A Way of Escape

It often amazes me, and sometimes amuses, how we choose to escape from situations we find ourselves in. I have to be away from home at a time when I could really use the quiet, restful place that my home represents for me. I have had to come to a place where energy is often expended, or over-expended, and where common, everyday niceties are systematically tromped into the dusty, broken streets. I won't say what place I am in except to say consider it a place in the mind. After all we often put ourselves in these places mentally where everything seems dusty, broken and demanding of our energy. Haven't we had reltationships like this?

"Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” This quote from Italo Calvino's beautiful book Invisible Cities I have always considered to be about people as much as places. What are we if not a collection of desires and fears and hidden discourse, absurd codes we live by, fooled by our own egotistical views and never really what we seem? I used to say that children are a humbling experience because they often force you to recognize the difference between how you see yourself and what you really are. At least they do if you allow yourself the introspection needed for such recognition. Many among us choose not to allow such introspection. After all, why damage the self-image? But ignore what children have to say at your own peril. Their truth is sharp, not dulled by age and egotism.

Sometimes we find ourselves in places we don't want to be. A party we wish we could sneak out of, a dinner we must attend, a wedding we have no faith in - any one of those little commitments that can seem a monumental demand upon our time. Sometimes this place is as much physical as mental. Thoreau says "most men lead lives of quiet desparation." I would say that most of us experience moments of quiet desparation - some more than others. These moments descend upon us and we find ourselves struggling. A friend from years ago called it the dark place. "I am in the dark place," he would say. We often talked about how to escape such places. I remember saying that I felt that it was more useful to work my way through such moods, to sort of find my way out by going through the mood, confronting the tangled branches instead of trying to dig beneath or find a away over. In this way I believed I was doing something more constructive for my soul. When we escape we also avoid confrontation. If we do not engage we learn nothing.

However, it should also be noted, that when we are in a physical place that drags the spirit down it isn't so easy to confront or engage. What then? How to escape? I remember, vividly, the wonderful documentary about the making of Coppola's Acopalypse Now, the actor Frederick Forrest talking about how he dealt with being in the Philippines filming or a year. He would simply pretend that he was somewhere else. "Where are you today, Frederick?" Coppola would ask. "Today I'm in Arizona playing golf with Jack Nicholson," Forrest would respond. I do the same thing except with books. Right now I am in Greece with John Fowles listening to his Magus, Conchis, tell his marvelous history. I can feel the sunlight, smell the pure, blue sea and hear the sound of the waves, all my senses attuned to the Greece of Fowles imagination. So far it is vivid and true and lifts my soul free, a way of escape.