(The Gnome at lower left signifies his allegiance in Arlington with pride).
The current malaise abroad in the land is sort of astonishing. You haven’t even heard the term “malaise” in a couple decades. We know it from former President Jimmy Carter’s speech in 1979, the year I was living on an old ship in the Far East.
The word is French, of course, as you would expect from a foreign word combining the meanings “bad + comfort.” As a medical term, malaise is a feeling of general uneasiness, or pain, and often the first sign of an infection or other disease. The word has existed in French since at least the 12th century. The term is often used figuratively in other contexts, in addition to its meaning as a general state of angst or melancholy.
So why would I be thinking of that word on what used to be a joyous celebration of the overthrow of a despotic King? You know. Judging people two hundred years in their graves by the implausible standards of transient modern times might be a good application of the term.
If our Gnome could speak, he would echo it, since his inanimate but evocative frame has watched our collective family doorsteps since at least 1904, according to the scrawled note in the back of an old black-and-white image. I found him in the crawl space of the Little House by the Bay when attempting to clean out the detritus in my folk’s house after their exit from this vale of tears. The gnome did not mind. He had seen the change in times across his years, and welcomed them all with the same impassive delight.
For example, among others in our line, he knew my Grandfather. I didn’t. He guarded my Grandmother in her times of sadness in the long decades after her partner left this earth. Gnome had follow-on protective tours of duty, briefly superintending my parent’s homes until his residence became a dark spot on sandy dark soil under the stout floors of a living room Up North. Discovered in a time of sad transition, he traveled in style with me down to the Piedmont of Virginia to rejoin the living.
There was a burst of excitement in his otherwise stolid existence as Grace took brush in hand and renewed the bright colors of his loden green-colored jacket and bright martial Prussian Blue trousers. His beard glowed bright white under confident ceramic eyes. For me, he guarded the little condo in Arlington before taking up station on the front porch of Refuge Farm. In both the locations we shared he stood proud and tall in his diminutive state until he joined the “booms” that periodically send their muted signal of entropic progress.
One of them, a dull boom, signaled the collapse of the heavy stack of materials that had enabled presentation of a certificate from Harvard’s JFK School of Government. A leg had collapsed on the elegant antique portmanteau in the garage that had contained all the knowledge. There is a process of leveling in this world that may be inexorable, but can be opposed with resolution and stout epoxy.
Another muted “boom” accompanied the collapse of the disintegrating wooden base I had crafted long ago to enable his proud stance. Times being what they are, the base rotted and split and the weight of his flag and lantern quickly transitioned his upright vertical stance to one of brief defiant motion.
The impact of his collapse was mitigated by the intervention of his stout right arm. To soften his fall, it snapped decisively from his loden covered torso. When I was able to methodically extricate myself from the chair in the living room and tottered out to inspect it, I was filled with mild misgiving. The arm, still holding his once-bright brass lantern, was strewn casually on the deck surrounded by shards of old ceramic debris. It was something I resolved to repair and return to him a traditional sense of uplift and honor.
(Consensus at Refuge Farm suggests masking tape is not his best look).
In so doing, to ensure accuracy, I searched for evidence of his happier state. The one in which he was not bound together with masking tape across his smiling face and spotted with slathered epoxy. The one in which he held his flag proudly in his pottery fist under a large banner unfurled to the endless and welcoming sky.
He will return to glory, as will we all. But for now on this day a smaller version of Old Glory is all he will carry, arm upright and re-attached. His malaise is being cured now. We will do our part of that rehabilitation today and honor the women and men who made this a haven of liberty in a chaotic world filled with all sorts of unpleasant alternatives.
They can have it. The Gnome of Freedom is rising again. If he had a thought beneath his bold red chapeau- French, for hat, we understand, it would be for that. Freedom. Liberty. Peace on this earth, and let us carry it with him to the next. Happy 4th, and God bless America.
Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com