<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The real world is simply too terrible to\nadmit. It tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will someday decay\nand die. Culture changes all of this, makes man seem important, vital to the\nuniverse, immortal in some ways.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Ernest\nBecker<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve often wondered what role art can play\nin ameliorating our species\u2019 greatest existential crisis, the awareness of our\nown mortality. Can any work of art provide insight into the fear and despair so\nmany feel knowing that their life as a conscious being in this universe is\nlimited, a mere blip in time before oblivion erases everything? Can great works\nof art offer us hope, and help us find a purpose for our lives? Or do they only\nprovide a false sense of meaning? Are they just distractions that enable us to\nevade the horror of our impending demise? <\/p>\n\n\n\n * * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n One afternoon many years ago, I watched Dersu Uzala<\/em>, Akira Kurasawa’s second\nfilm shot in color, set in Siberia. Dersu<\/em>\nastonished me with its ability to create emotional reactions that serve\nKurosawa\u2019s narrative, through both the performances of the actors, and in the scenes\nshot during the Siberian winter, landscapes that Kurosawa, like a master\npainter, captured on film. The surreal quality of the images \u2013 an endless\nred shifted sun flashing across a frozen lake, the blizzard that assaulted the\nCaptain and Dersu during their trek to save the expedition \u2013 cannot adequately be\nconveyed with words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Dersu Uzula<\/em> is epic in its portrayal of\nthe Siberian landscape, but intimate in how it carefully reveals the details of\nthe relationship between the two principal characters: the Captain, an engineer\nand leader of a survey team in the early 20th century, and Dersu Uzula, a local\nguide. Dersu is a native hunter who has\nlived in the Siberian wilderness all his life. His knowledge of the land far\nexceeds that of his more-civilized companions. \nA man of indeterminate ancestry, Dersu is a character who, in his\nintensely spiritual relationship to nature, reminds me of the hunter-gatherer\ntribes of North America. In the opening act, he is the butt of jokes by\nthe Russian members of the expedition, who find his behavior and customs\npeculiar and barbarous. Over time,\nhowever, he shows his value as a hunter, through his particular knowledge of\nthe land and by employing his survival skills to, time after time, save his\nRussian colleagues from disaster and death, including an attack by a man-eating\nSiberian tiger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Siberia\nis the true antagonist of the story, as distant as the angels of the higher ranks\nare distant, cruel as the evil Creator of the world that the Gnostics\npostulated, as alive as any of the people or animals in the film. Siberia,\nwith its vast spaces and hostile climate is portrayed as indifferent to human\nlife, and it haunts the human characters in the film. Ultimately, Siberia\u2019s\nhold on Dersu is the prime mover in the plot, creating the conflict that leads\nto the film\u2019s tragic ending. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When\nhe made this film, Kurosawa\u2019s career was at its lowest point. Thought to be washed up as a director and\nunable to obtain funding for his movies, he attempted suicide in 1971 at the\nage of 61. That he ever made another\nfilm was due entirely to the only nation at that time still willing to fund his\nwork: the Soviet Union. When Mosfilm\napproached him to make a film in Russian, he quickly agreed and suggested an\nadaptation of an autobiographical work by the early 20th <\/sup>Century\nRussian adventurer and explorer, Vladimir\nKlavdiyevich Arsenyev, titled Dersu Uzula<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\ntook Kurosawa a year and a half to complete principal photography on location\nnorth of Vladivostok. Kurosawa couldn\u2019t speak the language of the actors\nor the technicians on his set, and he had to contend with the censors and\nbureaucrats of Mosfilm. He battled numerous obstacles that took him to the edge\nof madness: delays caused by inclement weather and the bitter cold of the\nSiberian winter, fights with his producers, and his own inner demons, amplified\nby homesickness and despair. The movie depicts the vast power of nature and its\nultimate victory over man. Perhaps Kurosawa felt that he also had been conquered\nby the power of nature that his film glorifies in some of the most spectacular\nand beautiful scenes in cinematic history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *\n* *<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\nis a true story from roughly the same period I first watched Dersu Uzula<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\nwas midsummer and I was coming home from \u2013 where? Not sure. Perhaps\nI was coming home after going out for coffee, or maybe after dropping off my\ndaughter at soccer practice. Odd, I can’t remember when the incident occurred,\nbut I know that it did. A random memory from some random time, it floated\naround in my mind, waiting until just this instant as I sit here, writing about\nKurosawa and Derzu Usula<\/em>, to reveal\nitself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\npulled into the circle drive on which my house sits, a left-hand turn off the\nmain road. Passing by a friend’s house, I saw her son on the lawn, stretched\nout on a towel, fully dressed. He lay on\nhis stomach under a hot sun, eyes closed, with his head turned toward the\nstreet. His posture gave me the impression of lifelessness. Uneasy at seeing\nhim like that, I stopped my car in front of his fading yellow house and rolled\ndown the passenger door window to look more closely at him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nknew he wasn\u2019t stretched out in order to get a tan. Michael was fair-skinned\nand prone to burn easily. I remember\nfeeling quite anxious. He was the same age as my daughter. Indeed,\nI long suspected that he had a crush on her, but he was so shy and quiet that he never told anyone of the\nfeelings he might have had for her. But I always liked him. He was a good kid \u2013 a good kid with a\npacemaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes,\nit\u2019s true. His heart never worked\nproperly. The details of his disorder were somewhat vague, but I know he\nhad two surgeries after the insertion of his original pacemaker to install newer\nmodels. The most recent one was\ninstalled \u2013 what a word: installed <\/em>\u2013 the\nyear before. Every so many years, as he aged, the cardiologists had to replace\nhis pacemaker to match his growth. They adjusted for the increase in his height,\nweight, and perhaps other factors, such as the various hormones associated with\npuberty. As I said, I was ignorant of the details, only grateful that no\nchild of mine ever faced such a life-threatening condition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nwatched him lying there, motionless, and had the horrible thought that maybe he\nwas dead. Literally, he appeared to be lying dead in full view of\neveryone passing by. From my car, I shouted to him. Shouted his name three\ntimes, in fact, and each time, my voice was louder than the last. He did\nnot answer me or otherwise respond. In that moment, my own heart stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However,\nshortly after third time I called to him, he startled and woke up. Groggy and a little incoherent, nonetheless\nhe answered me back. I apologized for disturbing him, and asked if he was\nokay. He nodded, looking around in the disoriented fashion people exhibit when\nthe anesthesia wears off after surgery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As\nhe sat there, getting his bearings, the sun shining of his freckled face, I drove\naway, feeling mildly foolish, but thankful he was alive. I still wondered\nwhy he had been lying in that hot sun, wearing a long-sleeved shirt and jeans.\nIn that heat, I would have felt extremely uncomfortable, even in a t-shirt and gym\nshorts, much less fully dressed. Yet, my relief at his seeming good\nhealth filled me up. How strange that possessing a little information about a\nperson changes how you look at him or her. Anyone else lying there like\nthat, I wouldn’t have noticed. I would\nhave driven on by without a thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ironically,\nyears later, Michael died at the age of twenty-two, but not from an irregular\nheartbeat. One night, for unknown reasons, his heart raced faster and faster,\nuntil it exhausted itself and stopped. His pacemaker was not designed to\nprevent a racing heartbeat, only regulate an uneven one. The grief I witnessed\non his mother\u2019s face at his wake was beyond any sorrow I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *\n* *<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sitting\nat the computer, contemplating my memory of Michael as a boy, and my fears for\nhim, my mind leapt again, to a completely different subject, Wallace Stevens\u2019s\npoem about the jar on a hill in Tennessee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ANECDOTE OF THE JAR <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nplaced a jar in Tennessee, How\nstrange. How unfathomable. Stevens hides\nhis intention from his reader, I believe. To understand his meaning, we must\nplay his puzzle game. We are left to see that jar (and the \u201cI\u201d figure who\nplaced it there) in the abstract and, as on a scavenger hunt, look for meanings\nthere among the verses, or consider the chance the poem has no meaning, that is\nthe equivalent of a literary snipe hunt. \nWhen I first came across it, I found nothing there at all. The jar took\ndominion, and yet it was gray and bare. What the hell? <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\njar gives us nothing, yet it acquires everything. It destroys the wilderness\njust by its very existence. It is a riddle. Do I believe it represents\n\u201cHumanity\u201d or \u201cCivilization\u201d? Is the jar\na representation of all the ideals and evils human beings have ever concocted, a\ncrude retelling of the myth of Pandora? Or is the jar a symbol for God, the God who\nstill lingers in places like Tennessee, who still cares what happens to his\ncreation? To me, the jar doesn’t\nrepresent the idea of creation ex nihilo<\/em>,\nand yet it has this mysterious power to alter creation. It brings order, yet Stevens\nspeaks of it as being barren. How complex the thought of the poet, or more\naccurately, how complex the poem, whose words appear simple and unadorned upon\nfirst reading. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Is\nthe jar good or evil, or both? Stevens hints at many possible interpretations.\nHe prods us along with the words of the poem, and also, with those that he\nomitted; but he does not supply us, his readers, with any answers. I can take his\npoem as his metaphysical statement about the nature of existence or its end in\nan ambiguous apocalypse. Or I can read it as the drunken ruminations of some\ncrazy-ass writer who should have stuck to the insurance business.[1]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n What\nwould Michael, my friend\u2019s son with the pacemaker, have thought of that damn\njar? I pondered this for a while before\nrealizing how futile an exercise it was. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n *\n* *<\/p>\n\n\n\n What,\nafter all, do fiction, poetry, narrative, cinema, even music offer us? What function do they provide? Do they offer us distractions or insights, or\nsimply a way to shut off the tyranny of our egos for a time? Can any work of\nart ameliorate the physical pain I feel each day? Does it solve the problems that rise up when\nI interact with family or friends, when they must care for me or when I am\ncalled on to care for them?[2]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n In\nlike manner, does Kurosawa\u2019s film provide a catharsis? Do whatever insights I can glean from\nStevens\u2019 poetry provide anything that helps me endure the life I lead? Do the stories, true or fictional, that I\ntell, act as a balm for my current blighted situation, filled with fatigue,\npain and depression? Does art provide\nany value to a person who suffers? I cannot say. I can only observe and write, just as Stevens\nand Kurosawa created their own works of art. \nBut what if there is no better place to which art can transport us, no grand\nlessons to learn? For we all\nsuffer. What is art but merely an\nexpression of what so many find inexpressible? \nA brief vision of beauty or a distracting escape before reality again\nkicks us in the teeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *\n* *<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\nis a story about my daughter. The\ndaughter whom I love so dearly, but whom I cannot protect from the world as it\nis. This happened when she was in high school, after a junior varsity\nvolleyball game. My daughter was a member of the team, and this is a story\nabout psychological horror. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Silence\ncame indifferently on a cold October evening, but only after the end of a long\ntrail of tears, tears my daughter wept. \nI held my daughter for over an hour, held hostage by her speechless\nanxiety. The bruises on her legs, back\nand hands were the result of hardwood floors and aluminum bleachers, into which\nshe had been tossed, or had thrown herself. That physical damage, however, was\nnothing compared to the damage to her mind. The bruises to her psyche resulted from that\nactions of a middle-aged man, her volleyball coach, and his strange, unknowable\ndesire to tell a tale of murder and horror to a gaggle of teenage girls on a\nbus trundling home through fog rising from the ground after another winter high\nschool volleyball match. The story was about a psychotic criminal stalking a\nyoung woman, and it ended in blood and murder and terror. Holding my whimpering\nchild, I asked myself over and over, What had he been thinking? What possible\npurpose could his tale of the murder of a young girl, all roughly the age of my\ndaughter and her teammates, serve? Team bonding? Really? <\/p>\n\n\n\n When I picked her\nup at the high school after she stumbled from the yellow school bus, I knew\nimmediately that something was deeply wrong. \nShe had tears streaking down her face and could hardly speak to me. Her arrival home provided no solace. She described that awful story that her coach\nforced her to listen to, and her reaction to it, to my wife and me, in unruly\nfragments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She\nkept asking why no one, but especially her coach, heard her protests to \u201cStop! Please stop!\u201d \nEither oblivious or indifferent to her fear, he continued to regale the\nteam with his story of a child-killing monster. \nWas it because her voice wasn\u2019t loud enough? Did the big yellow bus with its bellowing\nengine and grinding tires mute her words, creating a white noise that canceled\nout her terrified cries? Or did he just\nnot give a damn? Was he some kind of\nsadist, using his position of authority to take pleasure in her misery? <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nstroked her back, and held her head to my heart so that its familiar rhythm\nmight calm her as it once did when she was an infant. \u201cYou\u2019re safe now,\u201d I kept saying to her, but my\nwords were inadequate, and failed to soothe her anguish. A slice of pumpkin pie smothered in Redi-Whip\nfinally provided a brief antidote to the poison that he injected into her mind. An hour, two hours\u2014the time dragged until at\nlast fatigue allowed me to steer her haltingly down the hallway to her room and\nto tuck her into bed. \u201cDon\u2019t leave me!\u201d She said that as I pulled the covers up to\nher head. \u201cStay with me until I fall\nasleep. It won\u2019t take long. I promise.\u201d \nSpoken slowly, but I could read the fear in her voice, so I complied.[3]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n *\n* *<\/p>\n\n\n\n How\ndid she get to this point? The\nexplanation requires another tale that I don\u2019t wish to recall, but I will tell it\nanyway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As\na little girl, she was happy. A stubborn\nkid? Sure. Willful? \nYes. But happy, playful, a child\nwho made friends like a dog attacks a bone \u2013 with relish. She loved especially to have me read her\nstories, or to make ones up. She loved my absurd tales of talking penguins, or the\nsongs I sang to her off key. She adored\nDr. Seuss, Goodnight Moon, Sesame Street, Barney, The Little Mermaid\u2014all the familiar\nstory books that parents of my generation read to their children. She absorbed\nthe light from the television as a sponge absorbs water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She\nwas six years old when the Towers came down on September 11th. What can anyone understand about the desire\nto slaughter other people? Kurosawa\nmade samurai epics about it and Stevens wrote his poem, \u2018The Death of a\nSoldier,\u2019 about the tragedy of war. Many\nfairy tales told to children have gruesome ends where an evil witch or monster\nor dangerous beast is killed. But what\nis that to a child when faced with death outside the pages of a book?<\/p>\n\n\n\n A\nyear later, a young blonde woman, a mother, who lived two houses down the\nstreet from us, was shot and stabbed to death by her husband and half-brother. She had two small boys of her own, this smiling\nwoman of 26 years to whom my daughter sold Girl Scout cookies (two orders of\nThin Mints \u2013 I was there with her at the door, I remember the sale). TV trucks\nand the police cars popped up overnight. Reporters knocked on doors wanting\ncomments from the \u201cneighbors\u201d about the murder, comments I refused to give them,\nwhile my daughter hid in the shadows, watching my interaction with the\nreporters. Two weeks later, playing at a friend\u2019s home, she witnessed several\npeople smashing in the windows of a car parked in the yard of a neighbor, before\nthey moved on to bashing the doors, the fenders, and the headlights. She came home after the other child\u2019s mother\nphoned, frantic because my daughter was freaking out, melting down,\ninconsolable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her\nasthma worsened under the stress. Her\nnightmares increased. Some children\u2019s\nfilms that we owned became unwatchable for her if they contained even the\nsmallest threat of violence, regardless of the inevitable \u201chappy ending.\u201d I threw out our only copy of The Neverending Story<\/em> because of the\nwolf, the bloody-fanged, red-eyed wolf, whose only purpose in the film is to threaten\nthe hero with death. If she was present\nwhen her brother watched it (it was one of his favorites), she screamed in\nterror at the appearance of the wolf. Knowing this, he frequently brought up\nthe subject in a teasing manner to elicit the same reaction, perhaps not\nrealizing the extent to which he tortured her. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n These\nevents damaged her in ways I could not immediately grasp. Thoughts raced through her head and so she\nraced around as well, using any activity to distract her mind and keep those\nthoughts from consuming her, those never-ending thoughts that delivered her\ninto evil. \u201cWhy does everything bad\nhappen to me?\u201d At the age of seven, that\nwas her most frequent question to me. No\nanswer I gave was the right one. Nothing\nI said comforted her. All those happy,\nsilly children\u2019s books I read to her for so many years were lies in her view,\nand the truth that those lies tried to hide was too large for her to bear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n *\n* *<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s\nthe secret I left out when I started writing. \nThe afternoon I watched Dersu\nUsula,<\/em> my daughter watched it with me. She must have been no more than\nthirteen. We did not finish the film because she asked that I stop. She could see the inevitable tragic ending\ncoming. She could see Death waiting to\nclaim its victim, and she wanted no part of watching Dersu die, a fictional\ncharacter that she grew to love through the magic of Kurosawa\u2019s artistry. I stopped the movie. The next day, I watched the end of the film\nwithout her. Now that she is an adult, I occasionally ask if she would like to\nsee it through to the end. Her answer is always no. I suspect she does not believe in catharsis.
\nAnd round it was, upon a hill.
\nIt made the slovenly wilderness
\nSurround that hill.
\n
\nThe wilderness rose up to it,
\nAnd sprawled around, no longer wild.
\nThe jar was round upon the ground
\nAnd tall and of a port in air.
\n
\nIt took dominion everywhere.
\nThe jar was gray and bare.
\nIt did not give of bird or bush,
\nLike nothing else in Tennessee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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