~"It feels so good to be so gone." -Miracle Legion. Fascinating to discover the things we bring along on this weird trip.
~'Back in the Car Park' by The Lilac Time because much of their lyrics are in the past tense. except not this one. not entirely. it's nice. have a listen.
It Was a Wonderful Life, a documentary about women who once had it all, still appear as though they have it all, but are brushing their teeth with their index fingers with 'recycled' water, scrounging 3$ to shower at the Y- for a semi-weekly shower in order to appear as though they have it all together so someone will hire them. Just a small slice of the proverbial pie, homeless (women) of this sort, but it got me thinking about leaving things behind--those who do it on purpose versus, well, those who don't.
hiya gang. hope ya'll are doing fine.
i'm working off about 2.5 hours sleep so bear with-. OK, so i watched that movie and of course it had the intended aaw -people-are-shit!-effect coupled with "s'right, Woman! No self-pity just Keep Moving with ferver and that's how we do!" (Jodie Foster narrated, so, duh). but it got me curious about people who opt to become marginalized, if i may refer to it as such. i started looking up 'hermits'. i was only mildly familiar with the history of the term, so read up if you're curious:
regarding hermits in the middle ages: some people couldn't get close enough to god even though they'd committed their lives to a monastery or nunnery (wasn't that a shakespearean reference to a brothel? remind me to look that up). so these kids would shake it all off and go live in the wild, a deserted found-location, a cave, or self-built hut. they ate food that they harvested, found, or were given by passers-by. their days were spent praying and/or reflecting upon god's ways.
sometimes the nuns would opt for life in a tiny cell with a tinier window that faced the church. the nuns called themselves anchoresses. anchors of faith. steadfast bearers. sound familiar?
fast forward to 1883 when a fella name Noah John Rondeau was born. he ran away from home (new york) as a teenager with an 8th-grade education (what i'd like to know is what family life was like at the Rondeau house that prompted his flight. remind me to look that up). one thing>to another=astronomy studies, caretaker gigs, taking up with an Abenaki indian, stints in jail.
fast forward to 1929. Noah decides to go ahead and live as a veritable, disappointed-with-the-world hermit. he takes up residence in the adirondack mountains (cold river, for those of you without wikipedia). he kept journals that i'm anxious to read just as soon as my neglected other-reads stop whispering you suck.
fast forward to 1943. in response to being a WWii draft dodger, Noah writes the following:
"I never went to Cold River to dodge anything, unless it was from 1930 to 1940 when it might be said that I dodged the American labor failure at which time I could not get enough in civilization to get along even as well as I could at Cold River under hard circumstances in the back woods. Since I'm not evading I did not make my first appearance at Cold River on the day that Pearl Harbor was bombed. What I'm doing toward the war effort looks like nothing, but that's all I can do and I'm doing it and it is this -- I'm self sustained."
o snap. atta boy, Noah! draw your own comparisons, folks.
so long story made longer, he didn't stay a hermit. people got interested; he "toured"; he got kicked outta his place in 1950; worked as Santa in Wilmington and died in August 1967.
Y'all know about Christopher McCandless, of course (Into the Wild). there's something to that kid, too. i admit, the maternal part of me thinks, o gawd to put people who love you through that kind of prolonged anxiety, but this hermit kind of flight speaks to a pretty intense need to 'be so gone'. it all goes beyond escapism, yea.
i return, briefly because i'm losing steam, to my initial that vs. this.
obviously the gals in my documentary aren't hermits in an original sense of the word. evidently their situations aren't voluntary. they're trying to hold on to what they can to stay part of this life. no doubt they've had a few revelations and disappointments in the "American labor failure at which time [they] could not get enough in civilization to get along...." hermits on the other hand...well, good riddance to bad rubbish, say they.
far be it from me to have any sort of intriguing philosophy regarding the above. i don't. i just record stuff i find and think about. there are no answers here, kiddos.
so what do we hold onto and what do we discard and for what reasons? and what, if anything, do we learn in the process?
