Thursday, June 30, 2011

The Matrix (really!)

A mind-shattering experience last night: Crispin Freeman's sci-fi/mythology lecture on film 1 of The Matrix trilogy. He tied together the film, Joseph Campbell's monomyth, Buddhism, and gnostic Christianity.

Just a taste: Keanu Reeve's character's original name was Thomas Anderson. Thomas: Doubting Thomas, the author of the Gospel of Thomas discovered in Nag Hammadi in 1948, a gnostic text. Anderson: Ander-son, son of man. At the climax of the film, he accepts his new name: Neo, a respelling of "one" (since he's The One) and "eon," a crucial term in gnosticism.

Morpheus (lord of dreams) kept telling Neo, "I can only show you the door. You have to walk through it yourself."

The easy glib jokes about my walking issues and my walker aside... I saw my own journey recapitulated. Just like Anderson before he was Neo, I'm not willing to go through the door. Sometimes even to acknowledge that the door is there--whatever that door may be.

But I feel a door calling to me, the going through of which will completely change my life in this M.S. world.

And I'm afraid to reach for the blue pill, because I don't want to let go.

Art imitates life imitates M.S.

It is indeed the hero's journey... even for one who doesn't want to walk it.

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