Angela's Blog

Musings inspired by Constantine Cavafy's "The City"

2008-01-23T20:04:00.000-08:00

The City

You said, "I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.
Another city will be found, better than this.
Every effort of mine is condemned by fate;
and my heart is -- like a corpse -- buried.
How long in this wasteland will my mind remain.
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look
I see the black ruins of my life here,
where I spent so many years, and ruined and wasted."

New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you. You will roam the same
streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods;
in these same houses you will grow gray.
Always you will arrive in this city. To another land -- do not hope --
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have ruined your life here
in this little corner, you have destroyed it in the whole world.

~*~

Reading this poem raised a lot of issues in my mind: migration, escape, loss, homelessness, aimlessness, a literal and psychological going around in circles. I think of friends who have gone in search of a better life abroad, and friends who eventually will.

I remember a story about Mother Teresa. A man went up to her and asked, "What must I do in order to spread world peace?" She responded, "Go home and love your family."

I don't know the context of this conversation. I like to interpret this story as a call against Messianic wishful thinking, wherein the mind links contributing to world peace to simply seeking a career or a vocation that involves social action. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with choosing such a career--go ahead, if that's what floats your boat. But I think that what's more crucial is that love should animate the daily details of a life filled with big and small relationships. If the personal is indeed political, then learning how to manage power issues in personal, private relationships in a loving, humane way is already feat worthy of celebration. And if we consider the domino effect of relationships, of one relationship affecting how the parties involved carry out their other relationships, at present and in the future, then we see how the way we live out our family lives could actually impact the situation in our communities and in larger spheres.

The problem with Messianic thinking is that it invites disappointment. As Archbishop Oscar Romero once said, "We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not Messiahs." Hey, even the Messiah Himself encountered a lot of disappointment. But it's so easy to get burned out when you see that you can't change people, that people will hate you for doing good and for trying to convince them to do good. I know, I had a Messianic complex when I was in college. My good intentions turned out to be counterproductive when I realized that I was expecting too much of myself and of other people. It's good to be demanding, but one has to recognize a lost cause for what it is. The challenge is to find a way to figure out opportunities within lost causes and make them work, without being unrealistic.

What does that have to do with Cavafy? Nothing. ^O^

But going back to the poem, the message I get is that you can't run away from something that's inside you. That's like trying to run away from your own skin, or your own identity for that matter. New sights and sounds cannot tear you away from your demons if your demons hound you from within.

John Labella, my En12/101 and Lit 13/14 teacher, once advised us to resolve our issues as soon as we could. If not, we would encounter them again and again, in different forms, as we go on in life. The constant, recurring themes of our pain remind us of what we have yet to overcome.

Ultimately, the only way to experience newness is to be new, because, in the end, as Anais Nin and Anthony de Mello say, "We do not see things as they are, but as WE are."

-17 January 2008

Ecology and Loyalty in Miyazaki's "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind"

2008-01-23T19:47:00.000-08:00

I've been reading the first volume of Hayao Miyazaki's opus "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind."

A number of things about this story fascinate me. One is Miyazaki's treatment of the ecological disaster that the communities in the story are confronted with. Academic and policy approaches toward environmental problems have always struck me as detached and obliging, as if the environment was an old, sick grandmother we would rather not have anything to do with but have to put up with because she owns the house and the resources. Yet Miyazaki's treatment of the environment (in Nausicaa and in Mononoke Hime) appeals not to a sense of forced obligation but to a sense of intimate communion. For instance, the heroine Nausicaa can communicate with the creatures and the forest, suggesting that the creatures have souls and respond accordingly to love, hatred, compassion and persecution. Instead of the traditional Christian understanding that man is superior to minerals, plants and animals, Miyazaki suggests that they are equal not just in terms of providing resources but in terms of spiritual value.

Another thing that struck me about this manga is the characters' emphasis of loyalty. In the first volume, Nausicaa has to go to war to prove her worth to be the next ruler of the Valley of Wind. There is a scene wherein the battle-seasoned warriors talk about their loyalty to her and how they would gladly die for her and how they are proud to serve her. In a later scene, another character, Kushana, chops off her waist-length braid to honor the deaths of the young cadets who sacrificed themselves for her. As she does so, she says that their loyalty will never be forgotten.

I've noticed that in the Philippines, discussions of loyalty usually revolve around a patron-client system, which is essentially a business relationship: I will be loyal to you for as long as you can provide me and my family with these services and favors. What's the point of cultivating a relationship with someone who can't give you an edge in your ambitions? I personally find this system sickening and I was inspired when I read Nausicaa because it reminded me that loyalty can be expressed in a different way. It's a personal loyalty in a sense that the loyalty is between people, not necessarily loyalty tied to a particular cause. But it's not a business relationship between people who are using each other to further their own ends; rather, it's a loyalty based on faith. I am willing to die for this person because he/she is someone worth dying for. And it is a reciprocal loyalty: the leader cherishes and cultivates her men's loyalty and is pained by losing them; she doesn't take on airs as though she is entitled to that loyalty, she doesn't act like their lives are disposable just because they are of inferior rank and are thus obliged to obey her. In this situation, loyalty is not just a courtesy mandated by a chain of command--it is a spiritual bond between persons with deep regard for each other.

-23 November 2007

Test Run

2008-01-23T01:05:00.000-08:00

Testing 1, 2, 3... Testing 1, 2, 3.

Kushana is clear and ready for take-off.