Compartmentalising

Having a few minutes to wait for my train this morning, I picked up a newspaper at the station. Amidst  accounts of "chaos" caused by the snow, just after the story of a Scotsman's lucky escape after driving his car along a canal less thickly frozen than he had imagined (he climbed out of the window and onto the ice as the car sank), was something stranger. Hundreds of people report feelings of "depression" and "sadness" after watching the film Avatar (which I admit freely to have loved, and watched several times). For these unfortunates, the real world seems so much more mundane and unfulfilling than computer-generated Pandora and its sylvan occupants.

Well, I suppose that a playground "world" costing several hundred million dollars ought to satisfy. And I doubt whether people facing real problems (as in Haiti, for example) worry in the least about the psychological aftermath of Avatar.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it, wrote Kafka. But, through creating such alternative realities in parallel to one's prosaic existance on earth, the opportunity for confusion rears its head. So it is that one needs to compartmentalise.

I am busying myself, on and off, on a work of fiction set in Celtic Britain, in that narrow period between the departure of the Romans and the arrival of the Saxons. Facinating this is too, inventing a scenario that works historically, creating a cohesive plot. I must imagine a fictitious people, dream up characters, give them names and natures. They fascinate me, and through them I can draw into my life albeit tangentially individuals whom I admire and may grow to love. Yet they are unreal. I can explore how it is to be another person, yet I am myself, not them. The non-existant I have created, however its span of reality remains ethereal.

But at work I muster facts and figures, marshall arguments, create documents, and all that related to creating a $3bn piece of infrastructure. Chairing a meeting of two dozen specialists, there is no room to think of equestian nomads or swords. Developing a new budget does not grant the opportunity to consider Celts or shape-changers. So I compartmentalise that thread of my life, allowing it out when the coast is clear, when it has free rein to live and love and create.

My riding I compartmentalise, for it happens at evenings and weekends, and interests colleagues but little and then out of professional politeness. But inform my life it ought, for is not my horse a mirror upon which I may see with shocking clarity my character?

Strange, it is, to be several things in one. Previously, out in Transylvania, my life and work and hobby were all one - trail riding and the tasks that enabled it. That life was intense, interesting, exhausting, and I was surprised how little of a hole was left when I abandoned it all. Now again life is multifaceted. Each facet glitters in a different direction, and one must stand far back to perceive the whole. Nor does the light shine upon every part at once, or indeed often illuminate more than one.

I wonder how to be like Tolkien's Elves, who put all that they loved into all that they did? Perhaps it is necessary to take a step back, to consider fundamentals: love of truth and beauty, integrity, spirituality, an enquiring mind? There comes a point beyond which one cannot honestly compartmentalise. It would be absurd to attend church on Sunday yet behave imorally during the week. Can I be creative when writing yet dull as I work on a great project?

Avatar I did enjoy within its compartment, and it didn't spoil my enjoyment of real life. Yes, it would be lovely to control a legged or winged steed by a direct link between minds. Flying through a fantastic landscape would be amazing. Being at one with the divine is practically beyond imagination. These are things of Heaven, of the New Earth, not to be found in this life.

Perhaps that is where Avatar led to disillusionment, for the film made the attainment of unusual skills both manual and emotional seem oddly straightforward. We can quickly become amazing riders! We can develop suddenly the skills to win a spectacular mate and lead a proud people! Even a complete grunt can do this! How hollow these notions seem in the cold light of day.

Meanwhile, if I want to ride fluently, I have the opportunity to do so. Should I wish to become a mounted warrior, I can work at archery. Neither will come easily, nor are they meant to. They are skills, broad and challenging, requiring knowledge and practice, intuition and dexterity. Were they not difficult, eventual success would signify but little.

Comments

[horseideology]

I enjoyed Avatar and glad to see some QUALITY films being made in my most favorite reading genre - fantasy. I plan on seeing it again Sat. with my son and his friends. However, I didn't leave it all depressed... these people need to get a grip!

We've got the Pope badmouthing the movie, and we have the Conservative Christian Right freaking out about the movie... which just further reinstates how out of touch both are with the general public. And the Catholics wonder why their religion is on a decline in the U.S.? Wake up and get a grip!

I like living in two worlds - it feeds my dual nature. The one that likes to stay busy, get things done, have accomplishments; and the other which prefers to seek spiritual enlightenment, connect with my animals and nature. Or maybe I'm just bi-polar?

Anyway I owe you a long email so I will try to get to that today in re: to your stories. Keep writing and dreaming! Even an engineer needs dreams, as inventors have shown over and over again.

PS personally I was more sad to leave Sherlock Holmes because I have been a Holmes fan since I was EIGHT! and Watson was kickass!

[White Horse Pilgrim]

Yes, it is good to see some quality films out there. Holmes was good too, and it was amusing to see him so deconstructed into an eccentric genius. Mrs Watson looked like quite a character too.

Well hasn't the Pope got a cheek, what with all the misdeeds of his organisation to cover up. Didn't look like there was much child abuse on Pandora, did it? And the religious right too? What do they want - more CS Lewis films? Do they moan every time a super-violent Rambo-esque flick appears? I can just imagine the neo-Protestant Pandora, where all the women wear long skirts and keep their mouths shut, and the white men take what they want - but redeem themselves by building a chapel for the natives. I'd better stop.

Duality is hard to live with. Do you find that you feel different to other people? If so, have you always felt that way? I do, and have for as long as I remember - for years this disturbed me. Transylvania was good because I was different, that was a fact and it became a bit of a license to be eccentric, at least until life became rather more serious.

Now I have compartmentalise aspects of life more rigorously than for years previously. But I do love to allow my imagination free rein in creating new places and worlds. That does seem to temper naked ambition, which would otherwise spoil the world of work - adding a balance that makes success at work a less serious goal. By that I mean that I'm happy being in the top 20% rather than the top 10%, for I have much catching up to do after a decade in the sticks.

[horseideology]

Hm well I've always been an oddball, J. That also tormented me when I was a teen and some in college - my agenda was never age appropriate; what I thought never the status quo. So nothing has changed :D except I don't care what anyone thinks anymore!

In my family, my behavior has never been predictable, though I have always found it easy to figure me out. I'm like Horton in Dr. Seuss' tale: I say what I mean, and I mean what I say.

I think this is why, people who know me, even a little in real life, are hesitant to cross me. I wouldn't say they fear me, (well maybe some do, really I do't know why because I am a pacifist!) but they know that I might take steps and when I can be totally ruthless and focused in my retribution.

For instance, I feel I am rather a lenient and understanding parent, but boundaries are boundaries, and when my teen son overstepped one (a HUGE one) right before Christmas there was hell to pay. He fessed up quickly though facing down two angry parents was surely daunting, but he knew there would be worse - I stand by my moral compass and punishment is swift, yet fair.

I was able to accept me after hooking up with hubby. He likes all my eccentric ways, my Protestant work ethic where pleasure is evil amuses him. My scathing tirades about hypocrites and liars, gives him a vicarious pleasure because he would never be in people's faces like I am. He likes my cynicism but doesn't share it. So having a partner that appreciates all facets does help a lot.

What I do find is that when I interact with most people, I have full shields up and engaged. My inner thoughts are no longer voiced. I listen more then I advise. I keep myself to myself. This is because I have learned these last 10 years that people will latch onto me and suck me dry to suit their own needs.

I didn't listen to those warning voices 18 months ago and so you know what happened. I won't let that happen ever again. I've grown more predatory and carnivorous in my nature.

[White Horse Pilgrim]

Well then we are both oddballs. A work ethic where pleasure is evil, I can relate to that - always have to be doing something. Of course writing and thinking count as work.

How important it is to be accepted as one is. I know what it is like to be married to one who wouldn't accept any eccentricity. That after parents whose opinions were reactionary and blinkered, and who simply denied there was any problem when plainly I needed help for depression. I find it hard to forgive any of them. Maybe writing Sketches will help me?

I have learnt to stand my ground more, and to say what I think (albeit with enough diplomacy to avoid needless conflict). That's got me out of one hole at work lately when someone tried to allocate a whole lot of extra stuff to me - and did not succeed. I do my work in my own way, which may be eccentric but it delivers the goods.

We have both been sucked dry over the past decade, in different ways and by different types of people, but drained nonetheless. It is good, indeed lifesaving, to have shed mistaken ways and false hope in human nature.

I've decided that I am a Saxon (or Viking) rather than a Celt. The Celts, like the Scots and Irish, tend to be occupied with their families. I am frustrated by mine, whether my mother's reactionary views and serial poor decisions or my sister's trailer trash life and spongeing for money. I feel little desire to see any of them anytime soon. My Old Soul too feels akin to others, at this time and way back in the past. For me, the present is a transient thing, eternity and enlightenment being the real goals.