White Fang
Mon 6-16-2014
With my advancing years and graying temples I ascribe more things in life, good and bad, to chance rather than to my own active choice and discriminating judgement. Just look at the last relationship I was in – that was just a happy accident. Look at the last book I read: White Fang. I only read it because it was pre-loaded on my Kindle for free when I bought it. I don’t exactly seek out early twentieth-century American novels.
The dog-wolf hybrid in the book went from being a vicious Yukon fighting animal to being a beloved member of a California ranch family.
The relationship and the book were both great while they lasted.
A few passages I highlighted from White Fang:
“On every side was the silence, pressing upon them with a tangible presence. It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of deep water affect the body of the diver. It crushed them with the weight of unending vastness and unalterable decree. It crushed them into the remotest recesses of their own minds, pressing out of them, like juices from the grape, all the false ardours and exaltations and undue self-values of the human soul, until they perceived themselves finite and small, specks and motes, moving with weak cunning and little wisdom amidst the play and inter-play of the great blind elements and forces.”
“He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.”
“His development was in the direction of power. In order to face the constant danger of hurt and even of destruction, his predatory and protective faculties were unduly developed. He became quicker of movement than the other dogs, swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with ironlike muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel, more ferocious, and more intelligent. He had to become all these things, else he would not have held his own nor survive the hostile environment in which he found himself.”
“He came out of the tangle a spectacle of malignancy, ears flattened back, lips writhing, nose wrinkling, his teeth clipping together as the fangs barely missed the hound’s soft throat.”
“They had hurt only the flesh of him; beneath the flesh the spirit had still raged, splendid and invincible. But with the master the cuff was always too light to hurt the flesh. Yet it went deeper. It was an expression of the master’s disapproval, and White Fang’s spirit wilted under it.”
When anything ends, whether it is big or small, it deserves reflection, consolidation in one’s mind, and closure. From my last relationship I will record and revisit certain vignettes: feeling a spontaneous surge of well-being and attachment when she avowed that she was “smitten” with me; seeing her in her glittery new dress that she liked so much; surprising each other and seeking to outdo each other’s delight in mystery-outings and adventures; and simply getting emails saying hi and describing her day, describing this and that event that she wanted to tell me about.
I will treasure each of these vignettes and more. I will use what I’ve learned to be a better person and to be a better special man next time.
From reading White Fang I will learn to claw my way out of the cold and the desolate places, to refuse to feed and justify the hate and contempt, even when it demands to be fed and justified. I will ignore compulsions about survival and self-protection. And I will learn ever to move toward warmth, trust, attachment, loving relationships and betterment.
Included: the coots that visit Lake Harriet each spring. They look like silly sea-chickens, and they are.
Also, me among the warm northern pines. Twenty years from now, with the unpredictability of climate change, those pines may be completely replaced by aspens.
pseudoisaac 