. Lucky him! (It made a good song, but was it believable? Probably not, but who cares now.) I liked the more realistic attitude implied by Burl Ives (MANY years ago): “The years go by, and I try to grin; keep things from getting’ under my skin…” – altho’ the theme of his reminiscence was “life gets tejus, don’t it?”, which doesn’t suggest a very optimistic outlook. Just go with the flow, old man, and take what comes.

There is one more thing about this time warp business: reminiscence and warm fuzzy feelings, brought on by music and beautiful country afternoons, or whatever, are all very well, but living in the past can’t be recommended. There are countless novels and stories built on ideas like revenge for past wrongs, seeking ‘closure’ (whatever that means) in relation to the death of loved ones, trying to resurrect faded love, and so on. There are people who don’t accept that the world has changed, that whatever your age, you have to move on; they cling to old habits and customs, like a few die-hard British in the fading splendour that reflected the British Raj in India, or the white people who cling on in Zimbabwe, dreaming of Rhodesia and the life we knew. I would like to go back to that, too, but the country and the people and the way of life we knew are long gone and vilifying Mugabe – however justifiably– won’t bring any of it back. There are still things to do that are worth doing, and afternoons in the sun that are worth living.