guided by Tolstoy and the moon

[sab]

this song is about Chris McCandless, the one who burned his cash and changed his name to Alex Supertramp and walked off into the Yukon and starved to death in an abandoned bus, and it sounds good to me right now.

I bought the book. I read the book. I hate Thoreau. I think I have a civic duty to pay my taxes. I read Tolstoy. I prefered Vronsky to Levin. but the snow, the safe, that erring unspecific ensuredness that, no, no, I can take care of myself, Chris said, when the trucker tried to lend him a parka and snowshoes, and I know, and I had it, and I miss it.

Sahara will never be the south of France, obvious with the rising sun. if I had no home I'd build one in the sand, if I didn't have a love I'd find me one

L did remind me it snows here though, and while it looks like I'm depressed, I'm not, I'm just broody, thinking of other times and other places where it was before and it's not here and it's not now.

Except, you know, I wanted that before too.

Comments

Chris McCandless

[cofax7]

Chris McCandless made me so sad. Because here was this kid with all this potential, and the ability to touch people, and he cut off his family for two years and when they finally found him he had starved to death in a bus. His poor family. I must be too old -- I sympathize with Chris but I never had the kind of drive he had, and I've never been able to disconnect myself from my family. I couldn't see hurting anyone else that much, on purpose.


I found "Into the Wild" much more powerful and disturbing than "Into Thin Air", because Krakauer really lets you draw your own conclusions about why Chris did what he did. "Into Thin Air" is well-written and a gripping story, but Krakauer is too close to do it adequate justice, I think. I wish he'd waited for a year or so before writing it.

random recs: Joe Simpson's "This Game of Ghosts" and "Touching the Void". "Void" in particular is an amazing story, well-told: it won the Boardman-Tasker prize for Mountaineering Literature.