Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.
This is how D.H.Lawrence's novel 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' begins, I've only just started it.
I just saw 'Into the Wild' a few days back. Its based on a true story told by Jon Krakauer in his book 'Into the Wild'.
After graduating as an honours student, Christopher McCandless (portrayed brilliantly by Emile Hirsch in the movie), gives his trust fund to charity, abandons all his possessions and embarks upon a self-discovering journey under the pseudonym of 'Alexander Supertramp'. Eventually to reach his final destination, the Alaskan wilderness. In search of freedom from the oppression of society. And its materialistic obsessions. He sheds all the extraneous needs this civilization inflicts. And thus seeks to find himself by returning to that elemental human existence in the vicinity of nature.
But dies in the attempt, of starvation apparently.
Native Alaskans shake their heads and think of him as, as Jon Krakauer puts it, "half-cocked greenhorn who went into the bush expecting to find answers to all his problems and instead found nothing but mosquitoes and a lonely death". And some think that Chriss McCandless is needlesslessly being romanticised by his protagonists Sean Penn (who wrote the script and directed the movie) and Jon Krakauer. Despite that this is a moving tale.
In his own words:
Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.
Alexander Supertramp May 1992
------------------------ Here is the original article Jon Krakauer wrote about the guy. It is worth reading.
“They say that other country over there, dim blue in the twilight, farther than the orange stars exploding over our roofs, is called peace, but who can find the way? This time we cannot cross until we carry each other. All of us refugees, all of us prophets. No more taking turns on history's wheel, trying to collect old debts no one can pay. The sea will not open that way. This time that country is what we promise each other, our rage pressed cheek to cheek until tears flood the space between, until there are no enemies left, because this time no one will be left to drown and all of us must be chosen. This time it's all of us or none."
Text by Aurora Levins Morales. A contemporary take on the Exodus that encompasses people of all tribes.
"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget. "~ Arundhati Roy
Something I just want to be reminded of every day.
