It has been a turbulent week here in my Arcadia...
Thinking of my many postponed trips and plans laid - I wonder at the intent, the why. What is this desire to adventure,these impulses come from what? Teenage Hemingway obsessions? Overindulgence in epic tales? Esquire Magazine and Men's Journal, to Hemingway as porn is to sex- exaggerated shells of form.
I have somehow wrapped my mind around the concept of adventure as a test, a gauntlet throw down between a man and mortality. I have lusted after the clarity that comes from a call to adventure, a clarity that is a hope for adventures that are illusions. There has always lurked the notion that Combat is pure, that there are ultimate measures of a persons fibre and integrity. Spectres of Chivalry, false notions I entertain. I confess to delusional romanticism.
Obviously I doubt the veracity of these ligamental beliefs, but they retain their tensions within me. I attempt to examine my mythologies and their origins. I wonder at the universality I seek in things.
I find myself framing my life with the legends that have raised me, from the Illiad to Star Wars. But those types of Adventures have not found me yet - no such hero's call for me. Joseph Campbell made his life work as a mythologist the distillation of the hero's journey, but is it merely a thread in our literature or an application toward ourselves individually? Maybe culturally.
I wonder what his Hero's Journey was and what called him to it. He abandoned his doctorate, He traveled Europe, He went into his cabin for year long stretches. Were any of those it. It seems very passive to me as interesting as his life was.
Of course this is the easy slope of Being literal. The hero's journey would be an internal development, an introspective journey...but with External Cause. Right? What are those, then, for me? Wives, children, loves, literature...
No comments:
Post a Comment