by David Tatlock
As I write this, New Bedford is busting out in a proliferation of ivy, ribbons, and twinkling lights. There is a red-nosed San ta. There is the Christmas tree at City Hall. There is merriment. All is legit. The South Coast is sliced from the receding glacial morass and encroaching sea. It is a jumble of Yankee, Portuguese, Portuguese Azorean, Portuguese Madeirans, Cape Verdeans, Brazilians, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Mayans. And New Bedford is a lot of fun at night. Here we are, spread amongst the winking coves and tidal inlets and the three deckers of underbelly Massachusetts.
What we’re looking for in this reportage are worthy fragments; blithe spinets, appertaining. We spied a great bumper sticker the other day, and share it with you now.
THE MEANING OF LIFE IS LIVING IT
How pithy. Given the onslaught of the obvious, it is nevertheless fitting that New Bedford upgrade the elements finding it tough getting together in times other than when it is supposed to be important, like crossing the street, going to a different part of town, like extending a good will gesture to someone different from you. Whales are a serious moniker in New Bedford, Massachusetts, but there seems a slight “disconnect” between what the whaling era means (?) and what needs to take place among men (and women). Like the ole “hands across the sea” routine, the Golden Rule.
A procession of toddlers and parents has just appeared. Here they come in search of Santa. Santa has a wife, and she is here, too. So is the Snow Queen who grants three wishes by placing a tiny silver bell in the palm of your hand, and uttering her incantations.
The yen for “transformation” seems very old. No doubt, it is part of human consciousness in the duplicity of awareness that things are better elsewhere. From the desire to emulate elders comes a mix of dissatisfaction and admiration. Embarrassment is conquered by competence, and learning whether to lead or follow; and here come all the psychological overlays to compensate for our basic humility. The traits worthy of inclusion in our identity are the ones worthy of trust. In the subjective confusions between humility and power, it was the hope of Amazonian natives in Peter Matthiessen’s fabulous novel, “At Play In The Fields Of The Lord”, “to escape their poor flesh, and dance away into the sky.”
The December animation is meant to last the year, but rarely does. The Season’s Greetings means to organize our meanings and “improve” the quality of our existences, and that means “follow through” on basic issues, like picking up the trash, donating a goal net for a soccer field in our midst.
Each year the supra-awareness of the holidays is bundled off to extremes, like buying four wreaths instead of one, like perpetuating the light show to Easter, when plastic eggs and bunny rabbits replace Santa and the Walt Disney characters that somehow get mixed up in the tableaux, or somehow more loathful, leaving up a ratty waistband of unlit twinklers.
One thing grows out of another, including the pious face of religion. Whatever seems more profound can be credited, at cost the is relative to the true ends, to want to emulate the seemingly more authentic holiday celebrations of yesterday, and so the general hijacking of the Holiday Season by purchase power, and the rampant, and deliberate, gullibility that goes with it, leaves the true meanings in a state of camouflage.
Here at the Tatlock Gallery, we play Celtic laced with Portuguese tunes to get into the holiday mood, hoping that the melodies will offset a post-Holiday stillness. It would not be proper to do more than advocate more than just helping others, by noble charity, and by spending time with humans and animals alike. Like the bumper sticker I see at the New Bedford YMCA, “animals are little people in fur coats”.
Happy Holidays.