Sometimes reading a book is like playing a game into a new map. Unfamiliar landscapes, and all kinds of bizarre plot stories. We are in it and out of it.
It is full of other people's landscapes, but it is my own life that I think about.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >01</h1>
The book "Sheltered Skies" tells the story of a trip to North Africa. To say that it is a trip seems to me more like a kind of aimless wandering.
Dream dust 70 years of the century of literary classics! It has been rejected by publishers several times and is out of print several times. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for 10 consecutive weeks after publication in the United States
Because travel is about knowing where the end point is, and you're always going back to the beginning. And the protagonist has been deliberately avoiding the concept of "going back".
They went deep into the pristine and barren Desert of North Africa, not struggling with material scarcity, but gradually conquered by the void world because of spiritual panic and dissipation. In the end, a guest dies in a foreign land, and a person is willing to fall.
There are generally two extreme outcomes of long-distance travel, either to rebirth or to destruction.
Because when people are in an unfamiliar environment, an uncontrollable situation, it is easy to expose their inner defects.
All the illusions that usually seem calm will be broken in successive conflicts. From traveling to wandering, are they fleeing their former lives, or are they finally banished by life?
Although being banished by life sounds absurd, the reality is a place where the weak eat the strong and the king loses.
Without a strong will and a strong ego, the elimination is only in the middle of the beard.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >02</h1>
The heroine of our book is naturally unwilling to control, unwilling to choose, and unwilling to bear the consequences.
All of her personalities are passive, preferring to passively accept all the badness rather than work a little harder to change or bear it.
At the beginning, in order to rekindle her love and travel with her husband, she did not take the initiative to communicate with him but passively waited for his ruling. This is the beginning of the Fall. Later, because of the pressure and contradictions of repairing the relationship between husband and wife, this is another layer of depravity. After the husband died, he felt relieved and felt that he finally did not have to face unknowable pressure, which was the third layer of depravity. As soon as she left, she casually followed a caravan and became a plaything for the merchants, which was the fourth layer of depravity. After returning home with the merchant, she willingly died drunk in a bed and even drank some kind of medicinal soup, which was the fifth layer of depravity.
The film Adaptation of the novel of the same name, The Obscured Sky, in which the original author Paul Bowles played the role of narrator
The reason for all this is not because of coercive external forces or unfortunate bumps, but because she is willing to play the role of being controlled, and she has given all the decisions about herself to others.
Therefore, she is going to degenerate step by step, not only is she getting farther and farther away from the civilized world in terms of distance, but also in the depths of her soul and spiritual strength, she is also the opposite of normal people.
It's all about refusing to choose and face the truth—the truth of their unsustainable love, the truth of betrayal, the truth of time being wasted, the truth of their husbands dying, the truth of their own powerlessness.
Every passive choice is to escape a reality. But the reality is there, and no one can ignore the rules of the game. Otherwise you're out.
So she chose to get out.
The heroine of the movie "The Covered Sky", Kitt
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >03</h1>
The heroine of our book abandons writing, abandons the material life of civilized society, and the identity of the artist's wife. Avoiding all the real pressures that had to be faced, he volunteered to lie in a stranger's bed for it.
All of her actions that seemed to be in order to free herself were grossly irresponsible, and she herself bore the brunt of it.
This is no longer a problem of passive personality, this is a human weakness that many people have.
When we are tormented by the difficulties of life, do we have the courage to face and solve them? Do you dare to fight a war against all odds?
Or is it cloaked in fragility and fear, cowering in a small shell, waiting to be saved by fate?
Or do you give your life to others, just to temporarily avoid the insignificant and small difficulties in life?
From ancient times to the present, some people gamble, some people drink heavily, some people are dogs and horses, indulging in the illusory no-man's land they have created, and what is the difference between the heroine in our book and the reality in the barren and remote North Africa?
These people, without exception, choose to escape from reality, either burying themselves in someone's hands or burying themselves in the hands of something.
Its essence is no different, it is all contempt for life, the waste of time.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >04</h1>
It is true that a person has the right to freely choose to live actively or depravedly, but no one has the right to choose between time and the passage of life.
Every minute and every second, at this moment, our lives are dwindling and time is passing. All the resources that are wasted in this moment will become a bleak reality that will surprise you at some point in the future.
And once a person chooses to fall, he will find out how easy it seems to be a way of life, so he takes a wrong step.
When it comes to looking back, not only can you face the life and time that have been irreparable, but also you can't face it in real life.
Just like the couple in the book, a trip is ostensibly to save the marriage for the rekindling of old feelings, but no one has kept the whole journey. They thought that changing to a primitive environment and saying goodbye to post-war Europe would purify the soul and restore everything. The two men are increasingly alienated by the novelty and wilderness of the exotic wasteland, leading to a tragic ending.
Desert Camel in the movie "The Covered Sky"
The whole story looks like a tragedy caused by a lack of real communication, but it actually shows the most cowardly side of human nature.
If the couple were able to communicate and be honest with each other in a circle, would this jaw-dropping trip still happen?
Unfortunately, life has no ifs, and all lost time and life will never be repeated.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
In fact, everyone is afraid of suffering, and when they encounter problems, they panic and run away. Some people choose to procrastinate and fantasize that the problem will disappear on their own; some people choose to turn a blind eye to the problem, deceive themselves, and think that the problem has nothing to do with them. We always avoid problems instead of confronting them head-on. We always want to stay away from the problem and don't want to suffer the pain of solving the problem. Because, there is no responsibility.
Paul Bowles is an American writer, composer, traveler, screenwriter and actor. The Obscured Sky was his first novel
Paul Bowles says in the book:
''How fragile we are under the obscured sky, behind the obscured sky is a vast and dark universe, and we are so small. ''
It seems to me that the obscured sky is actually obscuring the soul that has been lost by the desire to escape. And under this desire, no one's life sky is not obscured. The more you try to escape, the more you lose your whole life.
In the movie "The Covered Sky", the heroine eventually follows a camel team to continue to walk in the desert, and becomes the woman of the camel team, drifting away in the endless desert