OUR DREAM LIVES
McCarthy, Abigail
OUR DREAM LIVES Abigail McCarthy Like the instincts, the collective thought patterns of the human mind are innate and inherited. They function, when the occasion arises, in more or less the same...
...A letter in a newspaper tells of a fourth of July crowd on a public beach at the National Seashore brought to their feet and joining in, when a small group gathered to ring bells and sing The Star Spangled Banner at two o'clock...
...There seems to me no logical or ordered explanation...
...Look at it go...
...Photo processors now say that their arrival at Newport, in New York harbor, in Boston, was the most photographed in history...
...But we know that something happened in that fortnight around the Fourth of July...
...As I say, I don't think we can know or explain these things in any logical way...
...people of all races from the Commonwealth countries...
...And, in any event, the celebration was rendered meaningless by the tawdriness and commercialism which marked its preparations...
...And then there was the great unexplained popular success of the Queen...
...admirals hung with medals...
...One must examine and handle the elements, one by one, as, Jung says, one must handle a dream to find its significance, if one is to find the significance of the phenomenon at all...
...A bust of Washington with a 'WIN' button on his breast looks down on them...
...The great and near-great of official Washington...
...a Roman Catholic cardinal emblazoned with the orders of Malta and St...
...And in the midst of it all the diminutive Queen, a charmingly anachronistic figure in blue gown and blazing diamond tiara, moving pliantly erect, proffering her hand, smiling, listening graciously with real attention...
...All up and down the eastern seaboard, at least, people were swept by a tide of good feeling, pride, patriotism and friendliness...
...Behind and in back of the idea of flight is the sail harnessing the wind...
...Continued on page 575) Abigail McCarthy (Cant...
...We don't quite know what our healing myths are but they are necessary for our health as a nation...
...Somehow-no one is quite sure how-like the frog turned into the prince, the Bicentennial turned into a success...
...Fifteen hundred people did not seem many there...
...No need to say what queen- again no one can say quite why but it is clear that only the Queen of England is symbolically meaningful to us...
...Was her rueful humorous acceptance of that revolution long ago a symbol of the fact that division becomes differentiation after awhile...
...We had a wonderful view of them coming in yesterday...
...A sophisticated world traveler says, "Oh, yes, I went to Charlottesville, to Monticello and to Plymouth all by myself...
...It seemed the right thing to do...
...They function, when the occasion arises, in more or less the same way in all of us...
...Look, look," he cried, "just under the wing on the right...
...Then he spotted one in full sail barely visible through the low clouds...
...Greer Garson, Mohammed Ali, Elizabeth Taylor, an orthodox prelate all robed in somber black...
...Gregory...
...Carl G. Jung Man and His Symbols I read the other day in a local paper the description of a drawing now shown at a local gallery, Bicentennial by Peter Hooven, and I felt I was reading something out of the past...
...Interviewed on television, black and Spanish-speaking, Italians from the north end, Jews and the Irish-they said it was worth it...
...That is why an understanding of myths and symbols is of essential importance...
...What in the world did she mean to us...
...It was a question I struggled with at the reception in the lovely rose-grown grounds of the British embassy...
...If we are to see things in their perspective, we need to understand (our past) as well as our present...
...And what an assemblage...
...Some fortunate symbolic mix made them happy and hopeful...
...An Ambassador's wife, who has lived under the strain of the threats of terrorism, tells of being caught up in a huge street crowd and making her way through it with other diplomats, unafraid and carefree...
...They sat for hours on hard pavements or stood waiting for her to appear...
...It's misty, folks," he said, "but we may get a glimpse of the tall ships...
...What in that ship spoke to that man flying above it in a vehicle so much more swift and marvelous...
...On a blistering hot day after the fourth, I took a small commercial plane out of Boston airport...
...That was strange enough, but even more strange and more significant perhaps, were the receptions in New York and Boston-especially Boston...
...As we flew over the harbor the pilot's voice over the intercom was excited...
...Or was she the living symbol of our frail union-the ideals couched and shaped better in the language we share and no other...
...Was it the very idea of humankind freed from plodding the earth to be propelled through space on the wings of the air...
...A handbill stuck to the wall behind them reads, 'The times are dreadful, dismal, doleful, dolorous, and dollarless.' The group includes a nude girl with the Liberty Bell tattooed over her heart, and a seedy looking counter-culture type with the presidential seal tattooed on his arm...
...It was something which made a better future seem possible...
...The tall ships came sailing out of our past reminding us of what men working together with the sea and the air, with the elements, had done and were able to do...
...Perhaps, as we finger and turn over the elements of our revived dream, we may get an inkling of what they are...
...Perhaps it was the tall ships...
...Bicentennial, according to the description, "is a drawing framed on an actual American flag that focuses on an odd group of characters assembled on a deacon's bench...
...But something strange, and quite wonderful, happened...
...Then, as if to himself, "That speedboat near it must be doing thirty-five miles an hour and it's pulling right away...
...She disappeared into the huge double doors of the embassy leaving satisfied guests milling on the terrace reluctant to leave...
...We thought it ironic to celebrate our independence in an America still suffering from the guilt of Watergate and Vietnam...
...They loved her in rancorous strife-torn, ethnic Boston...
...No one could have predicted the response to them...
...They said it was worth it...
...This dismal view of the Bicentennial was the accepted one as we approached its celebration...
...At the end, a full-throated crowd singing The Star Spangled Banner and God Save the Queen...
...One person tells of starting out to dinner in New York and being so caught and captivated by a night parade, by its exuberance and creativity, and by the atmosphere of good fellowship in the sidewalk crowd, that she and her companion stayed transfixed watching for two hours...
Vol. 103 • August 1976 • No. 18
