These three days, October 31, November 1 & 2, have largely lost their meaning in the modern world. Insistence on acknowledging traditions at this time of year is sort of hackneyed and a tribute to the business of candy more than anything else. But, if we will take the time to wonder at the transition of seasons, in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, maybe we can touch something larger than ourselves for a moment. If we observe that there is no going backwards, that change is inevitable, that remembrance has its time and place, and then it should be released, then we can get a handle on why Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos in Spanish, and All Souls Day, might be worth latching onto -because it nods its head to the only truth there is on planet earth. Our lives as we know them, are temporary ventures.
Whether we believe in Heaven and Hell, Reincarnation and Karma, or nothingness when we die, the fact remains that as we are today is a temporal anomaly, not to be repeated or retreated from, and is a limited edition of one. This experience is unique and valuable because it is a one-time only deal. Even if you do come back as someone else in some other age, even if you do get to go to some paradise down a long dark tunnel, this part of the dream is not repeatable. We don't get a "Ground Hog's Day" or a "Hot Tub Time Machine" to do it again. and neither did our ancestors.
The Kosmic Egg is a great symbol for this day, as it gives you a "before" and "after" idea for how this life might work. Before you reach a certain age and awareness, happy is the "before" life, perfectly contained within an egg. Experiences are added into life with the notion that it will always be a certain way. We can't help it because we don't know until the egg cracks that there is more. The egg cracks when we understand that we have chosen experiences in life that have been harmful to ourselves or others. The egg cracks when we understand that life can't stay small any more if we are going to live to be ourselves in this world. The egg cracks when disappointment tips the balance and we fall into a dark night of the soul to discover what we've been shoving into that cosmic closet of ours. After the Kosmic Egg cracks, we can understand it as an initiation into a larger truth, and an expanded human experience. It happens at different times for different people. It is rare that a person can skip through it, though some try very hard to ignore it, or numb it out.
That crack usually has something to do with death. Whether it is the death of a dream, the death of a way of being, the death of someone close to us, or an illness threatening our own death it is a period of grief, rip-out-our-hearts grief, and we search for meaning in it. Anyone who's listened to the nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty" knows that there is no way to put everything back together in a life, to put it back the way it was before. But, the symbol of the egg doesn't have to be scrambled. Often that egg cracks because the new life inside can no longer survive confined.
The new life inside that egg has evolved to the point of no return. I love that the Mexican tradition includes the symbol of the butterfly or mariposa in the transition at midnight between Dia de los Inocentes (Day of the Innocents/Children) and Dia de los Muertos, because it is the symbol of the butterfly that best interprets the meaning of the cracked egg and what will follow. We cannot remain childish forever. At some point in life we must face mortality of that dream where things just work out, where we can mindlessly consume without offering back our full beauty and begin to take responsibility for ourselves...but what does that mean?
For many taking responsibility is a very sobering affair, and for some taking responsibility is the flight of the butterfly. I, obviously, prefer the latter. To think that I would shirk my duties, however, is to underestimate the flight of a butterfly. The fullest expression that I can imagine in life is to acknowledge our own fragility, and fly anyway. Can you imagine a pensive butterfly hanging forever to the broken chrysalis, considering how to climb back in and how dangerous a breeze can be? And yet, I admit, I have been this pensive butterfly, driven by fear of some boogie man, some ghostly hallow that attached to my psyche years ago.
Will I startle myself out of this pensiveness and finally blindly leap into the blue sky? I hope not. That has been my foolish start before and I seem to have landed back on this branch. So I'm turning against that instinct to depart and I'm turning towards the shadow to see what it really is. I think I know. I think it is perfectly expressed by Dia de las Muertos, and I will celebrate the opportunity with the sweetness of realization. Facing this zombie-like terror that is blocking the sun, I know it's a particular death, not just any death, and though I've confronted bits and pieces of it, I've never faced it head-on.
The Storyteller's Orchard where organic writing grows.
Showing posts with label unique. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unique. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Chapter Eleven - Part One - Heirloom Peaches
When beginning a new writing project I only have the vaguest sense of the outcome of the work, and a deep hope for some catharsis contained within it. Like a seed, tightly folded upon its woody self, the true tenderness is thoroughly concealed from my most penetrating gaze. Even after a few weeks of development the story reveals at least some of this interior motive, and thus becomes a seedling. However, the pits is where most projects begin for me.
They say that peaches were brought to the Americas by Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s. Obviously, these were not saplings ordered from a Burpee catalog. These peaches started as pits. Native Americans formed their own love affair with the sweet fruit and spread it all over what is now the Southeast United states. In places they grew so close and abundantly they become more like thickets of peaches rather than orderly orchards. When British colonists began settling the area a hundred years later, they presumed that peaches were native to the Americas because, of course, Native Americans couldn't possibly have the farming technology to plant and harvest such sweet goodness for themselves. (I shake my head at the arrogance of my antecedents.) In fact, the Native Americans who were forced on the long march from the Southeast to the Oklahoma territories by Andrew Jackson's armies brought with them their peach pits. So that Oklahoma's peach tradition is as rich as Georgia's.
Peaches have such a storied past. They have been hailed the fruit of immortality in China, eaten by the Gods only every 10,000 years to boost their longevity, now of course, commemorated yearly. They have been celebrated in ancient Persia. They have been taken along the silk road, and the Oregon trail. They come in different shapes and sizes and colors and consistencies to be used in different recipes all for the singular outcome of, "Yum!"
Unfortunately, the same thing that has happened to movies has happened to peaches in America. They have become hard, brightly-colored, tasteless things that we buy because we remember a time when they were, "yum!" Raise your hand if you have paid good money for a totally disappointing, mass-produced, picked-too-early, prettily packaged -- movie. I know that I have. These movies, as those peaches, are produced for one reason only: profit. It begins with the dream of the screenwriter to have a paid-for existence, a rather low goal for a writer in my opinion, but one I bashfully admit to carrying in my briefcase. There are much easier ways to make a living for goodness sakes, right?
In order to write a profit-minded script one must adhere to industry standards, and this leads to comfortable, predictable results. Like a peach grown in a commercial orchard, the shape, color and consistency must be reliable. As this puts the growers' minds at ease that they'll reap some reward from their effort, the reliability of a script to hit the page-numbered milestones shows a screenwriter's market that a profitable product is envisioned.
Now, I'm not saying that every commercially grown peach is tasteless, anymore than I'm saying that all the movies coming out of Hollywood are predictable. A few good ones slip into the packing boxes every year. Those keep us buying the rest.
Am I still interested in trying to write one of those good commercial scripts - the high concept thriller that makes your heart beat and convinces you of conspiracies you never even considered, or the girl-power driven comedy that has you rolling your eyes and nodding in agreement? Of course, I am. I've been studying how to do it for years and years. But, if I do one and it succeeds, then will I ever take the time and risk again to grow the heirloom peach orchard of my dreams?
They say that peaches were brought to the Americas by Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s. Obviously, these were not saplings ordered from a Burpee catalog. These peaches started as pits. Native Americans formed their own love affair with the sweet fruit and spread it all over what is now the Southeast United states. In places they grew so close and abundantly they become more like thickets of peaches rather than orderly orchards. When British colonists began settling the area a hundred years later, they presumed that peaches were native to the Americas because, of course, Native Americans couldn't possibly have the farming technology to plant and harvest such sweet goodness for themselves. (I shake my head at the arrogance of my antecedents.) In fact, the Native Americans who were forced on the long march from the Southeast to the Oklahoma territories by Andrew Jackson's armies brought with them their peach pits. So that Oklahoma's peach tradition is as rich as Georgia's.
Peaches have such a storied past. They have been hailed the fruit of immortality in China, eaten by the Gods only every 10,000 years to boost their longevity, now of course, commemorated yearly. They have been celebrated in ancient Persia. They have been taken along the silk road, and the Oregon trail. They come in different shapes and sizes and colors and consistencies to be used in different recipes all for the singular outcome of, "Yum!"
Unfortunately, the same thing that has happened to movies has happened to peaches in America. They have become hard, brightly-colored, tasteless things that we buy because we remember a time when they were, "yum!" Raise your hand if you have paid good money for a totally disappointing, mass-produced, picked-too-early, prettily packaged -- movie. I know that I have. These movies, as those peaches, are produced for one reason only: profit. It begins with the dream of the screenwriter to have a paid-for existence, a rather low goal for a writer in my opinion, but one I bashfully admit to carrying in my briefcase. There are much easier ways to make a living for goodness sakes, right?
In order to write a profit-minded script one must adhere to industry standards, and this leads to comfortable, predictable results. Like a peach grown in a commercial orchard, the shape, color and consistency must be reliable. As this puts the growers' minds at ease that they'll reap some reward from their effort, the reliability of a script to hit the page-numbered milestones shows a screenwriter's market that a profitable product is envisioned.
Now, I'm not saying that every commercially grown peach is tasteless, anymore than I'm saying that all the movies coming out of Hollywood are predictable. A few good ones slip into the packing boxes every year. Those keep us buying the rest.
Am I still interested in trying to write one of those good commercial scripts - the high concept thriller that makes your heart beat and convinces you of conspiracies you never even considered, or the girl-power driven comedy that has you rolling your eyes and nodding in agreement? Of course, I am. I've been studying how to do it for years and years. But, if I do one and it succeeds, then will I ever take the time and risk again to grow the heirloom peach orchard of my dreams?
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