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Although it's been around for a while, if you haven't seen "The Weeping Camel," [Edit: "The Story of the Weeping Camel"]please do, especially if you're interested in:
Mongolia
Contemporary Mongolia
Shearing of camels
Rope making!!
The Gobi Desert
Changing cultures
Sand storms
Self-sufficiency
Rituals--that work!
This one was sponsored by National Geographic. The DVD comes with English, French and Spanish subtitles.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Pardon my answering my own post, but I saw the movie again yesterday and wondered about the inexorable crawl of world culture onto the Gobi. I thought how impossible to stop the crawl and worried over the loss of near pure beauty in the daily lives of these herding Mongols. The photographer had taken a nearly minimalistic view in capturing even the muzzles of drinking camels, the smooth, quick movement of the rope maker's hands, the prints of camel hooves in the Gobi sand, the stirring of a pot. And the sound technician must have had a love affair with the human-like camel voice, capturing it in many moods.
So, I considered the minute and broad views of this remarkable film and thought how sad that television would make its way into the felt huts...that the young boy would begin to play video games...that the world culture would gradually fold into this semi-nomadic one.
Then it hit me. There I was in the comfort of a family room watching a television screen...taking in the beauty of the life of the Mongols...being transported to another place. And I thought, "If not them, why me?" At the very least, the current day Mongolian nomadic culture has been beautifully captured on film. At least that. At least that before it eventually becomes whatever it is to become in its next manifestation. And the boy-become-man-watching-TV will have a loving record of from where he came. We should all have such carefully documentation of a few significant days from our childhood.
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Ah sweet Lotus Blossom, come now and sit at the Zen-masters feet. A firey comet has entered your ear but has not yet exploded. Come. Let us together watch the TV.
Ah so, see, young Lotus, the little boy rides the camel while the heavenly orb of golden light ends it journey in the great mountains of the west. Ah, the boy does not look upon the setting sun, the boy is tired. Riding camels is not fun. Fair Lotus, have you ever ridden a camel all day? Great soreness comes to the part of you where you sit. I'd sooner give alms to a habitual blasaphemer than ride a soft-humped camel around a middling sized folding tent.
And think, little flower, of the little boy who rides the camel, what adventure, what exotic terrain, what an ordeal to find drinkable water, what poverty, what disease, what a dessert waste of a human mind who by the constraints and antiquity of his birth culture will be forever bound in this human zoo where he can live out the rest of his days building quaint little dung fires for warmth, and eating quaint little insects for food, while the larger world watches his miserable life go by on TV and says "how lovely, how quaint".
You may now arise Little Blossom. No! Do not kiss my feet! I am disgusted with you. You are pampered. Come back when you have found equal love for the less fortunate.
Ommmmmmmmmm.
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Pardon my answering my own post
Wordwind, if you're going to answer your own posts like that, there is no-one who can do it better. [Edit: Not even themilum. :) ]
Keep it up -- please. :)
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You may now arise Little Blossom.
Ah, themilum. Your song draws out the irony in the lives of these nomads, and in ours as well.
I hope Aorto reads this thread. You and Wordwind are equally right. And equally wrong. How ironic. How exquisitely ironic.
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I wouldn't kiss your dirty ol' feet, Milo, if you paid me a basketful of lotus blossoms.
Why did you assume poverty and dirty water for these Mongols? You made an incorrect assumption. One of the themes of the film was the simple opulence the semi-nomadic people enjoyed: wells, a wealth of sheep and camels, carefully engineered felt homes to protect them from sand storms, and inside! Bright blues and oranges worthy of the rarest Madonna in some alcove of a national musem. These Mongols were not poor in any sense of the word, yet they did not yet have television and motorcyles, both of which were most likely soon to come.
Yet the old stories carried grave weakness. The film begins with the story of how the camel lost its antlers, exquistely told by an old one with the modern addition of camera shots of a real bactrian looking about for the supposed return of its antlers by the fabled deer that had permanently borrowed them.
At the end of the film, the old man tells another tale, but the young boy interrupts, saying, "You've told that one before." The fables are less than fabulous to the boy; he longs for television...cartoons.
Life as they live it seems rich, full, and beating with the natural rhythm of the Gobi. Yet there are cracks in their lives, and not the cracks of either poverty or dirty water. Their wives wear silk; they eat from lovely porcelein. The cracks are the cracks of repetitiveness that the boy intuits upon seeing something New and Different. How quickly we pick up something New and Different, don't we, only to discover, sometimes at least when applicable, that what once was had more worth. And, then again, sometimes the New and Different is better.
I think "The Story of the Weeping Camel" raises the question: Will the New and Different be better? And since the film itself (something New and Different) is a miracle of film making, there is the twist of irony in the raised question.
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I think "The Story of the Weeping Camel" raises the question: Will the New and Different be better?
Sometimes we know too much for our own good, Wordwind.
It takes us all the way back to the Garden of Eden -- perhaps.
Is television, our airwaves, and the knowledge it brings, for this Adam and Eve in the desert, the snake in the Garden?
Is this the apple, Wordwind?
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yeah, but..
in the 1970's, PBS did a show with (Dr) Jacob Brownowski, The Assent of Man. the nomadic life style was explored.
the "simple opulences" of the lifestyle, are not the products of nomadic people. Nomads lives are driven by cycles of nature, they must follow the herds, and put the herds need first, the relationship is almost sybiotic.
they do not have time for the skills that support their lifestyle. something as simple as weaving and woven cloth requires some time, and some leasure. culture is by product of a settle life style.
the great feilds of wheat allowed humankind to stop the endless trailing after animals. they had time to spare, and they created decorative things. nuggets of copper could be made into earings, (and traded to the nomads, how had no time to collect, and smelt and hammer copper into decorative forms.) copper pans might dent, but they last much longer than baskets (that can be woven while riding a camel) but nomads would never have the leasrue time to learn how to make them for themselves, not could they afford to remain working a copper seam long enough to collect enough ore to make a potfor themselves.
Nomadic life is a hard life. its easier today when there are many more goods to barter for, but who dug the well? and who wove the silk? and who fired the porcelein?
no loom is required to felt.. just water and effort.. and its possible to add to a felted cloth..
but fine silk? it needs cultivated trees, and spinners, and dyers, and weavers.
the nomadic life still exist in part of the world, but it is sustained by settled people.
there lifestyle is not inferior, but nor should we idealize it. no doubt these traders has knives, (made of good steel) and brass hardware for the saddle and bridles.
these advances came at a cost.. the cost of settle lifestyle.
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