Wind Journeys

In the best of all westerns, “Lonesome Dove,” Cal [Tommy Lee Jones] keeps his promise in the end to bury Gus [Robert Duval], his best friend, near a little creek where Gus and Clara spent the day under a stand of almond trees—2500 miles away in Arkansas.  Watching the film for the fourth time, I questioned my two grandsons, Josh [whom we now call Newt, a character from the film] and Cam [now dubbed “Lonesome Cal] just how “rational” such an honorable promise really is—to haul the body of a dead friend 2500 miles on a buckboard through water-moccasin infested rivers, and over hill and dale. Remember, he had the option to bury the stubborn whiskey-drinking but loveable and honorable Gus in nearby Clara’s orchard in Ogallala.  The boys screamed with one accord, defending Cal’s strict honor code.  “He kept his word."  It’s all about “honor.”  I had questioned the practicality of such a promise.

And then there is old Falstaff’s mockery of that very “honor.”  Honor might “prick one on,” but it won’t cure a wound; “honor," he says, “is a mere word.”  Whenever we think of honor, like Falstaff, we think of the price of the word.  Honor, like all virtues, has its price.  Every soldier in Afghanistan and Iraq thinks about honor and its cost day and night.

When Juliet’s heart carelessly soars to the wrong neighborhood, she hopelessly sighs, "but what’s in a word?”  Her big mistake?  Falling in love with the wrong name.  It’s a social thing.

Montagues and Capulets just don’t mix.  But today's status is more about money.  If one of you has a lot of money, you can raise the other to an “honorable level.”

It  matters little, however, that the old sense of “honor” is disintegrating. Today when we say that a man is “honorable,” we probably mean honest or trustworthy (not necessarily physically attractive), but worth emulating. Who would call Megan Fox [why should I know this at 71?]  honorable, or Ray Lewis [NFL linebacker] honorable?  In fact, “honor” today may be a sweet substitute for being physically unattractive.  Few of us would call Lincoln attractive.  He himself asked a travel-worn photographer, “why would a man ride a horse from Washington DC clear down to Illinois to photograph the ugliest man in the state?”  But  he’s both honorable and beautiful to me because I “know” him from his words.

One more sweet example of honor—the Columbian film, Las Viajes de Viento [“The Wind Journeys”].  Ignacio rides a burro from one end of Columbia to another to return an accordion to his aging teacher. He remains honorable and admirable. We crave that--let me say it--goodness.

Honor even transcends fact; when we see the endless rows of flags that mark the lives of men and women who gave themselves, certainly their sacrifice transcends the questionable fact of “a just cause” in two wars which are pointless and unwinnable.

But honorable sacrifice of those soldiers will surely outlive the folly of such epic waste.