Back in August I did the following entry about the concept of exile:
This is a journal entry from the writings of Mircea Eliade. He kept a journal between 1945 and 1969. This entry was written 1 January 1960:
Every exile is a Ulysses traveling toward Ithaca. Every real existence reproduces the Odyssey. The path toward Ithaca, toward the center. I had known all that for a long time. What I have just discovered is that the chance to become a new Ulysses is given to any exile whatsoever (precisely because he has been condemned by the gods, that is, by the "powers" which decide historical, earthly destinies). But to realize this, the exile must be capable of penetrating the hidden meaning of his wanderings, and of understanding them as a long series of initiation trials (willed by the gods) and as so many obstacles on the path which brings him back to the hearth (toward the center). That means: seeing signs, hidden meanings, symbols, in the sufferings, the depressions, the dry periods in everyday life.
The image of oneself as an exile is useful on many levels. Spiritual teachings suggest that we are exiled from our original unity, a unity symbolized by the Garden of Eden and also the cosmic egg. I think in our "modern," technological age, we can come to feel we are exiles in our own lives. We have lost many of the rituals and ceremonies that once bound us to the greater whole of the earth and the universe. So we often find ourselves searching. This search can be lonely and painful. But even so, there are meanings we are meant to glean. Even in the "depressions," even in "the dry periods of everyday life."
I think it's intriguing that Mircea Eliade wrote this entry on the first day of the new year. I think I want to read this entry every year on January 1st from now on.
Entry excerpted from No Souvenirs: Journal 1957-1969, Mircea Eliade. (Harper, 1977).
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At that time, 2005 felt far away. Yet I did file my promise away in my memory, my promise to look at Eliade's entry each year when the new year came. If I could say that I've made any New Year's resolution, it is this: to read this entry from Eliade's journal every time I meet a new year.
So...exile.
I tried very hard to watch the New Year's Celebration on television. I used to enjoy it. This year, Dick Clark is recovering from a stroke and he was replaced by Regis Filban, and all anyone seemed to want to talk about was what was popular, what was "hot," what had sold the most tickets, what had sold the most CD's, DVD's and so on. For the short time I watched, I truly felt like an exile in this modern life. I looked at the people at Times Square, all penned up, like cattle (for safety purposes, I'm sure), and I shivvered at the thought of how tame modern life is becoming. According to the Writers Almanac: The idea of making a lot of noise exactly at midnight dates back to early pagan rituals. People believed that deafening noise would drive away evil spirits who flocked to the living at the start of the new year.
But now, the noise is just noise, and people don't seem to be able to truly reflect on evil anymore. What is evil? Who is evil? What about the evil existing within each of us? Each individual's capacity for evil?
By 11:00, I was so bored and disenchanted that I shut off the television and went to bed, NPR radio playing in the background. But not before I heard the big news story of the night was: "Don't drive drunk." The next morning the big news story: "What to do for a hangover." NOT, may I point out, the Tsunami.
And although I'm happy I don't let such popular culture concerns drive me, it is also a little lonely-making, this situation I find myself in. I am an exile in my own culture.
This is but one side of the multi-sided gem that exile is.
3 comments:
My dear Theresa - please understand that you are not alone. You may be exiled from popular culture, but there are many of us who find it equally distasteful. I switched on the Times Square celebration at about a minute to midnight and found Regis mundane and uninvolving. He was out of sync with the ball-dropping by about a second and that said it all to me. Popular culture IS out of sync with humanity, and there are enough of us out there who realize that - I believe, anyway. Just look at the community of journal-writers online. Look at some of the writers whose work you celebrate in your own entries.
I'm glad you see exile as multi-faceted. Being an exile from popular culture means you are alive and in touch with the earthiness, spirituality, and imagination that you write about so beautifully. It's a GOOD thing! Happy 2005!!
Love, Vicky
My Incentive http://www.livejournal.com/~vxv789/
PS - Hotmail/AOL are up to their old tricks again - just had an e-mail returned. See Thumbelina...
I think that the depressions and dry periods are really the times when we are able to find meaning. The other times, we get too busy with doing to seek meaning and understanding. It's only in the dry periods that our minds, in sifting all we've done and seen, can make the subterranean connections between symbols, signs and our activities. We may not be aware that the connections have been made then, because when they come forth, it's like coming on a hidden spring, and it seems the dry period is over. But it's there in the dust, on the lonely path of the exile, that the connections are made.
http:journals.aol.com/sistercdr/Sortingthepieces
I became a New Year's Eve exile the day Guy Lombardo ascended into heaven.
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