The Pacific Has No Memory
The Shawshank Redemption has been the top-rated movie on IMDb ever since it went to video almost thirty years ago. Strangely enough, the movie was not a box office success, and while it was nominated for seven Academy Awards, it won not a one. It’s heritage was solid, having been based on a story written by Stephen King and adapted by director Frank Darabont, who never again did anything as meaningful as this movie. But the movie had all the elements for success and that was borne out in its grass roots appeal which has kept it as the top-rated movie by the best judges of such things…avid movie watchers. We all know the Shawshank story and many of us remember much of the dialogue and even many of the scenes. The story is all about hope and human suffering. Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is as close to a Christ figure as you will ever find in a modern movie (other than perhaps Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, which strangely enough is also a great prison movie). The quiet calm of Andy Dufresne is a thing of beauty and when he tells his pal Red (Morgan Freeman) about where they should go when they get out of prison, its the town of Zihuatanejo on the western coast of Mexico. It epitomizes the hope for a peaceful life that we all share. When he is describing the spot to Red as they are both serving life sentences in Shawshank Prison in Maine, he describes Zihuatanejo as a little village on the Pacific Ocean and then tells Red that the Mexicans say that the Pacific has no memory. As best I can tell, that is a Stephen King line and not a part of Mexican folklore. But it sure rings true.
There is certainly something about the Pacific that draws me and I think will increasingly draw retiring Americans. When we were traveling in Egypt, we learned that the Pyramids and other tombs of the Pharaohs were all placed on the western side of the Nile. This was not a complex issue to the ancient Egyptians. The sun and all its life-giving features rises in the east and then, at end of day, sets quietly in the west. It was logical to conclude that the east stood for life and the west stood for death. But death in the Egyptian context was not a morbid conclusion. Ancient man’s imagination needed to think that there was a better place than the hardships on earth. The reason the most memorable parts of the ancient civilization of Egypt are the massive tombs and temples that worshiped the afterworld was because they really believed that the afterlife was paradise. We certainly see that thinking repeated in countless other major religions, so it is fair to assume that man found death to be something to look forward to. Looking to the sunset and to the west is therefore evocative of a sense of longing for hope for a better life. It is also fair to say that part of that thinking would also be to shed the memory of the harshness of life. So King’s grasp of the longing for a shedding of memory as we head into the sunset seems spot on.
Having spent most of my adult life on the east coast, there has always been an attraction to heading west. For fifteen years I satisfied that desire by going out to and owning property in Utah, which to me was Big Sky Country that held both winter and summer dreams. It was my New England snowfields and mountains on steroids in the winter, and it was the wide open spaces of my imagination in the summer. Some people like to burrow into the coziness of a hollow (or “holler” as Loretta Lynn liked to say), but the rest of us like to stand on the hilltop and see the vistas that stretch out as far as the eye can see. I am sure this difference is hard wired into our brain stem since I see animals like Betty that are always looking for a cool, shady spot to burrow into for comfort. That can’t be cognitive, it must be instinctive. In the same way, I watch the birds of prey always seeking out the high ground from which to survey the landscape. Sometimes they are looking for the likes of Betty, wondering what’s for lunch, but at other times I sense that they are just appreciating the grandeur of their surroundings. I guess if I was a Buddhist and believed in reincarnation I would want to come back as a Hawk rather than a burrowing beast. In Buddhism, the belief in the everlasting cycle of life that takes one from death to rebirth, which they call samsara, is not something to aspire to, but rather something to overcome. I guess even Buddhists want to transcend the rat race and look to the horizon (probably also to the west). Buddhists believe that we learn and remember from our past lives. What would be interesting to learn is if Buddhist believe that we retain that memory of our past incarnations once our journey gets us beyond samsara.
I try not to dwell too much on death, not only because it feels morbid and sad, but because my lack of faith in the religious sense of eternity makes me a bit uncomfortable, like someone who should just believe but is too embarrassingly rational to do so. If there is one thing I would want for whatever afterlife I have, it would be to retain my memories. I have loved every minute of my life, the good and the bad, and I can think of no better way to spend eternity than to wallow in those memories. This is not at all an indicator of any excessive privilege or good about my life, but just a bit of wonder about the thrill of it all. I have often quoted the movie Parenthood where the grandmother says that some people like the merry-g-round, but that she always liked the roller coaster because she got so much more out of it. Strangely enough, my love of life extends to another interesting perspective. While I want my memories to last and stay with me, I do not particularly hanker to be remembered. Some people want nothing more than to be immortalized and thought of lovingly or admired for generations to come. Not so for me. What I want is for my children and my children’s children to embrace life as I do and get the most out of it that they can by creating their own memories. I don’t mind if I am included in those memories as I am almost certain I will be (a collateral product of leading a larger-than-life life, as I generally aspire to do), but I do not at all crave adoration. I respect and fondly remember my mother, who is now going on seven years dead, but what I respect most about her was that she sucked the marrow out of life and pushed her three chicks out of the nest to go do the same for themselves. That is what I want for my offspring.
These August mornings when I wake up (this morning I am so very sore from my training session at the gym yesterday), I look out to the west to see the state of my horizon as seen from my hilltop. I am seeing what a friend calls the airplane view of the world. I like that expression because we have all looked out the airplane window and seen the clouds below and the endless sky above. It is the feeling of empowerment in the extreme, with no limits to our horizon. This morning I could see China to the west. What I mean is that the hills between here and the ocean were highlighted by the low-lying fog that surrounded them each and in so doing, defined them sharply. That is the view one gets of the Yan Mountains of China, 6,300 miles from here to the west. It is what inspired the Ming Dynasty to build the Great Wall. I guess they feared what lay beyond them to the west (presumably the land of the dreaded Mongols). I prefer to embrace and look forward to whatever lies to the west of me and look forward to gathering the memories between here and there even if the Pacific has no memory.