EUROLOGUE: Hunting, Misunderstanding, & Wonder

Rob Tesh: Hunting is socially useful. No, really. It makes you a better person. Think of the patience and dedication it instills; the care and precision demanded; the respect for nature it must surely engender. The killing part is pointless, of course; why not take a long-lens camera instead? But “hunting” sounds so much more adventurous than “wildlife photography.” On the other hand, for those so uncontrollably manly as to take real pleasure in indulging an appetite for inhumane and senseless violence, why not try jiu-jitsu?

Lee Bacon: The practice of hunting as I understand it (having never hunted myself) emerged from human evolution. There was a time when the human species needed to hunt, and so they - the men - did. As society developed, paving the way for markets and department stores, the necessity of hunting was eliminated. But generation after generation of this lifestyle cast men in a role that was difficult to simply discard. A man was supposed to be tough, impenetrable. Survival depended on it. Things may have changed, but humankind is slow to adapt. Perhaps these men still hunt out of necessity. Not the necessity to eat or to clothe themselves, but instead the necessity to form a relationship with one’s son or to spend a weekend surrounded by nature. The guns are a protection against those lingering traits of supposed manliness, the brutal tools that let these men appreciate the world and the people they care about in a manner that appears tough.

-

Rob Tesh: Misunderstand. Misunderstand again. Misunderstand better. It doesn’t matter what these sentences mean. It certainly doesn’t matter what I have in mind. What matters is what happens inside your head when you read them. If it’s not what I intended, maybe I screwed up - or maybe I managed to be a bit creative. Language and literature are the eccentric, slightly smelly but lovable older sisters of psychology.

Lee Bacon: Nabokov claimed that he was “neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction.” Instead, he sought above all else “aesthetic bliss.” But it would be a mistake to confuse didacticism with learning. If you are too preoccupied with seeking the author’s meaning you may fail to recognize what the words mean to you.

-

Rob Tesh: Wonderful anyway. It is a mistake to see another person being wonderful and think “I want to be wonderful like them.” They are no more wonderful than any other person, they have only been wonderfully successful in finding a life which makes the most of their best qualities, and doesn’t demand qualities they lack. We are wonderful like ourselves.

Lee Bacon: This observation brings to mind a series of objects stretched out beside each other, one by one, each larger than the next. An insect, a rock, a bird, a dog, you, a house, a tree. And other things, extending even farther. A strain of bacteria, an atom; or an entire planet, a cluster of planets. You - somewhere in the middle of all this - are unaware of anything but the most immediate of these surroundings: the tree, and the shade that it casts over you; the insect as it buzzes past your ear. You may crouch close to the ground, or stare deep into the sky, but you’ll never be any closer to this - to the invisible universe, both infinite and miniscule, that surrounds you.

Picture: © Daniel Slusarcik, 2007