The Obligatory Entry

Only an hour and a half of this joint to go! For today, anyway. Lunch was pretty nice. I got me some fresh joe, sat down in front of the fireplace, and did some reading. I’m at the point now in The Life of Pi where Piscine is in the lifeboat. Although the book is not really a classic to my mind, I must admit that I did get completely lost in it this afternoon. In the story, Piscine is adrift on the ocean in a lifeboat with four animals. As I read, my mind blocked out my surroundings and it felt almost as if I were on the ocean with them. I could picture the dying zebra clearly and hear the hyena as if it were next to me. I just got completely lost in the story. When I arose to gather myself together to head back to work, I looked around the café and it felt like my brain had to familiarize itself with the place again. Still, it was an exceptionally satisfying bit of reading.

The book itself is pretty good. The theme is an interesting one but the actual story is only alright. I don’t find myself relating to the characters very much and Martel’s writing style is nicely descriptive but a bit hackneyed. I’m determined to get through it, though. The thrust of the story is that life is empty without religion or spirituality. I use “or” because I haven’t finished the book to find out if Martel sides with religion specifically or not. Presumably the animals on the lifeboat are supposed to represent our baser instincts. I’m hesitant to extrapolate too much here as I’m not even halfway through the book.

I had a very curious smoke break earlier. I was walking outside and my mind seized upon obligation as a good thing to ponder. What obligations do we have and to whom? How far do they extend? Why do we feel we have obligations? We humans are creatures of proximity so surely we feel stronger and more obligations to those closer to us in time & space. To our families, our friends – our bonds to these people are especially strong and numerous so it’s unsurprising to feel that our obligations to these people are greater in number and more pressing than those to, say, someone we meet in the street. But do we still owe fealty in some capacity to that stranger we just met? And what about people we will never meet?

I’ve heard a fair amount of criticism lately about Bono - that's he's sold out, that he doesn't write enough protest music like he used to. A caller on Air America recently chastised him for not being particularly political on U2’s latest album. In essence what the caller said was that Bono was obligated to write protest/political lyrics since he is passionate about various humane causes and songwriting is his job as well as his passion as an artist. His public appearances and meetings with politicos are not sufficient according to the guy.

I think that the caller was way out of bounds because he expected Bono to basically neglect any other obligations he may have in favor of being purely political. Any sense of duty Bono may have to his art, to his craft as, be extension, to himself would be lost amidst the shuffle to compose another "Sunday, Bloody Sunday".

Driving home, I saw a number of cars with those magnetic yellow ribbons on them that say something banal like, "Support the troops!" What obligations do we civilians have to soldiers, if any? Well, if there are any, I've got a gut instinct that a $3 magnet on the back of a car doesn't fulfill any of them. But, along this same line, I don't feel that my spending $150 on a care package for a group of soldiers really fulfills any obligation either. Maybe it does. I reached out to them instead of towards the sales clerk at a convenience store. Still, it doesn't feel like I've satisfied any kind of duty to those people. And I don't even know what kind of duty I have to them.