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Foundry/forge
Sep. 22nd, 2007 09:55 amI finished reading Hope's Edge yesterday and have progressed to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. She begins by describing her family's move away from Tucson, explaining how she feels about the fossil fuel-based technologies that have caused a city to spring up in the middle of a generally uninhabitable desert. [we must scratch out a living on borrowed water and food, which lends our lives a certain hypocrisy] I'm inclined to agree. I can live in such a place for a while, but eventually the unreality of the lavish lifestyle in the middle of a desert is going to catch up with me and I, too, will want to move back to a place that isn't parched, somewhere where I don't feel like my mere existence comes at such a cost to the natural world that we depend upon.
This morning, I'm pondering Biblical stories of prophets who traveled out into the desert for reasons of spiritual growth. This theme of wandering and isolation comes up periodically as one looks through the Bible, and also through other mythological stories (trickster figures especially must wander). There's this sense that those persons who come through and fundamentally shake up our lives also have some je ne sais quoi that can only be met through isolation or deprivation away in an extreme environment. It contributes to their mysticism, I guess, their need to be somewhere all alone, doing things that we'll never know of or even understand, things that will never be remembered except through the act of leaving and returning. They toy with our sense of inscrutability.
I would never claim that that's the case for me with living here, although there are moments when I feel like I've come to the desert to be forged into something different. When I go back up to Seattle it feels like plunging into a cool pool of water, and my life takes on altered meaning in that context. At times it feels more real to be there because of the extended history of growing up among my family and childhood friends. There are also the ancestral ties to the area, to Montana and parts of Washington. [when I consider cowboys, my mind will forever travel to Montana]
I'd like to be able to think of my time here in Arizona in something closer to the above terms--not as an extravagance, but as a shaping event, something that helps me clarify the message of my life. I suppose at times we all need to feel like we are part of a larger drama.
This morning, I'm pondering Biblical stories of prophets who traveled out into the desert for reasons of spiritual growth. This theme of wandering and isolation comes up periodically as one looks through the Bible, and also through other mythological stories (trickster figures especially must wander). There's this sense that those persons who come through and fundamentally shake up our lives also have some je ne sais quoi that can only be met through isolation or deprivation away in an extreme environment. It contributes to their mysticism, I guess, their need to be somewhere all alone, doing things that we'll never know of or even understand, things that will never be remembered except through the act of leaving and returning. They toy with our sense of inscrutability.
I would never claim that that's the case for me with living here, although there are moments when I feel like I've come to the desert to be forged into something different. When I go back up to Seattle it feels like plunging into a cool pool of water, and my life takes on altered meaning in that context. At times it feels more real to be there because of the extended history of growing up among my family and childhood friends. There are also the ancestral ties to the area, to Montana and parts of Washington. [when I consider cowboys, my mind will forever travel to Montana]
I'd like to be able to think of my time here in Arizona in something closer to the above terms--not as an extravagance, but as a shaping event, something that helps me clarify the message of my life. I suppose at times we all need to feel like we are part of a larger drama.
