The Fork in the Road

Many years ago I read a poem by Robert Frost entitled "The Road Not Taken" which goes like this:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.  

 

At the time I was fairly young and, though I liked the poem, it did not and could not have that deep significance it has taken on for me today, as it resonates over all the intervening years. In our life, we all take many decisions, choose between one path and another, one course of action as against another. Just after embarking upon our chosen path, it may still be possible to retrace our steps, regain the fork in the road and take the other path, but as we travel on the road we have opted to take, it becomes progressively harder to go back, until one day there is no going back, no second chance, no alternative course. For good or for bad, we must now continue along our chosen path.

This question of choosing our life's path puts me in mind of a movie I first saw a few years ago, called Cast Away and starring Tom Hanks as Chuck Noland. I won't go into the plot of the film, you have more than likely seen it yourself, but if not,  go to Cast Away and you'll see what it's about. Anyway, at the very end of the film, the protagonist arrives at a remote crossroads in open countryside where he alights from his car and looks around at the four roads that vanish into the distance. A woman passing by in a truck stops to inform him where each of these routes leads. After she drives away, he is left looking down each road, seemingly unable to decide which to take, since each represents an unknown future which may bring him happiness or misfortune. The camera focuses on his face and we sense the mental anguish that he must be going through as he struggles to come to a decision. And that's where we leave him.

The ending of the movie is very poignant and moving, as the theme music kicks in and we wonder what his choice will be. But it really doesn't matter, as none of us knows in which direction happiness lies. The point is that he is literally at the crossroad of his life and the choice he makes now may well decide the course of the rest of his life. In one way or another, this is a situation that faces all of us at different stages of our life. And just as Frost's traveller opts for one road, knowing in his heart of hearts that it is unlikely he will come that way again, so Chuck knows that the route he chooses to go down is likely to be final and decisive.

Why are we still so barbaric?

This is a photo of an event that took place the other day in Spain when a poor frightened uncomprehending beast, a creature of God, some would say, was tormented and harassed to the point it scaled the arena barrier and ran amock among the spectators to escape its tormentors. This is sport in the minds of millions of unregenerated people who think that all is permitted against animals and that they may be tormented at will for the entertainment of us humans, and the worse thing about this is that the law allows it in certain countries, Spain being foremost among them (Catalonia only recently outlawed it). Why oh why are we humans so cruel and so barbarous and so bloodthirsty? When I witness scenes like that I can't help being overwhelmed by a feeling of disgust and revulsion at the human race. And we think we're civilised! Harassing a poor defenceless animal for the entertainment and delectation of the masses and then when things go wrong we kill it of course. The animal cannot win: if it stays to confront its tormentors, it is cut down in the end, if it attempts to evade the unwelcome attentions of its would-be executioners, it is put down.

And look at this moron tugging at the bull's tail. What does he honestly hope to accomplish with that apart from getting his picture in the media? What he needs to come to his senses is a good kicking in the teeth! It seems there is no limit to human arrogance and presumptuousness. People create the circumstances whereby they hope to derive pleasure and excitement from watching a hapless animal being harassed to death, and then when something goes wrong and their fun is spoilt, they shit themselves in their panic to escape and the bull pays for it with its life.

Honestly, have we evolved at all in real terms?  Or do we still have deeply ingrained in us the ancient blood-lust? It seems that when we're not busy killing each other for one stupid reason or another, we make sport of killing animals and this time we don't even have to justify it with any reason other than that of entertainment. We're a pathetic species really. And without wishing to impugn the Lord at all, He would have done well to stop at the great apes!

The Sower

The statue above, located in the city of Kaunas, Lithuania, is evidently a man sowing what must be seeds of one kind or another. We do not know what the crop is and there’s no practical way of showing the seed grains flying out from his hand, but nonetheless it’s clear what his activity is. Now if we go on to focus on the wall behind the statue, there appears to be an array of stars drawn on it, which fan out as they get closer to the ground. As things stand, it’s not clear what this is all about. At first sight, one might take it to be some form of graffiti defacing the wall, the handiwork of a disrespectful and inconsiderate youth who wants to leave his mark on the urban environment, an all too common feature of our undisciplined modern society. But is it really graffiti? Is it just the unrestrained daubing of a mischievous individual? The second photo below reveals all.

This is the same statue, the same sower of seeds, in the selfsame place, but now we see the scene at night, and all is suddenly revealed to our astonished gaze. What seemed to be mindless graffiti on the wall behind the statue is now seen for what it is, and we cannot help but marvel at the ingenuity of it all. Thanks to a clever positioning of the lighting, a shadow of the sower is projected onto the backdrop of the wall and we now see what is being sown - not crop seed at all, but a constellation of stars that sprays out from the right hand of the sower as it is scattered on the ground. The sower of seeds is in reality a sower of... stars! And by analogy perhaps a sower of dreams. And how apt that this should be seen at night, for it is then that dreams populate our sleep and transport us to a world of mystery and magic.

This transformation may also be regarded as an allegory: that things are not always what they seem and that seen in a different light or from a different perspective their true nature reveals itself. For those of us who are all too ready to jump to conclusions, it is a salutary reminder of the risk we run in prejudging what at first appears to be obvious.