Happy Introspective Holidays!
I have only recently gotten around to reading another book by one of my favorite authors, Kim Stanley Robinson. After reading his Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars, plus the companion book, The Martians, after which my latest short film is named) for the first time many years ago and recently rereading them, I have picked up The Years of Rice and Salt.
In both (all five?) instances, he repeatedly returns to the idea that one life measured from birth to death can be measured also as many lives led by a single person. Essentially, any stretch of a life – living in a certain home, working at a particular job – constitutes a ‘life’ unto itself, and is ended when one moves on, the new phase of their physical life marking a new life in the mind and of the spirit.
This is approached a little more directly in The Years of Rice and Salt, the characters being literally reincarnated according to Buddhist beliefs in addition to going through more corporeal stages of life. Nevertheless, the theme and the mindset is there; when Bistami is first exiled to Mecca and then seeks enlightenment in Western Europe, when characters in both stories live through long voyages and brutal wars, as well as when Nirgal lives his itinerant life moving from one settlement on Mars to the next. The idea is given perhaps the most voice when Maya decides to leave the Martian city of Odessa (as it is the holidays, I am out of reach of my copy of Red Mars, but when I can, I’ll update this post with the relevant passage).
In each instance, and in many others, characters look back at the time they’ve spent in one spot or doing one thing and regard it as a life wholly unto itself and they look at the new stage of life before them also as an entirely new life, also wholly unto itself. And so it is that when his childhood home comes crashing down around him, Nirgal-in-Zygote dies and a different person, Nirgal-with-Coyote, and later Nirgil-in-Sabishii, albeit with memories and acquaintances that span several lifetimes, are born and live their lives.
And it’s this mindset that I find myself in, now less than a month from my cross-country trek. It struck me recently, that this is a change of such magnitude, that it is comparable only to originally leaving home to start college six long, quick years ago. While intellectually it’s an obvious fact and my staying in Florida was (even I know) an attempt at preventing exactly this sea change which I wasn’t then ready to undertake, thinking of it in terms of lifetimes brings a whole other level of emotional resonance to it.
How can I think of the boy then and me now and not think of myself as a completely different person? How can I look at that boy’s path and where I am now and consider that person still alive? Ultimately, it’s only a metaphor and a relatively murky one, a ‘lifetime’ definable by any number of quantities to be any period of time, but one that seems unavoidably fitting with the change in all aspects that is coming; new roommates, new house, new city, new state, new coast. New routines, yet to be determined, but surely to be dominated by new employment or the search thereof, and new in the complete absence of school to define things (save perhaps some acting classes). A new life in a new world, referred to in cliché as “the real world,” if there is such a thing. But surely a new life, wholly unto itself.
Also, happy holidays!