Deep Cover

Every Easter, as every Christmas, we hear stories about how this holiday was originally a pagan celebration that was “Christianized” by the early church. Pagans celebrated themes of rebirth for hundreds of years before they ever heard the story of the resurrection. Even the name “Easter” comes from “Eastre,” the great mother goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Some use these facts to denigrate Christianity, or to prove that somehow Christianity is just a different take on ancient pagan traditions.

The fact is, the pagans got some things right. When you’re living in Northern Europe without the benefit of indoor plumbing, central heating, or modern agricultural methods, spring isn’t something you take lightly. It’s not the time of year that you look forward to seeing chocolate-covered bunnies in store windows; it’s the time of year you begin to regain hope that your family won’t freeze or starve to death this year. The spring equinox was truly a cause for celebration.

The pagans realized, in their limited way, that spring meant salvation – at least salvation of a limited and temporary kind. They didn’t take spring for granted. And they probably knew, despite their prayers and rituals, that there was nothing they could do to make spring come any quicker, or even to ensure that it came it all.

Spring, like our salvation through Christ, is a gift. Most of us have heard the story of the resurrection so many times that it has become part of the fabric of our reality: the notion that Christ did not have to come, that He did not have to die and rise again, is incomprehensible to us. Christmas comes every year, and Easter follows like clockwork, every year. We could print our calendars for the next thousand years, and Easter would always be there.

If you want to get an small idea of what it would be like if there were no Easter – no resurrection – imagine a year where winter never ended. Impossible, right? Not so. The year 1816 is known in New England as the “Year there was no summer.” Winter cold lasted well into spring, and the growing season from late spring to early fall was punctuated by a series of devastating cold waves that did major damage to the crops and greatly reduced the food supply. In areas of central and northern New England, the summer had only two extended periods without frost or near freezing temperatures. A widespread snow fell in June. As a result, corn did not ripen and hay, fruits, and vegetables were greatly reduced in quantity and quality. The promise of spring that year turned out to be hollow.

It’s a safe bet that the New Englanders who lived through this year never saw spring in quite the same way again. When even something as certain as the progression of the seasons can no longer be depended on, it is clear just how much we need God. Spring does not have to follow winter; it only does so by the grace of God. Neither was God’s gift of salvation inevitable. To take it for granted is a mistake exponentially more foolish than assuming that winter must always end. Were it not for the grace of God, winter could continue forever. In fact, that’s exactly the prospect with which we would be faced were it not for the gift of salvation: an endless winter, cold and gray, with no hope of spring.

So, as I say, the pagans got some things right: they understood the importance of spring, and never took it for granted. With the pagans we express gratitude for the end of winter and the return of life. Unlike the pagans, however, we can also thank God for an infinitely greater gift: that of the eternal life that comes through Jesus Christ.

I was in a restaurant that was decked out all in white. White tablecloths, white napkins, white walls, white carpet. Everything. Even I was dressed in white. The restaurant could have seated 300 people, but it was empty except for me. One wall was a bank of windows, revealing the dull whiteness of a snowstorm. But there was no snow. Just white.

The waiter, in an elegant white suit, arrived with the food. It was a massive plate of spaghetti, smothered in sloppy marinara sauce. As he set the plate down, I became aware of an intense hunger.

I ate as carefully as I could, but I managed only a few bites before a droplet of red struck the linen tablecloth, seeping inexorably into its fibers. The waiter appeared and took the plate away. I remained famished, but didn't bother to protest. I was finished.

The waiter asked me if I wanted to see the Hall of Stains. I nodded.

I had expected some kind of gallery, with bits of blemished cloth hanging about in frames. Instead, the Hall of Stains was a literal hallway, seemingly with no entrance and no exit. The walls were uniformly red. So perfect in their uniform redness were they, in fact, that it was impossible for the eye to focus on the wall. If it weren't for the corners where the walls met the red ceiling and red floor, it would have appeared to be an endless crimson fog.

I walked down the hall, and eventually found what I didn't know I was looking for: A single, tiny, irregular patch of white marring the wall to my right. It was an affront to the perfection of the Hall, and I looked about vainly for a way to repair the flaw.

The waiter was behind me, holding a small velvet box in his hand. He opened the box, revealing a dot of red resting on a silky white cushion. It was my stain.

I took the stain between my index finger and thumb and pressed it against the white patch in the wall. It fit perfectly. The Hall was complete.

Now, however, I found it impossible to differentiate walls from ceiling. I had the sense of being in a large crimson sphere. And I began to float, as if the sphere were trying to center itself around me. "I'm weightless," I said aloud.

"Free fall," said the waiter, whom I could now hear but not see.

Free fall. Yes, that was it. This wasn't the lazy sensation of floating but the queasiness of a roller coaster ride. The sphere was falling.

I fell with it long enough for the words intolerable and interminable to come to mind. Then the sphere stopped. I did not.

I smashed through the bottom of the sphere's brittle shell and found myself underwater. Eventually I surfaced, but the sea was violent, tearing at my clothes and making me feel sick.

I found myself naked, awash on a beach. I was greeted by the most beautiful woman I have ever seen; an island beauty with Polynesian features. It was assumed that we would be married.

At the ceremony, a problem arose. As the groom I needed to produce some sort of dowry to demonstrate my worth. It was a mere formality, but could not be dispensed with. Unfortunately, I had literally nothing. I had brought nothing to the island but myself.

There was murmuring in the pews, and I looked around nervously. There was no way out of this. There were only two options: produce a dowry and remain in paradise or be thrown back into the sea.

Anxiety overcame me, and I found myself coughing violently into a hankerchief. There was a coppery taste as my throat went raw. I spat something onto the white cloth: The stain. I had somehow taken it with me.

I held up the stained hankerchief. Worry and consternation instantly replaced disapproval. According to the island's customs, the people had no choice but to accept my gift. We were married and I was allowed to stay. The stain was buried deep in the sand, and a wire fence was constructed around it.

The council governing the island decided to split the citizens into two groups: One group would celebrate the marriage and the other group would mourn the arrival of the Stain. The celebrants, of course, thought this was a wonderful plan. The mourners cursed their fate, and cursed the celebrants.

Strife between the two groups interfered with food production. Soon many -- mostly mourners -- went hungry. Things went from bad to worse on the island, until outright civil war seemed likely.

Then someone made a discovery: A plant was growing in the sand where the stain had been buried, its tendrils twisting about the wire fence. From its leafy vines hung dozens of bright red globes: Tomatoes.

There was a scurry of activity as the island's inhabitants all tried to get to the tomatoes at once. But I stood next to the plant, threatening to uproot it and crush the tomatoes if things got out of hand. I insisted that there would be enough for everyone. And I instructed the people to form a single file line, starting with the mourners. Each islander was allowed to take one tomato. If there were enough, they would be allowed to go back for seconds.

There was in fact, plenty for everyone. Most islanders were satisfied after two or three trips, and eventually the crowd dispersed. That night, the islanders celebrated the Festival of the Stain together, gorging themselves on spaghetti.

The sauce was everywhere. No one seemed to mind.


Note: I have to admit this wasn't an actual dream. It was more a series of random thoughts that I had as I was drifting off to sleep. Some of the elements did then work their way into my actual dreams, but not this coherently. I felt I should write it up because it happened to coincide with my appearance in Cindra's dream.

Labels: Fiction

Note: This was originally posted on Central Snark.

Despite being a big fan of action movies, and despite the fawning of critics, I didn’t particularly like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. If I had to sum up why I didn’t like it, I’d have to say that it was unrealistic.

What?! You howl. Aren’t you the guy who just told us that Batman Begins is the best movie ever? Are you going to try to convince us that a caped crusader vanquishing flamboyant evildoers in Gotham city is realistic? You know what your problem is? You’re biased against movies with Asian actors and subtitles!

Probably. But there’s more to it than that.

I was a philosophy major in college. This admission prompts chuckles from certain types of people, who seem to think that philosophy has something to do with contemplating why the sky is blue or how many Kate Mosses can dance on the head of a pin. Contrary to the belief evidently held by the majority of small bookstore managers, philosophy is not the discipline that falls between Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet and the Time-Life series Mysteries of the Unknown. Philosophy — Western Philosophy, anyway, is mostly about logic and assessing the validity arguments.

Starting with Plato and Aristotle, philosophy has been all about breaking human knowledge down into discrete units and then trying to put them back together in a way that seems consistent with reason. Philosophy, in this sense, is the forerunner to Humanism, the Enlightenment, and the modern scientific method.

Eastern philosophy is a whole different thing. Eastern philosophy is about seeing patterns, and balance, and cycles in reality. Eastern philosophy tries to look at things as a whole, to get a sort of intuitive sense of reality, without trying to break it down into comprehensible chunks. Eastern philosophy is the kind of stuff that makes sense when you’re high, and then mysteriously stops making sense once you are in full possession of your rational faculties. This may be because drugs free your mind to embrace the hidden reality of the universe. Or it may be because nonsense seems to make sense when you’re f—-ed up. You may sense a slight bias on my part.

Where am I going with this? Good question. It occurred to me recently that the dichotomy between Eastern and Western philosophy explains a lot regarding the differences between Eastern and Western movies. Action movies, in particular.

What bugs me about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is that it doesn’t adhere to any internal logic regarding what’s physically possible. Sure, Spider-Man can stick to walls, but that’s because he was bitten by an irradiated spider. Wolverine can get shot in the head and live because he’s a genetic mutant with a metal skull. Batman can kick ass because he’s fueled with righteous anger at evil-doers; he’s traveled the world studying obscure martial arts techniques; and he’s a billionaire with access to a lot of cool toys. In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the only explanation for the fact that characters can soar 50 feet through the air or stand on a hair-thin bamboo shoot is that they’ve practiced really hard. Huh? Even more frustrating, sometimes characters seem to be bound by mundane forces like gravity, while at other times they are not.

I have the same problem with the Kill Bill movies, which borrow heavily from Eastern cinema. They don’t make any freaking sense. Kung-Fu training may explain how someone can punch their way through a plywood coffin, but Kung-Fu doesn’t give one the ability to dig one’s way out of a six foot grave with one’s fingers. For that matter, why would any semi-sane individual try to kill another person with a snake? Snakes are incredibly inconvenient to carry around, and make lousy weapons, as a rule.

In other words, Western movies may not be more realistic, per se, than Eastern movies, but they tend to devise a set of rules and then stick to them (and movies that don’t adhere to their own rules are generally excoriated by critics). Eastern movies don’t feel bound to make sense on the same level. They may make sense thematically, but the mundane details don’t necessarily fit together. So yes, I’m biased against these kinds of movies, but my bias has more to do with my analytic nature than race or language (although I am of course, the product of a Western culture with a strong analytic bent).

The real offenders, however, are those movies that don’t trust either tradition enough to stick with it. Take the Matrix films for example. The first movie was a Western twist on the Gnostic notion of reality as illusory and evil. It frames its themes in Western sci-fi staples, but its theme (“there is no spoon”) is an Eastern one. The second and third films go rapidly downhill as we are subjected to unnecessary explanation and elaboration on the sci-fi themes (not to mention tiresome quasi-philosophical discussions about free will, determinism, destiny, etc.). The filmmakers pull the curtain too far back, revealing a clockwork universe with little mystery. That’s the problem with Western filmmakers taking on Eastern themes: They are so ensnared in the Aristotelian mode of thinking that they assume progress consists of explication, as if a magic show could be improved by revealing the secret pocket in the hat where the rabbit was hiding. They make the allegorical into the literal, sucking the life out of it in the process.

The latter Star Wars movies had the same problem. Who wants to know that one’s aptitude for using the force is determined by the “midi-cholorian count” in one’s blood? Not I. Perhaps the best example is Highlander II, in which we learn that the the race of immortals struggling for dominance of the world are in fact exiled aliens from the planet Zeist. Sigh.

And, of course, there are plenty of examples of Western-style films that degenerate into pseudo-mysticism when they get into a scientific/technological bind. The sci-fi genre is particularly rich with examples. I’d come up with some, but I’ve got to leave some work for you, don’t I?

I suppose I should wrap this up and make some kind of point. So here it is: If you’re making a movie, pick a cinematic “language” and stick with it. You may feel compelled to create a system of rules governing your universe, or you may decide to risk being more freewheeling in what you allow; it depends what effect you’re trying to achieve, and who you’re making the movie for. You can even play around with mixing genres and themes if you want, but don’t simply switch from one cinematic language to another to disguise the fact that you’ve run out of things to say. Mark Twain didn’t lapse into a rural Southern dialogue because he had painted himself into a corner with Yankee English. You don’t improve on mystery by breaking it into digestible pieces, and you aren’t fooling anybody by explaining away technical inconsistencies with pseudo-mystical gobbledygook. Well, not many people anyway.

Believe in what you’re saying, and how you say it, or nobody else is going to either.

~Serious Diesel