I Am A Desert Stranger: Reflections on The Little Prince

Little Prince by Milan Cupka

“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Last night, I took to reading the entire book, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I have been reading a lot into the similarities between Paolo Coelho's The Alchemist and Jewish-Algerian folklore, particularly the tale of The Sabbath Lion. With The Little Prince I have now found a third counterpart to the incredible comparative mythology and collective archetypal resonance which these narratives offer to a keen mind. I could of course go on and on about the engaging metaphorical richness solely within The Little Prince, however I will stick to a fundamental theme within three of these works. 

The desert is an iconic symbol for the immense solitude that opens before a life lived for oneself, or as Coelho writes, for one's Personal Legend. The desert is the ultimate symbol of regenerative emptiness that provides the ground on which the traveler sets out before ending a journey of the soul. The Little Prince itself, closes with a simple drawing of an imaginative desert landscape. That "single event" as de Saint-Exupéry says above, is the recognition that ahead of us lies an expanse of desert. And on seeing the desert open, our dreaming emerges. As de Saint-Exupéry says, "a stranger totally unknown to us" and as Jung says, "that there is someone else in my house". American expatriate writer Paul Bowles also illuminated the desert similarly in his book, The Sheltering Sky

See my related post: Desert Wanderings: Reflection on "The Sheltering Sky"

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There is talk of a global calamity. The sky opens our eyes to the inimitable beyond. The solstice night tempts our minds away into the cold dogmas of apocalyptic paranoia. And then, a shift. The star light bends in a waking instant. I see through the unmoving universe, to an orbital flux in the atmosphere itself. Our planet has moved off course! 

Planet Earth 2 by Lena Luss Luyken

I feel as the only one, risen up to unparalleled sight. As a shifty character in The Little Prince, I inhabit my own planet as a sole entity, unable to move from its narrowing horizon. But my planet moves, and now the cold begins to gather as our sun becomes more and more distant. I traverse the edge of the darkening atmosphere. 

Evening Prayer in the Sahara by Gustave Guillaumet

I see into the Sahara night. Young boys play soccer among the ancient ruins. An old man enters the edge of the desert from a ruined city street. Both ancient and modern meet at the edge of the desert, and lament the last orbit around a dying sun.  

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Second call missing
Unctuous pull from the umbilical poor,

My unending desire for a madness
Inherent within revolutionary culture and the curtain’s aftermath

Beyond ironic civil warlords and the innate lust for earthen ore,
Lore and gore,

Multitudes fornicating over oceanic test-tube breasts,
Blessing the fatherland journey past the mother’s nest
...

Out of time
Whereupon sits the cosmic being,
Presidential yet aware of universal law
“To correct the broken backbone of history
Civilization looted in the ashtray night!”
...

To calm social panic
And sweep our American blushing under the oriental rug of timeless intoxication

For a new sky,
Fine-tipped,
Seeded and reading to be…

excerpts from "Reading to be..."

Borges and The Ancestral Mirror of World Literacy

"Childhood passed away and the tigers and my passion for them grew old, but still they are in my dreams. At that submerged, or chaotic level they keep prevailing. And so, as I sleep some dream beguiles and suddenly I know I’m dreaming, then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will and now that I have unlimited power I am going to cause a tiger.

Oh incompetence, my dreams never manage to breed forth a longed for beast.”

[From “Dreamtigers”]

Narrator

"Borges dream world extended from the house in Palermo to the city around it and out into the endless continuity of the pampas. Here in the open country he discovered another aspect of Argentina’s mythology. The land where his ancestors had fought, the vast sky and the gauchos..." 

From “Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man” 

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The dark forest leads under a storm-cast flood of opaque black cloud above the dimly lit cabin, barely in sight. Leaves, burnt by the frozen winds crumple with delicacy under our unforgiving step. Sense-deprived, we share the hollow bitterness of the cold mystery ahead. With Mexican friends, we enter the home of the recluse. Maps of Metis land and the intriguing sizzle of wild game invite us onto the weathered upholstery of inspired comfort. Indrawn, yet tempting, the host’s gaze is untamed, always welcoming. As friends and I sit around the country table, the food begins with due presentation, decadent meats and thick bean dishes melt in a haze of tantalizing scents. Conversation ensues. Drink follows. I’m ridiculed for my lack of Spanish. Dejected, I comb the ghastly wilderness, alone under the silent, new moon. Pitch darkness swallows me in a mutual fight with my emotional vacuum, self-trust extinguished with each step upon the unknown forest ground. I walk until dawn. On my own, I know the comfort of the empty sky, the abandoned railways, and graffiti concrete beside shallow streams. All are mere steps towards the final return, to where I used to be.

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Dark

"A dream of the dark is never a good aspected omen as after such a dream you are in danger of losing control of your temper and causing yourself a lot of hardships and losses. If you dream that dark is falling while you are traveling it is an ill omen for any business you try to conduct unless the journey is finished before it gets dark." (iDream)

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I revere my Jewish ancestors over the Hebrew G-D,
that is to say:
the personal history and presence of my ancestors are closer to me in bond
and in the formation of my living human identity
than are the laws prescribed in Hebrew society,
for we are of a greater human community

- excerpt from "Jewish ancestors"