In which we watch the sun rise in a story’s dark heart.
Beyond Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, farther up the Congo near the river’s source in the central plateau, that’s where I lived and worked for two years dodging hippos on the rivers of Zambia as I calculated cross sections and measured water currents to determine water flow in cubic feet per second.
That’s where I met the cheetah.
I’m telling you this because that cat taught me something about a little-discussed element of “story”— the nature of a protagonist’s “change of heart” at the Act II crisis.
I know, I know, postmodern writers disavow this whole business of “character arc”. They have no interest in portraying the human organism as a self-transcendent being. And so they overlook the reason readers read and why we writers write.
We are self-transcendent beings.
We have the ability—given the right conditions—to rise above ourselves. To see ourselves more objectively. To self-detach. To look down on ourselves as part of a bigger picture.
I’ve discovered that stories work to the extent that they portray this most-human potential. Without it, fictional characters would perish in their existential cul-de-sacs. Check it out for yourself—protagonists resolving their dilemmas by leaving their brittle old belief systems behind—it happens in every good book and movie.
This self-transcendence is elemental to “story”—and yet no one’s talking about it.
No one is talking about it!
I can’t believe I’m the only one who ever met a cheetah.
Photo by Vince Hemingson
I was lying in the elephant grass shooting her with my spring-wound 16mm Bolex. The cheetah was devouring the shoulder of goat I’d set out as bait. Having run out of film, I get up to leave and she made straight for me and clamped down on my hand.
I felt the grumbling in its belly. The guttural rumbling rattled my skeleton. I can still feel it. It wouldn’t let go. It has hold of me, to this day. My guide, an older woman, said, “Don’t move.”
As if!
I couldn’t even think. I couldn’t even panic. My heart, of course, kept beating
She approached the cat, knelt beside it, stroked its throat and whispered sweet nothings in its ear. My brain, as I said, was on strike. So, I had no opinion of this situation.
I had no opinion. Can you imagine that! I was inside that cat. I might well have been. I was! My boundaries blurred.
So, this is the heart of darkness?
Unable to make the slightest move, and with thought useless, I was super-alert. I became aware of a broader scheme of things. I saw a world in which I was no less a part, but only a part. I loved that cat.
There was nothing wrong with this picture. I think the cat loved me, too. Of course, I would have preferred that the cheetah unclench, but it wasn’t a deal-breaker. What seemed to be of more importance was the quality of that moment.
My attitude to the moment was one of utter compassion for everything.
Had I died, I would have been the hero of my own story, without a doubt.
The rumbling became a grumble, then a purring. She released me. We walked away. I’ve never been the same.
Moral of the story?
a) Wash your hands after carrying bloody meat on an African safari.
b) Self-transcendence—in fiction as in life—it rules.
NOTE: I expand on this incident in an upcoming eBook titled “Deep Story”.
If you like this kind of real-life/fiction commentary, please SUBSCRIBE to the blog. Sign in at the top of this page.
*ANOTHER NOTE: Two more “story people” are sympathetic to this subject of self-transcendence—Jeff Goins and Donald Miller. Check them out.
Actual photo of PJ seconds before cheetah attacked
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Great story, PJ!
But I have a question for you. Ever read the fantasy series by Steven R Donaldson, Chronicles of Thomas Covenant? Oldies but goodies, rich and detailed. But when I was reading them I found myself terribly frustrated, because Covenant simply refused to evolve, refused to get the fundamental lessons everybody and everything were trying to teach him. Book after book!
But I kept reading. Partly for the richness of the world, but partly to see if he would eventually get it.
What do you think? Can you actually make a story out of a character refusing to transcend?
OMG! Is the Cheetah moment the same as the ‘unselfing’ moment described by Amit Majmudar in his article in the Kenyon Review?
Challenge: finding a less ghastly word than ‘unself’!
Good question, Tony. My answer is yes. IF the story is written with that intention. Tragedies are like that — a protagonist whose refuses to see the light — and we swoon in agony because his belief systems have taken him down. Readers are aware how it might otherwise have turned out… and that possibility, for which we yearn, is awakened in us and nourishes us nevertheless. How`s that for an answer! Btw… I`ll look into those books you speak about. Thanks!
But absolutely, madame! And I intend to tackle that concept of “unselving” in a blog post. Viktor Frankl would call it “self-transcendence” or “self-detachment”. All clumsy terms, I agree. Anybody out there got a better, hipper, more user-friendly word for getting one’s own head out of one’s own derrier?
I don’t know much about transcedence because the term seems to have a lot of different applications (and they could all be right). But getting one’s head out of one’s butt, and that sort of thing, is something I think I am beginning to understand unless, of course, I’m on an entirely different page.
If I’ve ever experienced transcendence in my own journey, it seems to have always begun in an inauspicious and unguarded moment. Suddenly something has changed and is impressing insistence of something into consciousness. If ignored it goes away. If excited by it there is increasing recognition though it seems to be “off to one side”, not entirely ‘visible’ or comprehensible. What is being impressed into consciousness may be relative to a problem, or an understanding, or an enlightenment, of something one has been seeking. Transcendence, in my experience, never looks one in the eye, but rather the ‘excitement’ suddenly transfers from the oblique, off to the side ‘message?’ to the consciousness of the one, me, having the experience. (It may have something to do with the fundamental duality of everyone.) There is a feeling as if one has just been given an important gift, and it feels good. For a moment, or many moments, consciousness and what’s oblique and off to the side struggle gently with ‘the gift’ until consciousness, my consciousness, takes it fully in and examines it very closely so as never to lose recognition. It would be a real bummer if we kept having moments of transcendence and then proceeded to forget what they were all about and trying to reveal to us. We wouldn’t be worthy of more brushes with transcedent moments and what they bring to us. What I find odd is that these moments happen randomly for no apparent reason. They are suddenly just there as if they want to be noticed and courted. In what I understand by transcedence, it is a commonplace experience with extraordinary insight and content. I don’t think I’ve ever ‘lived’ in an exhaulted place in a mystical, or other, state of transcedence, nor do I expect it to happen.
In fiction do characters transcend, of do they experience transcendent moments that alter both their character and their fate, or is there no difference?
Taking on the significance of transcending/transcendance is the real work. Teachers I have met say to get on with the Work and not be concerned with those ‘experiences’. They are very seductive and such glimpses may lead to believing that one has finally ‘transcended’ – or to feel bereft when they are over. Random? Common? I’d agree. Also quite natural. In a nutshell, those moments are the falling away of everything that obscures being present, being awake. Why or how they occur is a bit of a mystery, but they do indicate that when the mechanical mind clutters up the awareness of simple presence by its incessanct commentary on what’s happening, one forgets there is an alternative to the busy, busy world the mind can create.
The Work, is whatever it takes to free oneself of being trapped in the mechanics of the mind. Zen’s Ten Bulls graphically shows the evolution of that work.
The glimpses, the moments of transcendence are evidence of what happens when the mind gets shoved out of the driving seat.
As for characters in fiction, come in PJ, please.
“In fiction, do characters transcend, or do they experience transcendent moments that alter both their character and their fate, or is there no difference?”
Well, ahem, this is really a question (AND WHAT A GREAT QUESTION) for the likes of an Eckhart Tolle or an Andrew Cohen. But I’ll tell you what my experience has led me to believe. We have our transcendental moments, which we never forget, and which alter our behaviour in small ways — but, no, we haven’t self-transcended for good and forever. Everyone returns to the complex of delusions that permit us to live in this “crazy world” (as Casablanca’s Rick would say). If the fictional character were to become fully “enlightened” in a story, the audience wouldn’t buy it. Such a transformation doesn`t serve us. So, there is a difference, yes. The human condition, it seems to me, is to gravitate through suffering to these transcendent experiences, which by degrees enable us to “grow up”. Slowly, slowly, we grasp a bigger and bigger picture that more and more reveals ourself as a part of a larger whole. Hopefully, finally, on our death beds perhaps, this enables us to let go more easily. It’s a guess. Wishful thinking. You can blame it on the cheetah!
Hi PJ,
Came over from your post on The Artist’s Road. Love the story of you and the Cheetah and the question of self- transcendence, for both the writer and the story.
As for a simpler word for it, I like “waking up” though it is kind of in vogue now and maybe over-used. It says it all for me. Do you read Poet David Whyte? Actually, listening to him is even better.
I tried to subscribe but nothing happened when I clicked the RSS button.
Mary… thanks for visiting. Yes, “waking up” is probably the best street-level expression. And yes I read David Whyte, perhaps my favourite poet: “I want to write about faith…” etc. No one reads poetry like he does. Ran into him in Seattle at a book fair. Memorable. Btw… I checked the subscription function… I too noticed that the RSS link wasnt’ working… I’ll look into it. You can however enter your email address into the form and get notification of new blog posts. I hope to hear from you again. Cheers.
PJ, you’re a lot woollier than I’d imagined
I went searching through my files for the right quotes for this. Because the greats can say it way better than I can;
‘The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.’ Joseph Campbell
‘In a Dark Time, the Eye Begins to See.’ Roethke
Yvette… what does “wooly” mean? I live in a country in which the humans outnumber the sheep, unlike N.Z. That aside, thanks for your quotes. I may have to use them in future posts. Joseph Campbell I know, of course, but I’ll have to investigate Roethke. Dark I like. May the force be with you.
Dark is good, I agree PJ! In fact in building my website at the moment I am drawn to really dark backgrounds (when I would have thought it would be light & bright).
Anyway… you asked about the term ‘woollier’? I was referring to the photo of you as a teddy bear. My point was alluding to the fact that the bear is fluffy (or woolly). Yes, we are outnumbered by sheep over here, by the millions too, isn’t it great? I love that, personally!
You asked for a hipper term than transcending? How about shedding skins? In keeping with the animal theme…:-)
Shedding skins is good… because it’s obviously painful. Thanks. Just “shedding” works, too. Or, letting go. Re “wooly”… yes, I had just figured that out. (I’m slow.) I’m finding this little alter ego useful for illustrating my blog. I call him Henry, after Henry Miller, of whom he reminds me, and who is my favourite American author. He who famously said, “I have no money, no resources, no hopes — I am the happiest man alive.” Try saying that…and mean it!
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