Stories

I knew nothing about Dune and so didn’t have any expectations upon seeing Part 1 of the film several weeks back. While I dislike much about pandemic life, certain things are absolutely better now: curbside pickup, and the ability to stream movies as soon as they’re released, for example.

Anyway, Ol was with friends for the weekend, and Jack stayed here to attend some school events, so Tom and I found ourselves alone in WV and tired after a day of work. I’d had some wine and couldn’t have cared less what we watched —if I’m by myself, I never turn on the TV so am both behind and infinitely flexible— and Tom suggested Dune. Sure. We set a fire in the cast iron stove and settled in.

I love Star Wars and Harry Potter but dislike Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. Where would Dune fall on the sci fi/fantasy spectrum? Squarely on the dystopian, polyglot, strong women, naive-handsome hero side of things as it turns out so, I was hooked.

I’ve since seen it 2.5 more times, including, today, on the big screen.

Is it an epic work for the ages? Jesus, I don’t know, and I’m not sure I care. But did it speak to me? 100%. I loved the crafty, powerful shadow-walker women of the Bene Gesserit who look like pissed-off Italian widows (ps: Charlotte Rampling could pretend to be a daft penguin and I’d love her); Rebecca Ferguson’s quite fierceness and her stiff-jointed sign language; every bit of Timothée Chalamet and his interrupted adolescence (and marvelous head of hair); the endless dunes; the integrity and courage of some; and, as in Star Wars, the variety of language and the fact that most seem able to understand all.

I don’t know about y’all, but in my opinion, shit is bad in the world. Like, really bad. If you made me tell my honest opinion on staying at or below a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius and American democracy, I’d answer that at this point, both are pipe dream relics of a bygone era. No one in power is taking climate change as seriously as Greta, Bill McKibben, Paul Nicklen, and Cristina Mittermeier are (or Al Gore and Rachel Carson were generations ago) which means all their big talk is, as Greta says, “blah, blah, blah",” and if you can’t even enforce Congressional subpoenas, keep judges from overtly preferencing murderers, convince elected politicians to protect voting rights, or keep science and fact from being optional, well, you’re in bad shape.

At this point, we don’t deserve to have much. We are an arrogant, ignorant country, and it is heartbreaking, scary, and ugly. I say that as someone has fought constantly since early 2016 but with increasingly fading hope. The fire that propelled me for so long still burns, but it is a tired flicker now, worn by injustice, Covid, and the fact that trump will probably run again in ‘24.

So, post-apocalyptic sand worlds and worms and no water in 10191? Give it to me. Lest you think this is my only escapist activity, I am also reading Endurance, the incredible yet horrifying recounting of Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition that commenced in 1914. Hoo boy, I doubt I’d be any sort of hero in either tale, but I can definitely appreciate the stronger among us. And meanwhile, I continue to delight in the possibility of two of our goats being pregnant and in helping idealistic young people go to college. I tell you, it’s all a bit of kosher LSD.

But really, is that so wrong? Why not indulge ourselves for a few hours each day around the times we try so hard to hold everything else together? We are long into a pandemic that isn’t ending, the world is burning, white Republican lawbreakers seem impervious to consequences, there is a national mental health crisis in our young people, Facebook is Meta (eye roll that strains), and winter is coming.

Stories help us understand, process, navigate, and leave behind even momentarily the tough parts of life; the losses, disappointments, worries, unknowns, horror. Stories can help us feel less alone, give us hope, enliven our imaginations and dreams, inspire us. And so for now, I’ll take Shackleton and Paul Atreides and my goats and all who keep fighting with courage and faith. I’ll take and relish the moments of pure distraction and otherwise keeping donating and parenting and doing what I can, and I’ll start reading Dune to tide myself over to the 2023 release of Part 2.