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October 16, 2007

succumbing to luxury 2

I saw this

and this.

.

I'm going travelling, too.

But only to a Kurort.

Enjoy this old reading. He was "my age"!

Also, the film shows a speech by Bush I about Gulf War I that was televised the night I met my first college boyfriend, who I was with for six years. We were always taking camping trips, although we never starved to death. Once we went back-country camping near San Jose and by the end of the three-day trip, we were so hungry we drove immediately to a Safeway and ate sandwiches from their deli right there at the store.

Not exactly into the wild.

Posted by eric at October 16, 2007 10:33 AM

Comments

Travelling again? And to a spa? You really are one of the New York hedge fund multi-millionaires that I have read so much about. (For this reason and your ability to afford $6.49 cartons of grapefruit juice, I am growing bitter and envious of you and we've never even met) Anyway... I thought you had blown all your vacation for the year.

Posted by: Boomer at October 16, 2007 11:21 AM

My Kurort will probably only be metaphorical.

It will not involve vacation time.

Posted by: Eric at October 16, 2007 12:16 PM

Only metaphorical? I guess that means you are not taking the waters at Saratoga, which was my first guess. Maybe just a facial at Nickel?

Jason Schwartzman & Owen Wilson in the same film is something I'm looking forward to enjoying (perhaps with great gusto). The other looks good too, but Emile Hirsch just doesn't elicit the same visceral response.

Posted by: Joe at October 16, 2007 01:13 PM

* Did you learn how to stop worrying and love the East?

** Getting all "may age!" nostalgic here: did my REI-approved forsaking material comfort trekkings on Mt. Whitney in '93. Got overtly sun-scorched and giardia from consuming alpine pond water.

RIP, McCandless and my youthful years.

Posted by: jason at October 16, 2007 01:19 PM

I had heard that John Krakauer was a great writer. If that article is typical of his work, he is indeed. The story about the boy in Alaska makes me want to catch a flight to Anchorage tomorrow and try my own luck in the wilderness.

Posted by: Aaron at October 16, 2007 04:11 PM

I was hiking in Denali right around the time that McCandless would have been dying. I vividly remember the reactions when the news hit that his body had been found. Half my family are hard-core Alaskans, the other half are cold-n-hardy New Englanders (I'm in the middle, a Big Gay Californian). There wasn't a lot of empathy for the poor guy from either of my familial extremes. I, however, felt profound sadness. Still do.

Posted by: Lucky Pierre at October 16, 2007 04:12 PM

Christopher J. McCandless was a fucking idiot. I'm sorry, but while I understand the return to nature a la Thoreau, "poor little privileged boy trying to be tough" pisses me off.

The hoopla surrounding this book/film et al. is infuriating. There are people around the world who are exist on far less that he did, and would not find his "experiment" amusing in the least--for them, it isn't an "alternative" means of existence--it is their ONLY existence.

There. I have now dismounted my soap box. Sorry for the rant, Erichen, but that shit pisses me off.

Posted by: Young Faruq at October 16, 2007 11:19 PM

This, from Wikipedia:

Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian wrote: "I am exposed continually to what I will call the 'McCandless Phenomenon.' People, nearly always young men, come to Alaska to challenge themselves against an unforgiving wilderness landscape where convenience of access and possibility of rescue are practically nonexistent ... When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn’t even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the area. If he had a good map he could have walked out of his predicament ... Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide."[11]

Posted by: Young Faruq at October 16, 2007 11:23 PM

Young Faruq: it's the return to nature a la Thoreau part that should piss you off. Thoreau was a poor little privileged boy trying to create an ersatz wilderness for himself, too -- refusing out of principle to hold a job that required him to have any kind of responsibility, and living in a little house on a friend's property and calling it "the woods". But of course, he went on Sundays to Emerson's house for doughnuts. I think in his quasi-Buddhist value for moderation Thoreau would have thought going to Alaska to find the solitude excessive, since solitude was available only a mile or two from the center of town.

What about that masculine pursuit of solitude, though. What's up with that? I group the survivalist McCandlesses of the world in with the monks who never speak and the old-men-of-the-sea -- these are all somehow stereotypically masculine pursuits of extreme isolation that often result in (or are the result of?) social pathologies that no one adequately understands, or really wants to understand.

I had originally included "lighthouse keepers" in that list of extreme isolationists but then it occurred to me that lighthouse keepers actually perform a function that's vital to society at large and their fellow humans, which is totally contrary to the Thoreauean navel-gazing exercise. The isolationists ultimately don't care much about their fellow humans. I had trouble with Krakauer's characterization of McCandless as altruistic, for example -- I felt more for his father, wondering how a kid who in theory is so compassionate could be so cruel to his family.

Posted by: andrea at October 17, 2007 11:37 AM

Andrea:

You are totally right re: Thoureau. He pisses me off, too.

Goethe did it best: chill in the woods, write a poem, and then go back home.

Posted by: Young Faruq at October 17, 2007 11:46 AM

Wow, man. All this anger.

... monks who never speak... stereotypically masculine pursuits of extreme isolation that often result in (or are the result of?) social pathologies...

Makes me want to retreat to my hillside studio apartment and be alone for awhile. Andrea, I'd highly recommend a silent meditation retreat this very minute.

Posted by: Joe at October 17, 2007 12:25 PM

Joe:

I just can't deal with the glorification of this twit.

Posted by: Young Faruq at October 17, 2007 12:41 PM

Faruq: I pretty much agree with you. If you want to "drop out" and make a statement, just join an ashram in the sticks somewhere, or build your own Unabomber bungalow in the Rockies, or whatever. The "tragedy" of some dumbass dying because of his own hubris and ineptitude is lost on me (though I'd still like to see the film).

I applaud when public agencies decide to send bills for the rescue expenses to amateur backcountry weekend warriors who get themselves lost or fall into a ravine or something (karmically, I'm sure this means I'm bound to die in the backcountry, gnawed on by a puma, or by falling into a ravine). Despite all this, I suffer from that stereotypical masculine pathology of finding something compelling about the Thoreauvian ideal/myth of the solitary man communing with nature.

Posted by: Joe at October 17, 2007 04:09 PM

Joe: actually, venting did me a lot of good. anger: all gone!

of course, it could also be the result of the hour-long nap my 6-month-old infant just finished. nothing like the afternoon nap to improve everyone's mood.

if there's anger about the masculine tendency towards monasticism in me, it's probably mostly tied up with resentment at being left at home to mind the baby. you know? like, while these guys are out there contemplating their existence and so forth, someone has to change the poopy diapers at home. thoreau eschewed all forms of drudgery, said mankind should never submit to it -- but then, someone wiped his ass when he was a little baby, too, and it probably wasn't a very exalting experience.

Posted by: andrea at October 17, 2007 07:07 PM

Gotta say, I'm with Young Faruq on this one. It makes for a tantilizing article (and a well written one, too). The deep wilderness for me is climbing Mt. Taurus up near Cold Spring on the Hudson. Felt like I was getting into the wilderness. Working up a sweat, miles outside the city and the reach of man. Of course at the top were a bunch of octagenarians in full gear with hiking poles. I was huffing and puffing. They just smiled and said "nice day" as if we were talking outside the five and dime. It was, nevertheless, an epic journey.

Posted by: paul at October 18, 2007 12:00 AM

But Andrea, changing a baby's poopy dipers is not intrinsically degrading either. Even poop and pooping are no real impediment or sacrilege to the divine. Seeking, however, is an invaluable individual tendancy that may bring an exalting or liberating outcome: like going home to change one's dipers with peace.

I do prefer Thoreau along Cape Cod.

Posted by: jason at October 18, 2007 03:45 AM