All great romances should have “a song” which lingers from the courtship days. For Griz and me, it’s Sheena Easton’s “For Your Eyes Only” – perfect for its lyrics, enhanced by the fact that it was the title song of a James Bond film complete with sexy opening-title visuals. And although Roger Moore wasn’t my favorite James Bond [Connery & Craig], for us sailors, this film’s pre-digitial underwater photography was well worth the price of admission.

Griz and I have been together for more than 30 years. Today is our 29th wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary, Griz:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another Sheena Easton song that came out during the same time period resonated with me and remains one of my favorites:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sigh. Pretty close – though Griz nearly always ”sticks to his guns.” “Abandoning the fight” has never been a comfortable option for him, but he has mellowed over the years. And I hope he realizes how much I appreciate the many concessions he’s made on my behalf.  One of the things we have in common – neither of us is particularly easy to live with.  Fortunately, with benefit of time, romance is augmented by the symbiotic gestalt of mutual admiration and respect, not to mention just plain old getting used to one another. Griz and I disagree from time to time, but we very rarely fight.

Recent research indicates happy, long-term marriages most often contain an “expansive” element. Rather than the old paradigm of “two people becoming one” (and ultimately more alike) - each member of the couple feels his individuality is expanded by the presence of the other. It’s 1 + 1 = 3 (2 healthy individuals plus 1 relationship).  That fits. It’s a great partnership model and a very comfortable place to be. 

Still – I’m glad I saw it again. The visual artistry is worth a second take. I noticed a lot visually that I missed the first time and I look forward to a sequel.

After all, it’s not as if James Cameron doesn’t warn us about the simplicity of his parable. If the stereotypical characters don’t jump out at you early on, by the time you hear the word “unobtainium,” you should have a clue.  James Cameron’s forte has always been special effects.  An old story with a new look works for him (and apparently his audience). Everyone who saw Titanic knew the outcome before they entered the theater.

I suspect James Cameron has great fun making movies, and I think he wants his audiences to have fun, too.  Nothing wrong with that.  Giving the Nav’i elongated canine teeth  is such a clear ploy for today’s vampire popularity that it’s laughable. He probably threw in many of Avatar’s other cliches and plot deficits just for fun, too (perhaps to see if we’d notice).  Cameron’s close enough to my age that I’m sure he saw the same old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies on TV that I did as a youngster. In Avatar, the only thing missing when the deus-ex-machina beasties stampede in to save the Nav’i is this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And from what I’ve read, it seems most people (including reviewers) come away from Avatar with the message they took into the theater beforehand. The rejecters reject the same things they always reject, the admirers admire the same things they always admire.  Appreciating good art is like that – the best art offers each of us an intimate subjective experience. With Avatar, gamers get a techie game, spiritual seekers get transcendence (although some devout reject Avatar altogether as promoting paganism), environmentalists get ecological connectivity, pessimists get to feel depressed because Earth isn’t as sublime as Pandora, optimists get to hope Earth is becoming Pandora.  Lots of good guys and bad guys to go around – with cross-overs and a paradox or two.

Here’s what I walked into the theater with: I am fortunate enough to live in an area where Earth’s vibrant glory is readily accessible and visually competes damn well with anything you can create digitally. This, of course,  keeps me fairly optimistic about life in general and our environmental direction in particular. Though not religious – spiritually, I lean toward nonduality.

Here’s the message I took out of the theater: The  Nav’i R Us.  We are rejecting our small, violent selves and becoming something larger. We are connected to all life, but life itself is a school and there are often mortal risks associated with learning to make the important connections. Ultimately, caring and connectivity will prevail and we’ll choose to banish our small, violent selves.

But the best thing about Avatar is this: popular movies are a reflection of our cultural consciousness. Even if the ideas are presented in elemental terms to reach the masses, ticket sales in response to Avatar’s themes of environmental responsibility and global connectivity represent very positive trends.

I had fun, too.

I’d also hate to get too attached.  Big trees fall. Some have to be cut down.

And most of our trees grew to their glory before we arrived here – without  the need for words or names. They just are, surviving tough conditions right where they stand, beyond analysis or judgments – and they’re mighty nonetheless. Passive endurance resulting in magnificent splendor. Unintentional artistry. (Though some would say it’s intentional.)

Look upward while standing quietly beneath a big tree. You cannot avoid feeling the power. Imagine what it takes to oppose gravity to that extent, processing sunlight, circulating nutrients and water to such great heights?

Big trees demonstrate the great wisdom of nature – they bend to buffeting winds, lean toward sunlight or bow to obstacles as necessary. When partially knocked down, they slowly redirect themselves back skyward, fortifying themselves even more at the bending point. They shed the unnecessary to better endure and prosper. I admire them.

Hard to believe such giants start out smaller than this volunteer western red cedar struggling for a foothold in our driveway gravel. This 3″ youngster was a seed last summer. I pot and replant more of these little buggers than is practical, but it’s hard for me to think of them as weeds.

The great tree symbology in James Cameron’s Avatar pleased me.  Avatar’s popularity demonstrates a positive direction in our collective consciousness. As little as twenty-five years ago, I doubt if Avatar (with or without 3D) would have captured such a large audience. Twenty-five years ago, only us die hard sci-fi types would have gone. Sure, there are probably more sci-fi enthusiasts now than ever before, but Avatar goes beyond sci-fi – it touches our growing ecological and spiritual awareness – our acknowledgment of an immutable connectedness.

A serendipitious tree article showed up in Griz’ Nuts & Volts Magazine last month. An Idaho company, Voltree manufactures a bioenergy harvester which attaches to a living tree and uses the tree’s metabolic processes to create electricity. The small electrical generators do not harm the tree. (At least we don’t believe they harm the tree.) Of course, the amount of energy you can generate this way is limited – these generators are used to power passive surveillance and scientific monitoring equipment. Still, it’s a kind of symbiosis that tickles me.

Voltree’s products are the kind of green technology we’re heading toward  (very slowly) – ways to use our resources without depleting or harming them.  We are starting to make those critical connections – artistically, figuratively, literally.

Of course, you get a lot more energy (quicker) from a tree if you chop it down and burn it to heat the shelter you’ve built with it’s carcass.  (Intentional shock value.)  See my next post Tree Power Down: Timber!

]]> http://blogfromahermit.com/2010/01/30/tree-power-up-tall-inspiration/feed/ 0 http://blogfromahermit.com/2009/11/17/memorable-hermit-georgia-okeeffe-no-one-to-satisfy-except-myself/ http://blogfromahermit.com/2009/11/17/memorable-hermit-georgia-okeeffe-no-one-to-satisfy-except-myself/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:38:10 +0000 Trish http://blogfromahermit.com/?p=2773 The Lifetime Channel recently aired a made-for-TV movie entitled Georgia O’Keeffe starring Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons. In spite of excellent acting, the movie was a big disappointment to me* [see footnote], focusing primarily on O’Keeffe’s turbulent love affair with New York photographer Alfred Stieglitz (played by Irons), her ultimate marriage to him and her “nervous breakdown” which the movie would have us believe resulted primarily from her husband’s philandering.

Though it is conceivable O’Keeffe’s art might have remained obscure were it not for Stieglitz’ promotion [exploitation?], the movie barely touched on O’Keeffe’s love of solitude and her many years as an artist after Stieglitz’ death. O’Keeffe’s solitary life without Stieglitz in her beloved “far away” (New Mexico) contributed a great deal to her artistic notoriety.

But O’Keeffe was an artist and educated woman before she met Stieglitz. (They met after he showed some of her paintings in his New York gallery without her permission.) And although she lived much of her life pre-feminism, and may not have defined herself as such, O’Keeffe was a feminist in her own right. For someone growing up in a time when men still controlled most power, most assets and most women, she achieved a high level of self-sufficiency and independence.

O’Keeffe is most well known for her large paintings of flowers (with an erotic, vaginal imagery which she denied was intentional); and her representations of the New Mexico landscape and its elements. Further details of her biography are available at Wikipedia. The website of the The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum has several good slideshows of her art.

O’Keeffe made it to the Most Memorable Hermits list because she valued solitude and found she could best experience it through her own creative process. This discovery occurred before she moved to the wilds of New Mexico (and before she met Stieglitz). This O’Keeffe quotation about the creation of her art is from 1915 (pre-Stieglitz):

“There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own unknown – no one to satisfy except myself.”

O’Keeffe didn’t like to sign her paintings and rarely named them herself. I suspect she is an artist who would have painted, and painted what she wanted, whether or not her efforts ever gained notoriety.

She was not a total recluse. By the time she moved to New Mexico, she was a woman of means who could hire assistance with her property. But she did learn to drive so she could travel into the far away on her own, with her paint supplies in the back of her car. Outside of her paintings – perhaps her own words give us the best sense of who she was:

“I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me – shapes and ideas so near to me – so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn’t occurred to me to put them down.”

“One day I found myself saying to myself…  I can’t live where I want to, I can’t go where I want to…I can’t do what I want to.  I can’t even say what I want to.  I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted, and that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn’t concern anybody but myself.”

“It was all so far away – there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.”

“I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.”

“Filling a space in a beautiful way. That is what art means to me.”

“I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.”

“I know I can not paint a flower, I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning, but maybe in terms of paint color, I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Special thanks to Oregon hermit, artist John C., who recommended Georgia O’Keeffe for the Memorable Hermits list.

*Footnote: One irony of the Lifetime Channel’s ostensibly “pro-woman” worldview (and one reason I rarely wander there) is Lifetime’s over-emphasis on women’s successes and failures as a factor of the men in their lives – romance. On the other hand, I do appreciate the difficulty of marketing a film of a lone woman wandering around the desert with her painting supplies.  Most successful desert movies seem to require lots of horses and explosions.

I was greeted by a very HALesque, pear-shaped tone, male computer voice which asked me to enter the ID number.

Immediately after I did so, HAL admitted sadly: “I’m having some problems. I’ll transfer you to a representative.”

I was impressed and rather tickled that HAL was willing to admit his fallibility so promptly rather than sending me off to a string of endless menus.

Furthermore, I didn’t have to wait for a live representative. Tami came on the line immediately, provided her name and asked if she could help.

I asked if the ID number I’d entered made it through to her.

She said “no” and asked for the Boeing employee’s name.

She looked the name up to confirm she should offer further assistance and repeated her offer.

I described the information I wished to confirm.

Tami replied with: “So this is a Health and Insurance Plan question?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll have to transfer you to someone who can help.”

Uh-oh.

And she transferred me back to HAL – who was still feeling ill.

Calm but decisive.  No options: “Our system is not available now. Please call back at another time. Good-bye.” Click.

Well, at least I was never on hold,  HAL never called me Dave and he didn’t fade out singing Daisy. A quick good-bye is always much better than being ejected off into space or something.

Might be a sad commentary on our times, though – I’m now so well-trained at phone call hassles with intricate, unhelpful menu loops, getting nowhere efficiently feels like a kind of victory.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The film is food for thought on many levels. Noland is clearly a different man after his four years of solitude.  The life he left behind has also changed – people have moved on without him, including the love of his life.

Naturally, I was most fascinated with the challenges Noland faced while on the island. Contemplating how you would fair facing similar circumstances is part of the movie’s fun. The daily challenge of survival at a subsistence level is a lot different than choosing a comfortable level of solitude with access to modern amenities.

Would you (as Chuck Noland does) anthropomorphize a volleyball for someone to talk with?  How long would it take before you decided to risk all and leave the relative, though uncomfortable, safety of the island to challenge the sea on a rickety raft?

Personally, if there was any other life on the island (birds, rodents, or even non-toxic reptiles), I’d like to think I’d try for a relationship with one of them over talking to an inanimate object.  On the other hand, you don’t want to ultimately face having to eat a creature you’ve befriended – no protein in a volleyball.

As much as I treasure solitude, surviving at a subsistence level holds little appeal for me. It would be a laborious challenge alone – not a game like we see on television’s Survivor and Lost which were both developed after Cast Away’s success.

Although I can find genuine contentment in relative simplicity, and I’m fairly certain I could do well without much human interaction, trying to survive without books might launch my raft off the island – a library or die.

I’ve been thinking about that movie a lot the last several weeks – not about the resolution of the mystery, but about the many vagaries of snow – the varieties, moisture content; how it falls, lands, rests, melts, refreezes, compacts; how snow impacts what it rests upon and a lot of other variables I have not previously had the opportunity to observe.

I’m not a big snow sports person (too many people funneled into a small area). What skiing I have done involved a series of cross-country day trips; and although the quality of snow, terrain and potential avalanche danger made big differences in my cross-country pleasure (or lack thereof), I was always unfamiliar with areas I was traversing, so I was more focused on getting from point A to point B, less consciously focused on the snow itself.

My newly developed sense of snow comes from watching it and shoveling it (repeatedly) on this landscape which I know very well in all seasons. It’s been a sometimes arduous, but revealing adventure – a new opportunity to learn something about nature by being in it.

We still have 5 inches of snow in open areas with some potential for more this evening before warm temps and solid rain move in to send us back to normal.

It will take the plow piles a week or more to dissolve. Many of our non-indigenous shrubs are emerging from the snow weight looking worse for the experience. But now we get to watch (and maybe help) the recovery.

And as much as a sunny respite appeals right now, I’ve actually been reminded of why I make a lousy tourist.  It’s more than just my reclusive nature. I’m not a person who enjoys hitting the highlights of a locale – seeing the stationary thing you’re supposed to see and moving on to the next thing you’re supposed to see.  I prefer to stay, work, play – even reside in an environment – long enough to observe and attempt to understand  – to, in some way, become a part of the process.

I like just about everything Anthony Hopkins does. When I think of this movie, I see Hopkins coursing the jungle with that long white hair. Actually, the primary setting of the movie is the psychiatric section of a maximum security prison where Dr. Powell is incarcerated after killing some gorilla-murderers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The movie is a psychological thriller a la One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Dr. Theo Caulder (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) is tasked with reaching out to the initially-silent Dr. Powell (Hopkins).  The movie is loosely based on the 1992 environmental sustainability novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.  The movie’s sustainability message ebbs more than it flows and Instinct was never a blockbuster; but it’s a good, winter evening’s home entertainment. Great acting is the primary sustainability element of the film.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Proenneke lived in his cabin at Twin Lakes until he was 82 years old. He donated his cabin to the U.S. Park Service and it is now maintained as part of the Lake Clark National Park.

Proenneke retired to the Alaskan wilderness at age 51 in 1968.  He documented the building of his cabin and his life alone through written journals and 3000 ft. of 8 mm film. The first-person narration on  the DVDs is based on  Preonneke’s journals, but there seems to be some confusion (credit-wise) as to whose voice we are actually hearing - either one of the Swerers or Dick Proenneke’s nephew, Ray Proenneke, Jr. Whoever is speaking, the voice quality and simple narration are so perfect to the task that once engaged, the voice easily becomes Dick Proenneke’s to the viewer.

Proenneke spent the last several years of his life with his brother in California and lived long enough to view the edited film.

Even if you don’t consider yourself an outdoor person, don’t miss the opportunity to view “Alone in the Wilderness” at least once in its entirety. Footage of the Alaskan landscape and wildlife are great, but Proenneke’s reflections and explanations of his projects have a peaceful, spiritual quality that ups the fascination factor. If you have kids, watch it with them. Very few films so startlingly remind us of the difference between needs and wants.

• Until the last century, most women were prohibited (legally or culturally) from choosing the circumstances or acquiring the skills necessary to survive independently. (This is still true in some cultures – in the extreme, infractions are punishable by death.)
• Women who attempted to free themselves from the bonds of sexual or domestic slavery, in spite of these cultural and political prohibitions, were at best ridiculed, and at worst murdered (as “witches,” for example.)
• Ergo, motivated by self-preservation, female hermits have until recently been extremists – maintaining absolute solitude and leaving behind no record of their lives.  Smart women – though many were probably also illiterate, since women’s access to education was (and in some cultures still is) restricted.

That said, one of the most memorable fictional hermits of recent years is the anonymous goat woman in Charles Frazier’s Civil War novel Cold Mountain and the 2003 motion picture by the same name. She’ll get the lucky spot as Most Memorable Hermit No. 7. She has no name in the book but is called ”Maddy” in the  movie. (Note the mad hermit stigma surfacing again.) Dame Eileen Atkins plays Maddy in the movie (pictured here).

The goat woman gets a bit more coverage in the book. She takes wounded protagonist, Inman (Jude Law in the movie) to her caravan camp, where she lives alone with her goats. (What is this goat thing and hermits?) When talking about a dispute with a man to whom she sells goats, we learn she has occasional dealings with other humans.  She keeps a detailed, illustrated journal of her life. Inman ultimately “snoops” in the journal.

Maddy has knowledge of healing herbs with which she dresses Inman’s wounds. (Just the variety of alchemy that got a ”witch” or two burned at the stake.)  In the several days Inman spends with Maddy, they get high on laudanum together. She tells him she ran away from a cruel husband to live alone. Inman shares with her his love of Ada to whom he is trying to return. Inman also confesses he barely knows Ada.  Ada symbolizes love, home and good; the goat woman symbolizes nature and spirituality. Inman and the goat woman discuss their mutual dissatisfaction with the world. Inman briefly considers the solitary, hermit’s life as a viable alternative to resuming his quest.

I’m on the lookout for real female hermits to add to the list. Recommendations are always welcome.