Each time you get into your car or enter a store you can go wherever you want to go, purchase what you want [not necessarily what you need]. This is a fantastic privilege, and also an opportunity, to make the right choices, or simply, better choices.
Over the past few days I've internalised a lot of what has been happening to me. I've gone on a minor ALIENS obsession, including reading the original screenplays.
Part of the reason for this obsession, I suppose, is that the young Sigourney Weaver, was the spitting image of my mother, at least when Sigourney had short, curly hair. But a similar nose, a similar strict beauty, a similar, distinctive strength of virtue.
If you want to hide away from the real world, there are plenty of unspeakable horrors in movie fiction which echo what's out there. In the original ALIEN, think about this:
Warrant Officer Ripley [Sigourney Weaver] has Dallas, her own commanding officer [and lover] countermand her order, thereby bringing an alien on board, and violating quarantine. The science officer, a robot, facilitates this subversiveness as well. Trouble is, once on baord they discover that the alien has a peculiar defence mechanism that makes it too dangerous to kill. It has acid for blood, so any injury it suffers threatens the integrity of the entire ship and crew.
To cut a long story short, the massive commercial freighter, 10 months off course in deep space, has to be set to self destruct to try to kill the alien parasite once and for all; this after almost everyone on board has met with a grisly fate. Ripley, shortly before setting the ship to self destruct, finds Dallas strung up in a web, about to become the host. He asks her to kill him, knowing what fate awaits him [since he's witnessed it firsthand through Kane]. And so she does - she kills her superior, her lover, out of love and mercy. She attempts to reverse the self-destruct but the process is by now irrevocable.
Once on the Narcissus, she sees the receding shape of the massive Nostromo, and watches it ignite. Now she is alone in space, adrift, alone except for her cat, Jones. In the echoes of recent events, she has seen her entire crew die. And there, alone, she finds she shares the small space with the alien. She defeats it, by blowing it out of the goddamn airlock, thereby losing precious supplies of oxygen for the 10 month voyage home. The alien survives in space but the engines of the shuttle are ignited and melt the creature, thereby killing it.
Only then, has Ripley succeeded, only then has she survived. Once she is picked up by a salvage mission, she is found to have had questionable judgement, stripped of her rank, and ordered to undergo psyche evaluations. If you follow the screenplay closely, you'll note that had the crew followed Ripley's instructions to the letter, they would have avoided catastrophe. How ironic, that she is the only one to avoid it, and in 'recognising' her efforts, she is punished.
Now although this is all a fiction, it demonstrates the extent to which a situation can deteriorate once one begins to stray away from sensible guidelines. It also demonstrates how valuable a good story can be to teach real life lessons.
But there is also a healthy way to stray. Over the weekend I picked up a copy of Runner's World - the October issue. On page 13 there is a fascinating feature on a chunky athlete by Bronwyn Burns, titled: GOING THE DISTANCE. It's a story on a chap, Stuart Wainwright, who must be one of South Africa's most obsessed, most driven long distance runners. In a year, for example, Wainwright ran over 4000km, and this excludes training runs and time trials, by driving each Saturday and Sunday, across the country, to the longest distance races he could find. He also ran 600km on a 1km track over 6 days.
You may think this is crazy, but Wainwright never gets injured. He seems to run, in part, to do soul searching. Is he straying from the norm? Surely he is. But I'd argue, in a good way.
You, on the other hand, may do soul searching in your home, or on your way to work. But there are creative ways of living our lives, whatever destruction or deterioration is happening around us.
I note that mall robberies in South Africa are becoming frequent. It seriously echoes what we see in the Batman mythos, of a city buckling under a crime wave, citizens crying out for a rescuer, cringing in fear.
A recent attack involved 25 criminals armed to the teeth, in 10 vehicles, hijacking a mall. Earlier in the month there were seven mall incidents in 7 days.
In terms of energy, I recently quoted a New York Times article which posits that due to the dearth in gadgets, in new technology like flatscreen TV's, our individual consumption of electricity is increasing per capita. Nevermind that the number of human beings is increasing. We all assume that we can simply consume more and somehow the energy will keep coming. Look around. We're at the cul de sac, the end of that road.
But it isn't necessarily something to fear, though some tough choices and difficult experiences no doubt are in store. But you can make up your own adventure along the way. So long as you don't stay from the basics. Ripley's code of ethics includes humility, respect, responsibility, common sense, and facing up to reality. Wainwright's code is simply: what am I capable of? In use his words: "Never say die." Take heed, gentle reader, and dear friends, because to the extent that you do you can go a long long way and have a rich rich life.
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