My thoughts on Avatar

Just got back from the IMAX 3D Version, and my mind continues to percolate things to say about this film. First of all, I'd like to say that I'll be posting spoilers for the film here, so beware! I avoided learning too much of the plot beforehand, so if you want to keep your experience pristine, then read this afterward.

I loved the movie, just so you know, and what I wrote below is simply an examination of the movie from several of my favorite angles.

Avatar and the Monomyth

Joseph Campbell (look him up) talks about one myth, one story, that has been told again and again throughout the ages, the Hero with a Thousand Faces. Every heroic story follows this familiar arc -- the hero, a person with something to set him apart from his fellow man (in this case, Jake has been paralyzed), is placed in an unfamiliar environment with rules that are different from what he knows. He masters those rules, returns home, and changes his old environment as a result of what he has learned from this unfamiliar environment -- he has changed and can now benefit his fellow men. There are embellishments in this tale that are often added -- magic weapons are given, spells are learned, the hero falls in love, etc... but the pattern remains the same.

Avatar is such a satisfying film because it follows this pattern so precisely. We have Jake, a man set on an alien world with rules of its own, who learns the ways of its native people (riding a horse, flying, learning their language, marrying their princess) and returns to his old way of life altered and able to help his fellow people -- an interesting twist is that for Jake, his alteration completely changes who he sees as "his fellow people."

What makes Avatar also brilliant is that it contains a second monomyth embedded within the first -- we have Jake, and Jake's Avatar, his "true" form, and in helping his "new" people with the war, he uses the knowledge he has learned from the "alien" world -- the realm of the military. Indeed, the juxtaposition of these two forms is what I want to talk about next.

Avatar and the Higher Self

I think you probably know the original meaning of Avatar -- a Sanskrit word for an incarnation of God in human form, taken on in order to restore balance and Truth to the world. When I first heard about the movie James Cameron was making, I though he had it backwards -- here's a human with a weak body coming from a place of separation from nature, incarnating into an already pure environment as a spy to help destroy nature.

In Jake's vat-grown artificial body he has all the freedom he lacked in his real body, literally running and jumping for joy as soon as he inhabits it. It makes him more alive, more real, more himself. And yet, it is just a temporary state, and he must continually go back to the "real" world where he is not in communion with nature

However, halfway through the film, Jake's identification shifts. He is now more the Avatar body than his old one, and living his life almost entirely through its remote controls and senses. He becomes initiated into the tribe, and this ceremony is the turning point for the whole movie -- he has been forever altered, and cannot unsee or unlearn his life in the forest.

He proves, through war, that he has mastered his new body, and can use it to change things, to do the impossible, to make Pandora (Earth) a better place. And this is when it struck me: his Avatar body is like his soul, real and more himself, and his body (as it were) is the fake him, the (in a Sanskrit sense) real Avatar that his higher self has used to help get him to this place of truth.

I can hear the MUM students groaning already, but I was really struck by how perfectly this fits with the experience of meditation. At first, Jake does not identify with the Avatar body at all -- he claims that it looks like his brother, not himself. But fellow Avatar operator Norm doesn't buy it; "It looks like you," he insists to Jake.

At first, the higher Self is seen as "not me" or "not belonging to me", but gradually, it becomes something you get acquainted with and really start to enjoy. After some time with the repeated experience of this Self, something happens, and it's suddenly you now. It's YOU, and the old you is seen as more of a shell, as something that may come and may go, while the real you is ultimately permanent.

After all this time of denying your own actual identity, the sudden realization of your own true nature may completely destroy your previous life, as it does for Jake -- he is basically a prisoner of war after his destruction of the camera. However, it always turns out that the life which emerges after the Self is realized results in true happiness, free from fear or limitations -- Jake fearlessly destroys all the opposition and becomes the new leader of the natives on Pandora.

At the very end of the movie, Jake leaves his old body permanently at the ceremony for his aptly named "birth." His real body, his immortal spirit, opens its eyes as the word "AVATAR" manifests -- very powerful. The total transformation into spirit reaches completion, and full enlightenment is attained. And he gets the girl to boot. ;-D

Avatar and Politics

Okay, raise your hand if you caught some -- ahem -- similarities between the events of this movie and what happened to the Native Americans.

Okay, you can put them down now.

Really, this is the most obvious thing in the film, and James Cameron does a great job clubbing us over the head with it. Really, this could be said to be like Dances with Wolves (another film that everyone loved because it follows the monomyth so exactly) but in space. Still, let's look at this angle for a bit.

The greed that the white ma... I mean that the humans have for natural resources remains insatiable even in the 22nd century. Unobtainium (groan) is simply the new oil or coal or land, and Pandora is simply America or any other place Native people once inhabited. On the surface, it seems fairly all right to just get the resources -- after all, the Natives aren't using them, right? But as the plan unfolds and it seems that the Natives won't leave peacefully, well, we need those resources, right? So send in the Cavalry!

It was very hard to watch certain parts of this film -- the burning horse when the battle seems almost lost was very intense -- because it so perfectly channeled the despair that Native people feel when their homeland is overrun by invaders with highly advanced weaponry that leave no room for resistance. The terrible firepower of the shock troopers in power armor, the flight of the people after the destruction of the home tree, these all triggered collective American memories of the near-extinction of the buffalo, of the trail of tears, etc... and I feel, may be slightly lost on some foreign audiences even though this is a universal human issue. Still, Cameron hit on something here.

Jake tells the Na'vi goddess Eywa that there is "no more green" where the humans live, that they have "killed their mother," a clear environmental warning. So there's that message in the film as well; that it is right to protect nature, and senseless to destroy it.

Many people could say the message is heavy-handed, but at least Cameron shows the situation instead of telling us for 90% of the film, which makes it much better in my opinion. And he may have hit on something, which brings us to:

Avatar and the Emergence of a New Earth

It's become somewhat of a cliche in spirital circles to say that we are entering a new age, a time when things will be better and when humanity will live in harmony with Nature instead of fighting it. I live in a community where many people meditate, and the term Heaven on Earth is common parlance, so you can understand how I might be seeing signs of growing awarness wherever I look.

The portrayal of the Na'vi as respecting all life, and regretting its loss is certainly just like Native peoples all over the world. Neytiri, Jake's eventual wife, tells him not to thank her for the deaths of the doglike creatures when she saves him. (Of course, I'd like to point out that the Na'vi have no problems killing humans at the end of the film, but I guess it's okay if its to defend their homeland, hmm? But I digress.)

The Na'vi share an innate bond with nature, a literal link to anything in the forest. This is totally sweet as a concept, but it's also a perfect portrayal of modern human desires -- we want to be able to commune with animals and plants like that, to be one with them. (By the way, do Na'vi have sex with their hair links? Just a thought. But again I digress.) According to many spiritual teachers, by becoming more natural (one way is to return to the way native people lived, or at least by respecting the earth more), human beings can regain their link with nature, which is actually the oneness of all things in creation (as Sigourney Weaver tries to point out to the clueless corporate executive).

As the audience, we undergo the same transformation Jake does. We start out as clumsy, broken, incomplete, and fall in love with the beauty of nature and the freedom that comes with respecting it. We start out as members of the human race, and emerge as Na'vi at the end. We see the military method of conquering another people fail utterly, and rejoice.

Some might fault Cameron for having the Na'vi win the war -- in a typical Deus Ex Machina moment, the Na'vi are saved when Nature Herself in the form of the creatures of Pandora overruns the human troops and brings victory to the native people. But this did not happen to the American Indians, or the Zulus, or the Incas or the Aztecs. Neytiri says that the goddess Eywa does not choose sides. Why couldn't Cameron leave it at that, and let the audience see what really happened back in those conquests?

Perhaps what Cameron is saying, however, is that now, things will be different. Now, militarism will not solve problems, will not win, and in fact, is totally senseless. This time, Eywa, the Goddess, Mother Nature, will answer the people who are protecting the world and its resources. There will be a response so clear, so unmistakable, that even those who are blindest must not fail to see. Even if this isn't what Cameron intended, Avatar may still play a great role in influencing the subconscious of the audience and preparing them for whatever great changes may be coming.

This is Ted Walker. Thanks for reading. I'm going to bed. Good night.

From my Digital Arts for Sustainable Living class

Leftover Memories
by Ted Walker

Pancakes. It was all about the pancakes. I would wake up, smell the delicious aroma, and jump out of bed, making my way from the guest room to the kitchen. Then I would and park myself at the kitchen table to wait, my fingernails making grooves in the soft wood. Grandma would see me and laugh at how I wasn't even dressed yet. But she would serve me first, the golden brown cakes gleaming slightly from frying pan oil. I loved my Grandma. She would smoke out the kitchen window, and happily greet everyone as they came into the kitchen, laughing and joking.

She lived in a farm house in Easton, a town on Maryland's eastern shore, where I suppose she must have lived her whole life. I really know very little about her, once I gather my memories. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't ask anyone else what they remember about her as I try to piece everything together. I know she was college educated, but that she spent most of her life in the home making things nice for Grandpa.

Easter was one of the best times for us grand kids to visit her. After receiving massive amounts of Easter basket goodies, Grandma would boil dozens of eggs, and we would painstakingly decorate them. I remember my “dinosaur eggs” would always have large, colored spots of crayon, while my sister and Mom used stripes and zigzag patterns. The dining room table would be covered in newspaper and laden with all sorts of dyes, crayons and wire egg dippers. Grandma, more a reassuring presence than a participant, would lean over to place bowl after bowl of finished eggs down for us all to reach. I like to think she got a great deal of satisfaction seeing us decorate the eggs and show them her before we rushed out to hide them.

The expanse in front of my Grandma's house bordered a major highway. Drivers sped past at 65 miles an hour between the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and the Atlantic Ocean. At the edge of this road, my sister and I (and my brother, once he got old enough) would go back and forth across the great lawn and by the old pine trees and hide the eggs as best we could. I even buried some of them in the ground (they were dinosaur eggs, after all) or put them in old birds' nests. My sister would use the beds of plants or behind rocks as her favorite spots. And then we would run around like maniacs – feet from the deadly highway – and grab as many eggs as we could find, crushing many of our prizes in the process.

Once we had gathered the eggs, my memories get a bit hazy at what we would do with them. I don't think anybody wanted to eat that many eggs, but as I write this I realize now where our egg salad at lunch had to have come from. Since it was Sunday, this lunch would be the last meal at Grandma's for some time. I think I remember knowing somehow that Grandma was sad to see us go, even at a young age. I knew that once we were gone, the house would return to silence except for the sounds of the radio or television. She wasn't a sentimental woman, but she was glad to have us, glad to have someone to talk to. While Grandma was a garrulous woman, Grandpa was a quiet man, and ten years her elder; it always seemed that Grandma was the one holding up any conversations they had, and I wonder if when we left they had much to talk about.

My Mom actually never spoke much about Grandma, or if she did, I was probably reading a book or playing a video game at the time. I remember some of the stories: she told us about growing up in Easton, high school, how she and her brothers were as kids. I saw the toys Mom and her brothers had played with in the attic along with journals and posters, but the details of how Grandma had raised her children eluded me. I remember it being mentioned that if Mom misbehaved as a child, she would sometimes be spanked or smacked, which always upset me. Mom was growing up in the sixties, and Grandma was from the Greatest Generation that had fought World War II, so the classical generational disconnect was bound to occur. I think Mom may have felt hurt or angry at Grandma, but as time wore on, I think she let a lot of it go and enjoyed spending time with Grandma as friends as well as mother and daughter.

Perhaps my Mom saw the distance in communication between her mother and her father and felt sorry for Grandma. I sometimes think she secretly vowed to have a marriage with someone she could really communicate with. And I believe she found a very good companion in my father, except for the fact that he was gay. When she divorced him when I was four, I think she lost her best friend and her comrade-in-arms. Sometimes I fear she is tragically reliving the same disconnect between her mother and her father with her husband Rob, but again, this is all in my mind. I don't really know these stories other than a few quarter-remembered memories, and my interpretation of events is certainly biased. In fact, I think that I am the one with inner tragedies and losses; they have simply taken the form of my mother and grandmother.

Thanksgiving was usually a big affair for the Royer family. Like Christmas, it provided an excuse for us to gather in Easton for a mini-reunion. My aunts and uncles would be there, as well as my cousins, who were younger than my sister or I. Having the whole family gathered was actually one of my favorite things, and all the grandchildren would go wild. The upstairs attic was a veritable toy chest, and we would play stupidly dangerous games such as “alligator pit” while the adults sat around downstairs watching football. When we grew tired of this, my cousins Martin and Daniel would play all sorts of nerdy board games with me. All the while, Grandma would be quietly tending to things, cooking, baking, setting the table. She was a farm woman, after all, and she was doing what she did best. She went on her shift when we were there, working overtime to make everyone at ease, to nurture and feed us.

I remember how one year – I was probably ten or eleven – Christmas was fast approaching, and I had asked for a remote-controlled car (because Aaron Butler had one). I kept begging my Mom with the request until she finally hinted that Grandma had gotten me one. This eventually quieted me down, but I still drove the wireless vehicle over and over again in my mind, fantasizing how I would launch it off ramps and use it to deliver secret messages to my friends.

When Christmas morning dawned, and the plastic Santa Claus was fixed on the roof with nails, and the antique ornaments hung on the tree, I was ready for my present. Grandma was so proud to give me the gold-wrapped box, and I was filled with expectation. She smiled down at me as I unwrapped it. Beneath the paper was a remote controlled car! I was so happy, and hugged and thanked her. I began to remove the packing, and froze. I had made a disturbing discovery: “remote control” only meant a few feet; the car had a thick black wire connecting it to the control mechanism. I suddenly was so angry at my Grandmother that I threw the worst, most undignified tantrum that I have ever thrown. I just knew that she had gotten me a cheap one from the dollar store, and was so frustrated after all that waiting. My Mom was so embarrassed that she dragged me from the room, and as cast a backward look into Grandma's surprised face, I felt my rage turn to shame. I cried and cried, and wondered what she must think of me. Her grandson had turned out to be an ungrateful brat.

However, as I grew older and spent less time at her house, I started to appreciate the occasions where we would see her, and help her out as best I could. She didn't say it outright, but I knew she saw the change in me, partially due to my love for her, and also due to my growing up. I think she was proud of me near the end, but again, it was non-verbal. For all the talking Grandma did, she never really spoke about her emotions to us.

At the dinner table or the breakfast table she always encouraged others to eat more, once famously insisting on a salad bowl for cereal instead of the standard size. She was a big woman, round spectacles resting on her pointed nose and her wavy gray hair hanging down as she served us food. But what was largest was her presence, filling the house, making us at ease, letting us be wholly ourselves. A subtle thing, but how profound the difference was when she was gone.

Grandma outlived Grandpa by three or four years. I was in school in California when my grandfather died, and my parents decided that I should stay there rather than fly back for the funeral. I always felt that I had missed out on some family experience, and how this affected Grandma. When I got back home to Maryland, I noticed that she had changed. She was more distracted, more worried, her color and aura more gray. I think she loved him very much. He had been a mischievous and funny man despite being taciturn, and she had also been taking care of him for so many years that it must have been a shock to finally be released from that task. Like anyone of that age who loses a partner, she must have been acutely reminded of the approach of her own death, the most terrifying thing of all.

I remember how fast it all happened. One day, my Dad (who, even after the divorce, talked with Grandma regularly on the phone) came into the family room to let us know that Grandma was spending some time in a clinic for health reasons, and he was concerned for her; the house she lived in was her natural habitat, and like removing a fish from the water, her leaving the house could have dangerous consequences. I remember how Dad suggested my sister and I go and visit her, but my cousin Brian was living at her house at the time, so we didn't think it necessary. He called Mom, but she was living in Montana at the time, and working. So in a few days (I remember it was a Friday) my father told us the news; she had died of pneumonia in the clinic, where she was only supposed to be staying a few days. We were all shocked. My Dad was upset because he believed her death could have been easily avoided, and that she had died because she was neglected. Not only that, but he thought that she had been in pain.

Nobody on my Mom's side of the family spoke about that. My Mom and her brothers would be arriving on the next flight, and we would all be attending the funeral in Easton on Monday. The next day, I got in a car wreck and was lucky enough not to have been injured at all. My car I had been using for work was totaled, and I had no idea how I was going to get a new one in time for work on Tuesday.

The family gathered at the old house, and the difference I mentioned earlier was acute. Aside from the grief, we just didn't have that sweet woman to bind us together. We talked little; I think everyone felt a bit shocked and guilty. I remember the funeral, seeing her body, and how it really didn't look like her; it looked waxy and unnatural. The minister presiding said something about “love living on,” even though he didn't know her at all. I felt that he saw our pain, but wasn't able to do much to ease it.

As we left the grave site, I asked my Mom if Grandpa's funeral had been “worse” emotionally. She said no, that this one was much worse, since it meant nobody in the family would have a place to meet anymore. And she was right; I have not seen my cousins or aunts or uncles since that day, since my uncle Jimmy, executor of the estate, decided that I should inherit my grandma's Volvo. I drove it away from the old house by myself, feeling unfamiliar and scared behind its wheel, while emotions I could not name swam through me.

The old house was quickly bought up and replaced by a used car lot. The internet has no records of a Louisa Royer in Easton. I own no photos of her. I have not been back to visit her grave. Nothing remains except for the car she left me, the one without wires.

Art Essay

Conversion to Digital

Whenever I discover something obscure that I think is good, a little obsessive voice inside of me pipes up saying breathlessly, “Yes, yes, this is amazing, the best thing ever! You must keep it a secret to the masses and show it only to your closest, coolest friends! Once they are exposed to it, they will undoubtedly recognize it as amazing and see you as you really are: a true cutting-edge visionary, a genius!” The little imp-voice is usually quite convincing at the time, playing off my desire to be seen as avant-garde. So I end up obeying its dark whispers. I bide my time until I get a friend of mine alone, all alone with nobody else around to interfere. And then I strike.

Forced exposure is really the right term for what I do. I am insecure exhibitionist opening their robe to unwilling eyes, emitting a vulnerable, naked cry: “This is me, world! Love me!” Usually, I will sit someone down in my car, in front of a stereo, or my television. I then make them listen to a piece of music, play a video game, or watch a movie. I spend the whole time while the entertainment is going on sneaking piercing, expectant glances at their face for the slightest sign of enjoyment, or commenting intensely, “did you notice this or that part?” It took me some years to realize that people do not generally enjoy this treatment, and it has not proved an effective way for me to make people like what I am trying to show them.


In the rare few cases someone actually enjoys the experience, I really don't know what to do with myself. So we both like this thing; now what? Does this bring us any closer? Do we discuss it together easily and naturally as friends do? Do I get any satisfaction at all from the sharing? No; my original pleasure in finding it – and finding it first – has by this time turned to possessiveness and jealousy. We cannot share the experience with each other, because I am putting up a psychic block. The song, game or movie cannot be “ours;” it must remain “mine.”


There's really no way around it; I can either enjoy it by myself and only by myself, or I must give it up to the other person so they have just as much claim to it as I do. Absurdly, I am not even the artist or designer, just a fan, but I must be the fan, the biggest fan. This takes a lot of energy, so I tend to only obsess over something for a short while, unless it's something I really, truly believe in.


And here's where my love for the band Underworld comes in. They were really the first band I discovered on my own; my friends, parents, and especially my older sister had almost completely guided my musical tastes until I was twenty or so. My sister, highly passionate about her music, bears partial responsibility for my forceful exposure tactics. She and I would be driving, and over the music she would loudly proclaim that this band (whatever one she was into at the time) is the best band in the world, being so kind as to explain why in exquisitely minute detail. Some of these car rides were rather long, so I guess it worked; later on I would download songs by whatever band my sister had me listen to. When I got my first real job, they became part of the growing library of mixes I listened to in my own car.


However, one afternoon I was clicking away on the computer in the family den. Illegally downloading large amounts of music was what young people did at the time, and I was no different. I listened to track after track of music, casting a wide net into the streams of data. I was looking for something new, but everything I sampled had the same unpolished, lackluster feel. Then, by some divine providence, I was struck by the humming bass of one song. The aforementioned bass and the guitar rhythmically and repeatedly played, with the subtle sound of a muted horn in the background. Like Radiohead, a popular band I was into at the time, the artists seemed to have a light touch which added to the texture of the music without overloading it. But the end of the song was the best part, suddenly dropping to a lone bass before crystallizing to the most perfectly exquisite blend of lyrics, piano, and techno sound effects with the guitar finishing last like an echoing ghost. I, of course, immediately knew I had found a treasure in this song, and the obsessive imp voice cackled with glee.


I next did some serious research on Underworld, the band. And by this, I mean that I typed their name into my Limewire software's search box and ripped dozens of their songs off the internet, none of which I paid a penny for. Listening to more tracks by them led me to a shocking discovery: Underworld was a British techno band. I didn't really go in for most techno, and my sister would be disgusted with me if she found out I was listening to it. But Underworld uses real instruments along with electronic ones. They've been around since the 80's, constantly pushing the envelope while keeping their original sound alive, never selling out or going pop. In fact, their greatest commercial success was the song Born Slippy (which I never really liked) from the Scottish indie movie Trainspotting.


Like other techno bands, the same lyrics are rhythmically repeated throughout the song (sort of like an instrument) to create a rich musical texture. But to my surprise, I discovered that Underworld actually sings their lyrics to the beat rather than using prerecorded samples. In short, these dudes had never sold out, and didn't take shortcuts.


I also noticed a commonality in the structure of their tracks: Underworld's lyrics are hints, never describing precisely what the point of a particular song is. It's not to say that their songs aren't about anything, because they most certainly are. Still, their lyrics without music would look ridiculous and out of place. Again, the wholeness of the music is essential to the effect that the words evoke; they perform a haunting dance around a central thematic maypole, threads in a complex verbal tapestry. They have a talent for writing songs which slowly build and crescendo to a beatific climax, where angels raise the listener out of the grungy gutters and into the azure skies.


So, that evening, in case someone were to discover that I was now listening to techno, I labeled my newly-made mix disc with a caveat: “Highly Experimental.” I wanted to see how the band held up during my long drive to work. I only placed a few of their songs on the disc, as if to deny that I was coming under techno music's spell. However, as the morning drive wore on, I found myself moving past all the other tracks on the disc to get straight to Underworld's songs. They made such great driving music that I was hooked, bouncing my fingers off the steering wheel to the beat in the beautiful Maryland morning.


Cold and Crisp was the first mix I made almost entirely centered around the band, opening with the primal drums and echoes of Mo Move. Like the band's long, epic techno songs, I used every bit of time on the disc for a full 70 minutes and tried to make the album build to a fever pitch. I put in all my favorite songs, from the dreamy blue cellphone cityscape of Jumbo to the grungy, dancy grind of Luetin, to the futuristic journey Mother Earth.


However, my favorite songs of all were the sweet and simple tones of Rez, used in the Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky, and the yearning, desperate vision of the Goddess herself in Cowgirl. One day, I found out that Underworld actually performed my two favorite songs back to back in their live shows. When I finally found the Rez/Cowgirl track off their live disc, I could not believe my ears. Even to this day I experience chills, goosebumps, and an upswelling of indescribable awe/joy/sadness every time I hear that song. The singer's voice as he gets to the climax, describing feminine beauty without directly saying it, is so full of emotion, the music peaking so perfectly, the timing so exact, it just gets me. I always saved that song for special occasions as I drove up and down the hills of Maryland, so alive, so grateful.


I could no longer keep possessing the music. I had to share it, and I one day, I tried to get my sister to hear the beauty of the songs as I had. She actually turned off the radio right in the middle of the song, saying it was giving her a headache. I was heartbroken. I even began to doubt the richness of the music, as friend after friend couldn't really “get” what I was hearing. Gradually, after a few years, Underworld was phased out of my musical repertoire, in favor of songs that I could rely that others besides myself would enjoy.


Today, however, since my thoughts were on the band, I had a sudden impulse to check YouTube (which had not been around when I first started my obsession). My first search's results revealed something magical: Underworld's songs are not only there, but there are thousands of glowing comments posted by the users there in praise of the music I had once loved. What I saw (the impish voice screaming as it began to fade) were the same points, the same exact reasons I loved the band mirrored perfectly, as if I was the one writing the words I read. I realized that the band needs no advocate; the music speaks for itself, and those who would listen to it are richly rewarded.

"Shooting Dad" and "Rainy Mountain"

Writing...

"Shooting Dad"
I just want to say first that I kept wondering in what way the title was appropriate as I was reading the essay, only to be pleasantly surprised in the final few paragraphs. Brilliant.

Chesterton - "A Piece of Chalk" and Montaigne "Of Books"

Chesterton - A Piece of Chalk
The intro to Chesterton really hit the nail on the head. He is very fun and very light to read. However, as the intro said, along the way some of his comments on religion tend to grate a bit (i.e. "blind old gods that men worshipped before the dawn of right"). That being said, the whole story of how he discovered the enormous piece of white chalk beneath him bounces and flows so nicely that I read it again right after I was done. He also reminds me of myself in the second paragraph when he explains the importance of brown paper to the woman in the kitchen. It seems like I'm always doing things like that. Also, I wanted to mention that I enjoyed all of his talk of color, especially the cow's soul. Very fun piece.

Montaigne - Of Books
Again, the intro to Montaigne describes him to a T. It was good to read that the first language his father had him learn was Latin; this essay might not be as understandable without that piece of information. I found at times that the jewels of Montaigne are hidden in the center of his paragraphs, which makes it hard to pick up the good bits without reading the whole thing. And then I realized that the whole piece is like that. He is a very good link to the ancient world of Rome, able to read between the lines and accurately get at the personality of whoever it is he is examining. And it is interesting to note that he has understood these authors so well (and then wrote about it) in the same way that I am now understanding him (and writing about it). Montaigne is an intellectual, and his work is full of references that most students in this day and age would not get, but he is truly human and very sincere. I really liked that bit where he wrote about how the most skilled clowns do not need to have makeup or silly faces in order to make people laugh. And when he talks about his preferred telling of history -- how he wants truth and accountability -- I wholeheartedly agree.

Nature Essay - Revised

Borderless

by TED WALKER

For reasons that are difficult to explain, I spend a lot of time, sometimes hours, at my computer desk. By the second or third hour, my body and mind are rough-edged and irritated from the cramped position of the char and the intense stimulation of the flashing screen images. So I put on my shoes and just start going somewhere, feeling the chain linking me to the computer break as I leave the room. If I'm feeling an intense need for relief, I'll go to the park, the closest thing to unfiltered nature we modern humans have.

I think danger, a necessary ingredient for the wilderness experience, is almost universally absent from these parks. This is not really the wilderness; If I continue to walk, I will reach a farm, or Hy-Vee, or the Highway. So I savor walking over a simple utilitarian bridge: nothing to lean on, nothing to prevent the traveler from ending up waist-deep in water after a hilarious fall. I am a trickster at heart, and enjoy a good thrill, but I don't actually want anyone to fall to their death, or get eaten by a savage predator. I simply want trust from whoever made these parks that we don't need safety nets, and that we know what we're doing. Even if we don't deserve that trust.

Of course, there are children to think about, and nobody wants a child to get injured. Children who grew up as I did don't know how to behave in a natural setting. If they have been confined to an artificial one, you may place them in nature, but don't expect them to react appropriately. You may be lucky enough to get them to appreciate the beauty, but what will be missing is the proper attitude of respect for nature.

I've never been able to shake that feeling of disrespect. Animals here are on high alert – every area I enter, I hear things moving in the underbrush before I have a chance to see them. A clunk or bam or rustle and I feel like a made some terrible mistake; I was too ignorant and loud, and missed my chance to see something truly worth writing about. It will take hours for nature to reset and return to a state of equilibrium where the animals are at ease, just because of me. I move away from the swamp after a long wait to see if anything else moves. In my wake, Life continues where it left off.

I suppose I could make more of an effort to go into the wildness, to get away from these shallow wading parts and into the depths of Nature. In these shallows the signs of man are visible everywhere you look. But still, there is the joy of seeing your fellow man taking pleasure from the same things you do; across the pond from me, a photographer gratefully spreads his arms to take in the expanse of the water before him. This is before he mechanically falls into snapshot mode and loses his wide-angle focus in the lens of his own camera.

For the modern person, the price of admission into the wilderness is contact with fear, discomfort, and break in routine. This is all our baggage we bring along into the woods, and in the ignorant, it can turn violent. I too have felt the instinct to destroy nature. Even on this walk, it comes up. On the path leading away from the pond, I pick up a piece of wood laying before me. It looks solid and sturdy, like it could make a good cane or staff, until I see fungus growing on the other side. Annoyed at touching the white growths on the bottom, I hurl it at a tree nearby.

Right before smashing the would-be walking stick, I feel the most subtle voice or impulse (so subtle it really has no word) informing me that my action will be somehow wrong, will result in guilt. It really happens right as I toss the stick, smashing with a painful, woody tunking against the lovely tree; half of the heavy stick falls on a young, green plant nearby and crushes it. The plants vibrate with the impact and return to stillness, and I am suddenly reminded of a person's involuntary shudder at witnessing a scene of violence. These plants patiently and silently bear my abuse.

I remember when I was a teenager, how I used to smash and attack the tree by the school near my house, by the baseball diamond. I was in rage, in anger at the world, at school, at everything. And the tree there took my punishment, the ultimate martyr, as I struck it again and again with its own fallen branches. It never objected, but one night, as I tore a branch from it by twisting, I felt a sort of gut-pain, and I realized (as if the camera had been pulled back) what I was doing. I walked away and never did it again. (Last time I checked, the tree was doing fine – I even patted its trunk and apologized.)

As I wander, lost in thought, a painted frog leaps out of the path of my shoe, directly into the tall grass beside the walkway. There she sits, totally motionless – her living eyes the only sign of animation. I have heard in these moments of paralysis that the animal experiences great stress. This must be a defense mechanism, to remain so motionless for so long. I imagine the frog's tiny heart (I know just how tiny from our dissections in high school) beating furiously in the face of death.

I don't know if any of my feelings about the frog are true or imagined, but I reluctantly move on and leave – as I go, the frog must feel like it can move, and jumps repeatedly at the tall grass in an almost clumsy fashion, looking to me like a panic to get away. Again I am filled with a sense of guilt, that I am causing a disturbance here and stressing out animals.

It's not always like this. One night I was walking home; it was a beautiful summer evening, and I had decided leave early from my friend's house. As I got to the edge of the bridge, I saw a rustling by the trunk of a tree not too far from where I had stopped. No, not just a rustling; a munching noise. Thinking that it must be a rabbit, I waited for it to continue on its way. But it was not a rabbit; it was something I had never seen before.

The word “muskrat” stuck in my mind (even though I knew it to be an incorrect identification) as I watched it emerge from the cover of foliage. It had a rat-like body, and a somewhat short tail, but it was absolutely adorable. It crossed the path in front of me – about 6 or 7 feet away – and went over to the other side of the path, where it disappeared down a slope. I stood still for a minute longer since I could still hear it, and to my astonishment, it emerged about a foot – this story at least has no embellishment – from where I stood transfixed. Incredibly, it even sat down with its back to me like the guardian of the bridge. It yawned, or munched whatever food was remaining in its teeth, completely at ease and natural. I was stunned.

It took my leg a bit of effort to remain completely motionless, and it began to cramp. I stirred a bit, to relax it, but the creature still did not move. Of course, with such an opportunity at hand, I knew I had to take a picture of it, and slowly pulled my cell phone from my pocket. I took two pictures (both of which turned out completely black), and at each “click” noise of the camera, the creature not more than a foot from my shoe began to take notice. Finally, it decided to turn back down the slope, but it did not seem panicked, just a bit busy, as if it was late for an appointment with friends.

I checked the internet when I got home. The thing it most resembled was not a muskrat, but an adolescent groundhog, or woodchuck. I still, however, feel that its nature is best conveyed by its correct name: the whistle pig. It was at ease with me and happy, unlike the feeling I got from the frog.

And the desire to embellish my frog story from what it is – a frog jumped in front of me – into “I saw a ton of frogs,” or “one frog jumped on my leg; I wasn't scared, just startled” comes on with shame. I write it down in my journal to get it out, to exorcise it, and as I do, as I write these very words in my notebook, the sun in all his glory lights up the white of the paper in a cleansing radiance.

Who were Thoreau's children? I think I recall that he had none. Was his relationship with Nature enough for him? More than enough? Along with the need to embellish stories comes the feeling in me that someone is not successful unless they have a family. These concepts rise to the surface, being threatened by these simple men and the environment they lived in. I suddenly am afraid that I have been living my whole life for other people. Thoreau's children, quite appropriately, might be those he inspired by his own personal conviction to go into the wild and see for themselves what he was talking about.

But I am not in the wild; these familiar paths lead only in designated directions. Neural pathways or else walking pathways, it is all the same. I think, as I see a carp-shaped leaf swimming around my feet, that perhaps the time has come to forge new paths, to be a Pioneer of Me. To see what's in my own underbrush, hidden from view.

I am on my return journey now, circumnavigating a field of flowers, when I come upon a yeti-like caterpillar. White and shaggy with black spikes, I catch it performing the ultimate fakir's trick: levitation. It climbs Jacob's ladder, ascending an invisible rope into heaven. I watch in fascination and childlike wonder until half-doubts cause my brow to furrow: is getting there really that easy?

I avoid mystical writing for two reasons: out of embarrassment, and fear of fraud. I don't want to be seen as an “out there” hippie type who can't be taken seriously, but feel like if I neglect telling about this area of myself, it will fail to mature. So, as I continue along in a mystical mood after my encounter with the caterpillar, I end up getting all excited over a hollow.

I take a fork towards a bowl-shaped hollow with a path running around the brim. Sunlight forms tiger stripes on the descending slope. Huge oaks are the gateposts, with splitting trunks and spreading branches like huge hands in the late summer glow. I think that I will call one of the trees in the center of the hollow the king, but then I notice another of the same height, and suddenly am startled to see that all of the trees, thick or thin, are of the same vertical size, their leaves making a perfectly round canopy. It exists as magic cauldron, a womb. Living, expanded, open like a mother's arms. I see nothing move within – just silence that is awake and alive. Nectar just in the seeing.

I want to do it justice, but how can I work the magic of the true appreciators, the brilliant writers who can almost adequately express how this feels? Practice makes perfect they say, but talent – I am afraid I don't have it, or maybe the wrong type of it. My words on paper are too literal and too the point, too grounded, avoiding the freedom of the space which surrounds them.

It really is beautiful here. Fairies have been on my mind a lot recently, and I wonder if one day, I too will see them. This flower-laden, brilliant scoop of one of Nature's countless hands seems like their natural habitat.

And what separates the Fair Folk from a mortal whose heart melts at this beauty? While we are stuck on half-believed ideas and identified with the toys of our own minds, we don't belong to this world and we know it. Perhaps, I think, with training, we too can cut through the noise of ignorance and fall back in love with nature, become fully acknowledged children. Then the feeling will arise “this place is right for us.” Nothing will remain to separate Man and Elf. The sacred broughs will become our homes too.

That very night, after I am done writing, I think that my wilderness trek is over. I've been invited to dinner at a friend's cabin north of town. My girlfriend and I bring vegetables she has herself grown. Thinking that this is just a regular house we'll be cooking at, I am surprised when we have to walk from the road past a green pond, through a field, and across a wooden plank bridge to a tiny, one-room cabin by a stand of gorgeous pines.

My initial annoyance that we don't even have electricity, a working sink or overhead lights falls and begins to disappear with the sun over the trees to the west. It is really a beautiful cabin, and the working of the wood is done with a master's attention to detail; art, carved by hand, decorates the interior. And so we cook the vegetables we have grown in the twilight, lanterns our only source of illumination as it gets later and later.

When we finally sit down to eat, the food is delicious, and the company sweeter still. I feel the same sense of sacredness, growing subtly since I arrived, that I felt at the edge of the hollow. The duality in me breaks silently and softly: we belong both to the wild, and to civilization. We celebrate, as natural and free as any Elf, by lantern light in a simple cabin at the edge of the world.