A Rabbit's Life

This week, from the Re-Visiting Books From a Long Time Ago department: Watership Down. If memory serves, I first read the book 35 years ago this summer, which is an amazingly long time ago when you think about it. The only thing I remembered was that it concerned a group of rabbits who were displaced from their burrow by a construction project and had to find a new home. I'd forgotten everything else, except that it had seemed a novel concept for a book-length work of adult fiction. (I just learned that some people consider it children's literature--if it is, it's an extraordinarily nuanced and sophisticated example of the genre.)

Once more, I find that the passage of time seems to have turned a work into something completely different than I remember, so different that it's hard to believe this is the same book I read all those years ago. It's almost as if, as Shakespeare puts it, it has undergone "a sea-change." Of course, I know that isn't right, because the words on the page haven't altered--it's the reader who is different. Back then, I found the book moderately diverting, but this time, I was struck at every turn by the sheer humanity of the author, if that doesn't sound like an odd thing to say about a novel about rabbits. My own imaginative powers seem to have expanded enough that I can now take in the great feat Richard Adams accomplished by entering so sensitively into the lives of non-human protagonists.

The book almost made me want to be a rabbit--in spite of the inherent hazards of the lifestyle (and the fact that you have to live underground). Humans do not come off particularly well in most of the book, and while the rabbits have their faults, it would almost be worth giving up the advantages of being human for such companions as Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, Holly, and their friends. Their resourcefulness, courage, ingenuity, and loyalty to one another put the rest of us to shame, I'm afraid. I was so engrossed in the story that I had a hard time putting the book down, and I cried at the end, which rarely happens. I was hoping against hope, every time the rabbits faced seemingly impossible odds--trying to cross a river, escaping from foxes, stoats, and cats, escaping a snare, battling a formidable enemy--that their wits would carry them through just one more time. It's a spirited adventure story, well told.

It may be that the first time I read Watership Down, I objected to what I saw as anthropomorphizing. I'm glad I got over that, because I think the novel's presentation of a fully realized animal world--the rabbits have their own stories and mythology, their own games, diversions, worries, and dreams--gives us, in a totally non-preachy way, a richer, more penetrating view of our own world. It's hard to think the same way about a new housing development when you consider it from the point of view of the creatures who suffer because of it and have no say in what happens to them. Seeing the world from the perspective of a rabbit might be enough to give you pause, for a little while, at least, on the whole "might makes right" philosophy. In any case, it's a pleasant antidote to human presumption.

Besides being entertained by the spirit and humor of the rabbits' mythology and storytelling, I was struck by something else that I suspect went over my head the first time. The novel is firmly planted in the sensate world, in all the sights, sounds, tastes and scents of the Hampshire countryside. Every blade of grass, every individual leaf, has character, and the rabbits' keen senses, especially their hearing and sense of smell, pick up so much more information than I could gather at my most observant. The novel luxuriates in descriptions of wildflowers, weeds, and grasses and a multitude of other objects a rabbit would recognize instantly; I would walk through the same scene and experience it much more monochromatically.

So, who is smarter, humans or rabbits? I think it depends on what you mean by smart. There is certainly something to admire in the simplicity and economy of the rabbits' lifestyle and in the way they live their lives as part of the whole. And in the book, at least, they seem to know a thing or two about humans that most of the humans have failed to notice about themselves. (Who knows, this could be true in real life as well.) I believe these particular characters are also meant to show us how we ourselves are at our best. It's perhaps a gentle reminder that human nature is also animal nature, however evolved we may have become.

Kentucky Is the New Black

The first time it happened to me, I was in the soup aisle at Kroger. I was going about my business when I caught a glimpse of someone I thought I recognized and, for a second, was ready to say hi to a classmate. A moment later, the reality hit me: "I'm in Lexington, so that can't be someone from Pacifica." That was the first of many instances where worlds collided as I attempted to balance a working life and residence in Kentucky with the long commute to graduate school in California. Since then I've had to re-orient myself many times, placing myself in the proper time zone and locale when someone who reminded me of someone else gave me a split second of uncertainty as to my actual place in space and time.

I had been eying California from afar for years, wondering if I could ever make a life there, so I was really bemused by the ways it was becoming a significant presence in my day-to-day life while I remained in place in Lexington -- though it is not exactly accurate to say that I remained in place, because things were already changing. I had a dream right after starting school in which I was sleeping out on a balcony, up on a cliff overlooking the sea. Moonlight and then sunlight shone down on me, and I felt alive and exhilarated; I knew I was in California. I felt perfectly at ease in the dream, a moment of pure bliss that was succeeded by concern as I realized that the sea was rising fast and I needed someone to help me move my bed inside. My interpretation of the dream was that I had taken a definite step in a direction that my psyche approved but that I had a great deal of anxiety (not shared by the other characters in my dream, whose attention I could not get). My concern was not so much with drowning as with ruining the mattress.

Somebody I know once described Lexington as a "safe" place (compared to the great unknown). The familiarity is both comforting and, at times, stifling. Years ago, a restlessness so intense would come over me, often on a Friday night, that I would literally drive around for hours, picking familiar and unfamiliar neighborhoods with warrens of streets to get lost in, turning the radio to a rock and roll station, and looking for something -- adventure, novelty, occurrences out of the ordinary -- that I was not likely to find, at least in the places I was looking. It was actually a sudden decision, ten years ago, to spend a weekend in L.A, a rather unexpected act that took even my breath away, that started to inch me, little by little, toward an ongoing relationship with a place that in some ways seemed like an unlikely draw.

On the other hand, I'm a writer, and a writer is always looking for new ideas and experiences. Although people kept telling me it was Northern California that I should really be looking at, that L.A. was too shallow and uncultured, I discovered a fascination with the city that I couldn't talk myself out of. I have generally been well treated in L.A.; except for their behavior on the freeway, people seem easy-going and friendly (someone put money in my parking meter one time in Venice, and that has never happened to me at home). I am not an aspiring actress or screenwriter, so I haven't experienced the rejection that probably grinds down many transplants. I am overwhelmed by the effort it takes to get from one place to another, even just to park the car. The size of the place is daunting. But I have been amazed at the richness of cultural offerings, from the Getty Center to Disney Hall, and the sunshine is wonderful.

Yes, I am put off by the great emphasis on surface appearance and image that seems so prevalent there. On the other hand, my training as a mythologist tells me that images are often richly compounded representations of much that lies behind them. Movies are carriers of the collective imagination, and the film industry, often derided for a lack of seriousness, is actually an indicator and curator of the things that are most important in our culture.

In some ways, I've had one foot, or at least a big toe, in California for quite a while -- but in other ways it still seems like a million miles away. Last time I was there, though, an unforeseen development gave me a taste of home that I hadn't expected. Because who would ever have expected that homey, folksy Kentucky would become Hollywood trendy . . . but that's what's happened! Everywhere I looked, from the sides of buses to the sides of buildings, was the image of the hip as can be star of Justified, which takes place in Harlan County (and Lexington) and features a somewhat more colorful segment of the population than I can lay claim to myself. Nonetheless, references to familiar places and things abound, and the themes of violence, kinship, the difficulty of leaving home (and of coming back), and the conflict between regions and attitudes are both realistic and strangely inflected in a Hollywood accent.

This could be a sign that I might find myself more at home in L.A. than I could have expected. I might be the new "It" Girl, with my slight Kentucky drawl and name-dropping references to Ale-8-One (bottled in my hometown). On the other hand, consider the chances for disorientation. Last night, I was taking a closer look at a past episode for local references when I noticed low mountains in the background, obviously meant to be the hills of Eastern Kentucky. If you weren't paying much attention, the illusion was almost complete. But I recognized the broad, creased surfaces of the mountains surrounding L.A.: California mountains just don't look like the ones in Kentucky, which are darker and more somber to my eye. What I thought I was seeing was not in fact what was really there.

I've wondered for a while what a cross between California and Kentucky would look like. It might take some doing to bring two such different places together, but it looks like the popular imagination is already running off ahead of me. Maybe by the time I get there, there will be a local source for Ruth Hunt's bourbon balls, an art-house theater as hip as The Kentucky, and a porch swing with my name on it.