Far Out Places

There is a part of our culture that is discovering, or rediscovering, the use of psychedelics for spiritual awakening, enhancing creativity, pushing us out of our rigid habits.  Pollan’s book is full of information, history, credentials, universities and scientists – all needed to provide the gravitas to make the average reader take a serious look at a subject usually dismissed or joked about.  Pollan has a long way to go to educate us away from our view of psychedelics as 60’s party drugs.

He is successful in this very thought-provoking book.  The similarities of altered states described by mystics, shamans, faith healers, saints, monks, and Pollan himself convinced me they are describing the same thing – a different consciousness that is a real part of the human psyche, not some drug induced hallucination. 

What are the implications?  Will psychedelics give us a short cut to the elusive meaning of life?  Researchers today are extremely careful to talk about controlled settings with trained assistants.  Neuroscientists work hard to keep up with rapidly expanding knowledge about the workings of the brain. There is excitement in the mental health field because of successes in the treatment of PTSD, depression, fear of death in the terminally ill – stubborn areas with currently few successful treatments.   And the mid-life crisis?  That remains to be seen. 

Shortly after reading Pollan’s book, I found an article in the New York Times entitled “The Psychedelic Revolution is Coming.  Psychiatry May Never Be the Same.”  It states, “Psilocybin and MDMA (Ecstasy) are poised to be the hottest new therapeutics since Prozac.  Universities want in, and so does Wall Street.”  Well, if Wall Street wants in and the New York Times is writing about them, psychedelics must be something to pay attention to.

But there is a double meaning.  The phrase also refers to being in the water, as in under the water, with the wave above.  Not where the surfer is supposed to be.

Theroux, who lives on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, captures the beauty and attraction of the ocean, the culture of the big wave surfers, the grandeur of the island, as well as the poverty of the local residents, the ignorance of the surfers (“There’s a difference between Arkansas and Kansas? who cares?”), the homeless encampments.  Ostensibly about surfing, this is a book about how to live life.  The details of the surfing experience are exquisite in and of themselves, plus they draw in the non-beach, non-surfer person with their metaphorical quality.

Joe Sharkey, known to all in the area, is a competitive surfer who has lived just the way he wanted to – day after day in the surf, sex and drugs at night.  But now, he is 60, that precarious time of life when he realizes he is no longer at the top of the pack.  At this vulnerable point, an accident occurs that sends him into a tailspin – under the wave.

Theroux examines Joe’s life choice: the childhood in Hawaii that led him to be a surfer, the joy and exhilaration that kept him doing it. (Joseph Campbell of bliss fame would approve of these passages.)   Joe’s rescue is a counterpoint to the things left out of his loner surfer’s life: human connection, love and kindness.  

An unusual topic also explored is that of adult hero or celebrity worship which rears its head throughout, leading the reader to ponder just why it is that adults fawn over other adults they don’t know.    Maybe it is some genetic thing that pushes us to connect ourselves to someone successful.  A stray mastodon scrap may come our way.

Summing up the things wonderful in Joe’s life, and the things missing, is this quote about reading: “Talk of books, here especially, seemed irrelevant.  What was the point of mentioning these inert objects while on the beach, facing the moonlit sea flickering with chop and now and then a wave bursting in blackness offshore and crusted in white; these palms, this mild air and moonglow – it was all beyond books…”   (Maybe it is, but can’t we have both?)

I read this alongside Michael Pollan’s book and couldn’t help but compare the portrayals of drug use.  Theroux’s portrait is the antithesis of Pollan’s carefully choreographed, privileged experiences.   Drugs here are not for supervised medical use or spiritual development but instead crush the lives of disturbed school children, dropped out surfers, the jobless poor.

This is a good description of Cynthia Ozick’s book and her views on life.  Her characters each have plenty of darkness in their lives – intellectual Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1930’s tossed into the U.S. without position or respect.  And, a young woman who lost her mother when a child, living with an impoverished gambler father uninterested in her.  And, a young man like Christopher Robin who lived with a father who preferred his created version to the real son.  The light of their happiness is fleeting.  Love, success, or money appear but are often lost or unsatisfying.

In addition to happiness in their lives coming only intermittently, glimmering refers to their partial understanding of the reality around them.  The scholar has a reverence for the ancient past, but will never understand those lost thinkers in full.  The physicist has an insight, but it needs to be enlarged and developed.  People fall in love but have only a superficial understanding of their beloveds.  Our heroine leaves for a hopeful, but uncertain future.

I like Ozick’s language.  Her use of glimmering is a creative way to prod the reader into reflecting on the meaning of the novel.   Her descriptions sparkle: “I had endured typing for three hours…The tender balls of my fingers tingled, as if sparks had shot up from the keys; their glass shields had captured the light, and sent violet streaks into my pupils.”   I liked the double meaning of, “Or was she Ophelia, whom true madness submerges?”

This book starts out slowly, but the characters soon exert a fascination.  Add to this a poetic command of language, the author’s insights on life, and we get a novel well worth reading.

But it is Ozick who wins the prize.  She celebrated her 93^rd birthday in April and in the same month, published her latest novel, Antiquities, to excellent reviews.  According to Random House, she has been at the “height of her powers” for fifty years now.   What an example!