Shadows, Spurs, The Wild, and Kindness
My weekly post at The Midnight Hour is up. It’s Five Things About Writing, including Jungian shadows and whips and spurs. Enjoy.
Last night the Teen and I watched Into the Wild. I’d read the book, of course, and knew the ending, so it was heart-in-my-mouth time. The film succeeded for me, I think, because I understood the parents, the protagonist, the incidental characters, and the desire to get out and away, to flee.
The movie affected the Teen very strongly, because of how he feels “about nature”, he said. And because when he was younger, he had dreams of striking off into the world just like Chris McCandless did. It has always seemed ironic to me that the youth who wants to flee the most is often the most ill-equipped for the harshness of the world. There is beauty and kindness out there, sure, and most people are decent. But there is also very real and very present danger, from people and elements AND everything else. Surviving a few hard knocks should make one a little more cautious–but sometimes, the false sense of young invincibility from surviving a few hard knocks can be oh-so-dangerous.
So the Teen and I talked about that urge to get out and go away, and I said something that apparently shook him. “Those types–the explorers–God, they’re selfish. I mean, they have the best intentions in the world, but they’re always heading off into the blue and leaving people behind them to wait and worry. And they’re so self-centred, even though they don’t mean to be.”
He was still thinking about that, and we were still discussing it, when the movie showed what eventually happened to McCandless. I knew, but the Teen didn’t, and he was very taken aback. Afterward the Teen leaned over and wanted a hug.
They get so big, but never so big they don’t need a hug every now and again.
I think both Krakauer’s book about McCandless and the movie succeed as pieces of art, one more documentary than the other. They both provoked strong feelings in me, and both helped me to understand a very human tragedy. More and more, the older I get, I think there are very few cases of true “evil.” (I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, just that it’s rarer than we think.) When you understand both sides of a story, of an issue, of a bloody dispute, it breaks the heart to see people blindly battering away at each other, physically or emotionally.
I also think that to be an artist is to search for understanding as a means to communicate. You cannot communicate clearly without understanding, and (again, Johnny, you’re rising in my thoughts) such understanding breeds compassion.
Ah, I’m getting maudlin. Here’s a few links I’ve enjoyed in the past few days: first, SPATS! and next, golly, they just figured out young humpback whales communicate with their mums. (Gee, go figure.) And Mark Morford’s note to China, where he points out that it doesn’t take a genius to figure out there’s bloody totalitarian repression going on in Tibet, and maybe the Olympics will blow the lid off it. (Hey, we optimists can dream, can’t we?)
Last but not least, watching Into the Wild last night made me figure out something: I want to look like Catherine Keener when I grow up. Talk about aging with grace and beauty. Damn.
But more about that later. Have a good weekend, dear Reader. Hug someone you love–and if you can’t, then hug yourself. Please.
