Lost Worlds

Visions of vanished worlds have been on my mind for a couple of months now. While visiting Jasper Junction with my wife, I came across a secondhand copy of the book The Atlas of Legendary Places. (This was just one extraordinary find. Besides that, there were two action figures from the Inhumanoids toyline and two boxes of Tetley tea. Who takes Tetley tea to a secondhand store? Who buys Tetley tea from a secondhand store? The answer to the last question at least is clear: we do!)

Anyways, the book find was serendipitous as I have been considering writing something about vanished worlds, but not necessarily real worlds that have disappeared. Instead, I am fascinated by tales of lost worlds that never were, realms like Atlantis, Eden, and Camelot. Sure enough, the book had entries on each of these places. One common link between each of these locations (and some others I'm leaving out due to space constraints) is how they are evoked, either metaphorically or seriously, to make sense of experiences of tragedy and loss. There is already a great book on the subject (i.e. the "politics of nostalgia"), so in this post I mainly want to touch on how each of these three fictional lands has been used to construct visions of the "good old days." At the end, if you hang in there, I have included a special announcement.

Atlantis

According to the myth, Atlantis was once the most advanced and cultured civilization on earth, but it grew decadent, warlike, and complacent, leading to a cataclysmic punishment: earthquakes and tidal waves destroyed the entire island, entombing it beneath the waves forever. This story originates most likely with the Greek philosopher Plato, who used Atlantis as a metaphor for how societies can go wrong. Generations of later thinkers and explorers wondered if he was referring to an actual place possessed of untold riches. Hence began the speculation as the "real" location of the lost world.  For some, like Helena Blavatsky (a Russian Spiritualist/Medium/Psychic/Purveyor-of-all-things-weird), Atlantis was a real place that represented humanity's lost greatness. Blavatsky believed she was in psychic communication with departed residents of Atlantis and hoped to use their wisdom (among others, like the "Ascended Tibetan Masters" and representatives of Martian civilization) to point humanity out of its 19th century military-industrialist doldrums.

Eden

The Garden of Eden story is actually the second of two different creation stories in the Hebrew Bible's Genesis. (This alone should convince people that Biblical literalism is untenable, but, what are you going to do?) Believe it or not, like Atlantis, people have been looking for an actual location for this fictional spot for some time. (Check out this list - especially the first one.) While the Biblical story certainly has roots in Mesopotamian folklore, there are scholars who believe its pastoral setting is due to its context: it may well have been written during a period of increased urbanization, when nostalgia for green, idyllic places was high. In his attempt to create a Christian epic on par with the Iliad and Odyssey, John Milton used the Eden story in Paradise Lost to question the British monarchy and suggest it had gone astray from earlier, better foundations.

Camelot

Arguably, one of the more prominent "lost worlds" referred to in American culture is Arthurian Camelot, the paragon of just rule and chivalry. Like Atlantis and Eden, Camelot came to an end through inner corruption, but the wonder of what it was for a brief, shining moment echoed on. This initially Welsh myth, which again has been a persistent focus of investigation, came to be equated with the Kennedy presidency, partly because of a prominent Broadway musical on the subject that ran during the period, but also due to the shock of Kennedy's tragic assassination, the abruptness of which resembled the end of Camelot -- or Atlantis and Eden, for that matter.

Myths of long lost lands of placid peace obviously fill a human need for security, for dealing with painful transitions and passages in our own day-to-day lives. They are a way to articulate, through narrative, the odd feeling that "good times" only exist in the past. For instance, take this oft-shared meme from the show The Office:

There is something haunting about this realization, which I am sure many of us have felt. Times change, circumstances shift, and comfort zones we have built up either retract or disappear. At those moments, what came before can feel like a paradise compared to the anxiety of not knowing what's coming. In those times, we relate to the residents of Atlantis, Eden, and Camelot - they too, we feel, lost something precious and golden to the fog of uncertainty.

However, these feelings can obscure something else that's equally true: almost nothing in life is completely perfect. There's a line in an old Billy Joel song: "The good old days weren't always good / and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems." (Check out the song, if you're curious.)

Or, for a more contemporary iteration of the same sentiment, there's Macklemore and Kesha, "Good Old Days."

Some of the best lines come at the end:

"Never thought we'd get old, maybe we're still young
May we always look back and think it was better than it was
Maybe these are the moments
Maybe I've been missing what it's about
Been scared of the future, thinking about the past
While missing out on now."

Pining over lost Atlantises, or Edens, or Camelots is wasted energy. Even in the stories, there were things drastically wrong in each of those settings that contributed to their demise. For each of these paradises, the "good old days" were not entirely good, and the same is true for all of us, except in times of strain and stress, there is a real temptation to feel that way. In that case, I've resolved to remember, at least for myself, that the good old days were good, but we need to make tomorrow better.

And Now for the Big Announcement:
A couple of weeks ago I received word that my book manuscript (Malleable Mara: the Transformations of a Buddhist Symbol of Evil) has been accepted for publication by the State University of New York Press! This is a great press for studies of Buddhist and Hindu traditions. In one form or another -- through an MA thesis, a PhD dissertation, and then an actual book -- I have been working on this manuscript since about 2002, so this is the culmination of a lot of toil, self-doubt, and perseverance. For those curious, the book is about how the mythical figure "Mara" in Buddhism has been portrayed differently according to changing times, religious rivalries, cultural contexts, and even popular culture. Here is an artistic representation of Mara attempting to stop Siddhartha from becoming the Buddha:

(Mara's the green guy on the elephant.)

More to come as the book gets closer to release, but for now, I could not wait to share the news! Until the next post, take care.

Fathers and Sons

First, in between now and my last blog on archery, I came across a fascinating article on how the sport is played in Bhutan and the ways in which it brings people together. Imagine trying to hit a target from 460 feet!

The topic for this post stems from our family's most recent homeschooling unit dealing with civil rights and African-American history. Besides reading about Martin Luther King, the horrifying period after Reconstruction, and seeing a great musical on the 1961 Freedom Riders, we read the novel Sounder by William Armstrong. When I was in second grade, our teacher, Mr. Leichty, read the book to us and I was very taken by it, imagining what it would be like to be the boy in the story. Encountering it again, I was drawn to the character of the father, most likely because I am now a father myself, showing how time and life changes alter our perceptions of stories. Sounder also resonated with a book I read not too long ago: Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which also tells the tale of a relationship between a father and son during desperate times. In this post I'm going to compare the two stories and their remarkable similarities, especially looking at what they have to tell us about the complex ways fathers and sons perceive one another. (There will be times, necessarily, when I give away parts of each book, so keep that in mind. Obviously, if you've read both books, this post will mean more to you, but if you haven't, maybe by the end you'll want to.) Also, if you stay with me to the end, there is a bonus Haiku!

Sounder (1969) focuses on an African-American sharecropping family. Amid the poverty and racial oppression they face, the oldest boy and his father find joy in hunting with their hound named "Sounder" due to his booming bark. (Interestingly, the dog Sounder is the only named character in the entire book.) During a particularly bleak winter, as the family goes hungry day after day, the father goes out in the night to steal food so that they can eat. Not long after, the white sheriff and his deputies arrive to arrest the father in a disturbing scene that involves Sounder being badly wounded with a shotgun blast. Convinced the dog could still be alive, the boy searches for Sounder, who eventually returns, though mutilated and mute. The boy then undertakes long journeys looking for his father at various prison labor camps, encountering abuse and violence from whites along the way. Though he never finds his father, he does meet a teacher who offers to tutor him in reading and writing. Eventually, the father returns home, crippled by his years of hard labor in prison. He, and Sounder, die shortly thereafter and the boy moves on to continue his education.

The Road (2006) is not for the faint of heart. It is as stark and bleak as the cover above suggests. The same is true for the 2009 film adaptation starring Viggo Mortensen.

The Road describes a shattered, post-apocalyptic world of ash and cinders. An unnamed father and son travel through this devastated, desolate landscape, making their way to an undefined destination, with only each other for comfort. McCarthy reflects the spareness of the landscape in the text itself by eliding apostrophes, commas, quotation marks, and even capital letters. The words themselves have been rendered barren, just like the earth. As the man and boy travel, they face starvation and must be constantly vigilant against roving bands of ruthless cannibals. Though they speak of being "the good guys" and want to keep a spark of humanity ("the fire") burning, the father's uncompromising protection of his son often veers into unwarranted suspicion and even cruelty toward strangers. The boy picks up on this and fears they may be turning into "the bad guys." Sickness and a wound from a hostile band eventually lead to the father's death, but the boy is able to find a family of people he can trust and with whom he can carry on.

Both books share the device of not naming their characters. At one point, select critics found fault with Sounder for this move. Framing the characters in this way, though, lends both texts a kind of universality: they are not about particular people, they are about tensions, pains, and issues anyone can face. These books also refuse to provide firm places or dates, rendering the location of the narrative both nowhere and everywhere (though in fairness, given its firmer historical context, we could probably loosely locate Sounder). These choices on the part of the authors help to pull the reader in and see beyond particularities to the broader resonance of human experience.

Both books also delve into religious imagery. Sounder offers explicit instances where the boy and his mother refer to David and Goliath or Joseph in Egypt as touchstones for their current situations. I think it's significant that the Biblical references are entirely to the Old Testament, with that corpus' themes of escaping slavery, dealing with a wrathful (and usually inscrutable) God, and the pining for justice. The Road offers far less evident notions of religious imagery, but when more diffuse concepts arise, they are quite powerful. For instance, as the father looks at his sleeping son, he thinks, "If he is not the word of God God never spoke." This simple line potently communicates the father's fierce devotion, as well as the burden he feels. There are possible references to Job and Revelations in the book, and some have argued that the boy symbolizes a kind of Christ-child. I find this kind of interpretation much less convincing than the tack that the book wrestles with base human conflicts about what it means to be a good, moral person, and all the potential religious questions such a tension abuts.

Most poignant for me, however, is the register both stories hit regarding the journeys fathers take with their sons. (One certainly could read either text for the even more universal theme of parenthood, but as a father with sons, that is the level at which I was struck.) Both fathers struggle, but are ultimately unable, to protect their sons from a thoroughly hostile world. Both fathers are pushed over the moral line (one by stealing, the other by lying) in the effort to provide for their boys. The father in The Road is especially flawed, consistently acting in ways that bend or break the very morality he is trying to instill in his boy. Yet, what sets him apart from the surroundings is that he is at least attempting to provide a good example whereas the rest of world has given up. Finally, both fathers die when their sons are fairly young, yet, in acts of authorial mercy, Armstrong and McCarthy end their stories with each boy finding paths to seemingly brighter future, whether (respectively) through education or a surrogate family.

When my wife and I first became parents, I keenly felt the descent of heavy responsibility onto my shoulders and perceived, more than ever before, that the world around me did not correspond to the world I wanted for them. The books encapsulate what I fear and hope for my own sons. I fear how I will never be able to fully protect them, that hurts and trials unknown and unfair await them. I hope, even as it pains me, that like the boys in both stories, they will be able to move beyond my need to protect them. In Sounder, we can see that the boy has moved on when, after his father dies, he realizes Sounder will soon follow, but is willing to still leave to attend school, even though the dog is still living. He has let that part of his life go in order to create his future. In The Road, the boy could stay hidden where his dying father secluded them, but instead he ventures out and discovers another (friendly) family. I could not help but read the dire straits of both books as the fears we fathers have for our sons of what they will encounter when we're gone, but the endings gave me hope enough to trust that, though our boys must journey on ultimately without us, they will find their way. The last words of the father in The Road evoke a courageous faith in life that I am not certain I share, but to which I aspire: "Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again." In Sounder, the first book the boy finds is from Montaigne and at the end of the story, after his father's death, he recalls this famous quote: "Only the unwise think that what has changed is dead." It is a sign that the boy will carry forward his father's influence, remembering the man when he was in his prime. Those images, I suppose, live on in our children's minds, just as images of them as our little ones live on in ours.

Bonus Haiku
While shoveling snow the other day, I thought up a haiku:
                           
                                                White flakes fall gently
                                                 on the earth. The call of a
                                                 hawk breaks the still air.


That's all for now. Until the next time, take care.