January 20, 2010
Seeing home
I finally went to see James Cameron’s Avatar last weekend. It was splendidly done, no question, a visual spectacular, showing a satisfying triumph of beauty and spirituality over corporate greed and blindness. I enjoyed it greatly, and yet I came away from it not feeling profoundly moved. My reaction may have been colored by the issues of romanticized racism that have been raised elsewhere — the idealized and pure native peoples needing to be saved by the Great White Soldier-Hero — but it wasn’t only that. It may have been that the characters didn’t hit any of my particular triggers (aside from being felinoid, which is always an attraction, blue or not), but it seemed that there was something more. And as I thought of the luminous, otherworldly forest that the movie depicted, the vivid and brilliant wings of the irkan and the toruk flashing against the sky, the perfect union of the bond, the realization came, sudden, startling, and sure:
Beautiful, yes. But not as beautiful as my Mother’s eyes.
The green-tinged gold of the winter hillsides; the moss of my lawn, lush in the brief, damp thaw; the flawless, living clarity of the brook — the caress of the sun; the wind’s sweet, subtle stirring; the leap of my heart, the sense of presence like an embrace; Her warm and endless regard holding me, always. The kinship of those who care for me and whom I care for, of those who hear echoes of the same callings, a silver, flickering music.
I feel a little sad for the people who come out of the movie theater pining for a place that they’ll never get to. The connection to something larger, to the universal web of beauty of which the self is one part, isn’t out there, on Pandora. It’s right here, right now, in the eyes that see, in the heart that opens itself in exhilarated joy and welcome like the outstretched wings of a bird.
The day after Avatar, I went for a walk to the local nature preserve and sang an offering to the stream’s spirit; at home, I raked leaves, cut back perennials, and hauled firewood, alive to the contours of the land beneath my feet, to the fall of the light. Whatever its flaws or its virtues, I’m grateful to Avatar for this: for reminding me of what beauty truly is and where it lives.
I see you, the Na’vi greet each other.
What do you see?
thehouseofvines said,
January 20, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Yes! I think you hit the nail on the head, at least as far as what’s been bugging me about AVATAR and all it’s hype. This place where we live is just as magical, just as mysterious, just as awesome and yet people don’t see that because it’s not a bunch of CGI.
Dver said,
January 20, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Beautiful post, and so true. I haven’t seen the movie, and have no desire to really, but I’m guessing I’d feel the same. There is so much spectacular *and* everyday beauty on this Earth, there really is no need to go searching elsewhere.