Creekside Notes

I walked into my first charcoal drawing class and immediately felt intimidated. I was probably the oldest person in the room. Some classmates were already there, pulling out their easels, setting things up, continuing drawings from the previous class. They looked competent. They had proper pencils and materials. They seemed to know what they were doing. I, on the other hand, did not even know how to set up the easel. For a moment I thought: Oh my God. I am going to embarrass myself. Then I stopped myself. Never mind, I told myself. I am here to learn. That was all. A boy of around fifteen helped me set up the easel before I even asked. He told me he would start high school after the summer. Later, we went to an art shop to buy the materials the teacher had asked us to get. He decided not to buy anything yet because he wanted to check exactly what he needed first, so he borrowed the materials I had just bought. I did not mind at all. He had helped me first. Then I helped him. Somehow, ...

I enjoy shopping with my sister. We could hang out in the shopping mall and discuss the colors and trends of clothes and shoes relentlessly, and ever joyfully. We also shop online at home — helping to audit the items in each other’s shopping cart before online checkout, on the living-room couch with a nice cup of coffee against the 37-degree, burning air of Taipei City. We never fought, except once. It was many, many years ago. It was the voting day of a presidential election in Taiwan, and for the first time, we supported different candidates. We both tried to convince each other to switch sides, and we both failed. In spite of that, my sister still offered to drive me to the voting station. But it was not a regular presidential election. One of the presidential candidates had allegedly been assassinated — shot by two bullets and sent to the hospital right before Election Day. The news release stated that the gunshots had created an 11 cm by 2 cm wound on the surface of the candidate’...

  It was the opening night of the play Peter Pan. Four boys were preparing at home to go to the theatre. Their mother was seriously ill and could not keep them company. They needed to attend the premiere because the play was based on their life story, and the playwright was their best family friend. After the show, the playwright came to greet the children, only to learn the news of their mother’s irreversible illness. He looked at the eldest boy and said: “Magnificent. The boy is gone. In the last 30 seconds… you became a grown-up.” This is a scene from the movie Finding Neverland (2004). The playwright is J. M. Barrie, played by Johnny Depp. He says this to George Llewelyn Davies, the eldest of the four Llewelyn Davies boys — the real family who inspired the Peter Pan story. George Llewelyn Davies does not go on any journey. He realizes the possibility of his mother’s foreseeable death, and he transforms. No quest. No monsters. No battles. Disturbing news arrives on an ordinary e...

  A farm boy leaves home and becomes a Jedi. A reluctant prince faces danger and returns as a hero. A founder starts in a garage and builds a commercial empire. We are naturally interested in stories, particularly hero stories, because they connect with our desires and emotions. We witness how heroes suffer during the journey — temptations, deceptions, romances, traps — and how they successfully mitigate risks and eventually conquer their quests. These stories promise sweetness after pain: effort pays off, suffering has meaning, and heroes eventually win. As Joseph Campbell, the author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), writes about the continuing presence of mythic journeys: “The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.” Campbell and the Architecture of the Hero’s Journey Campbell argues that myths across cultures share a...