Personal Journal

The Road & Me

Last weekend, Memorial Day 2010, my wife and I watched The Road, with Viggo Mortensen. I just heard it was a good movie about a 'post-apocalyptic' world. I love post-apocalyptic world stories.

That I loved the movie is a given. I loved it enough to go buy the book, and I read the book in 2 days (more like 8 hours). It was an imagined world that was so believable and consistent and completely over-the-top in enabling me to suspend disbelief. These are the fictions that I adore. I think, actually, the movie was a bit better than the book, simply because I think Macarthy is one of those writers who stretches his brain around adjectives to the point that it's either forced (which I don't suspect in this case) or distractingly unnecessary (bing!). But that's not a major distraction. The movie was better because of its visuals (and becuase it gave a slightly less bleak opportunity to imagine hope).

I'll have to go read some more McCarthy then. His characters were fantastic (and I really liked his non-standard punctuation for dialoge! BREAK THE RULES!)

But in a real sense, I'm back here at Writing because these stories moved me. Moved me enough to remind me that one of the things missing in my life is hope.

I have a real deficiency of happiness in my life, and I know the major influences are the continuing little deaths from 'no free time' made mandatory by school, and the hopelessness of my work situation. I'm also recognizing how difficult it is for me to live with someone, and I've been at that for 2 years now (which is where it usually goes bad, though I don't think that's at all likely in present conditions: I totally love and appreciate my Laura).

I'm not hopeless today. Maybe I've come to terms a bit better with how I can go about landing a new job. Maybe it's because it's Friday and I've left early every day this week (since we are experiencing a dearth of new work crossing our desks, we're all sitting around here reading crap and goofing off, like this entry).

I do believe that I needed to be back here writing. It cobbles together thoughts and ambitions of mine, and it helps give me more balance and flexibility in life. I write. I'm in touch with myself. Since I left Digital Expressions, I really hadn't journaled, and that's been more than 3 years now.

The thing about The Road that strikes home with me is the hopelessness of the human condition. It's not that we all die, though that does suck heavily. It's that 'society' or culture or civilization or whatever you want to call it, is nothing but a veneer. It is an artifice that lies over the top of the fact that we are all in direct competition with our neighbors, and we are all predators underneath. There are a plethora of rules and long entreaties on ethics that tend to govern how we behave with one another, but in the end, there are good guys and there are bad guys and there is very little you can do to stop the bad guys. Because they don't feel the rules should have to apply to them.

Human beings can rationalize anything, and that fact governs my hopelessness.
I'm sure I rationalize certain things without being aware of it. For example, I'm robbing my employer and its shareholders right now. I should be working or going home and taking myself off the payroll for the day. But I feel this is warranted. Merited. Deserved.

The most complex situation in the Road to me is the encounter with the man who stole the protagonist's supplies, and how Man treats the robber. Disabuses him of all his clothes and supplies, and leaves him destitute. In essence, killing him, over the protest of Boy, who knows exactly the consequence of these actions, and who still has empathy for others. Man, on the other hand, is empowered by anger and empathy for himself and the situation that WOULD have existed had they not caught up with Thief. And in his anger, and with two conflicting empathies coursing through him (what would have happened to him; what will happen to Theif after they extort all his possessions). And he gives in to the hatefulness. He rationalizes that he is not killing Thief, he is doing to Theif what Theif would have done to them.

We have all faced this circumstance: the moment where we literally convince ourselves that doing evil is not in fact doing evil. It is a justice that we are uniquely empowered to mete out.

I find this the depressing part of the hopelessness that I think ties living things together.
I feel, and I'm not sure I should, or that it's helpful, or that it's permanent, that the metaphor of The Road is alive and well in the world.

I am not hopeful for my country, or my species and their futures. I'm a little bit MORE hopeful for myself, so I'm not completely hopeless. But this struggle to get through grad school and to develop for myself a solid career that engages me intellectually and spiritually - it is a struggle, and it is an exercise in failures, and managing them.

It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn