view from the window and why dead flowers are still beautiful

a breath of fresh air from a displaced goldfish:

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point in the last few years I started to forget what it was to be a child.  It may have been the day that I decided it made sense to drive the speed limit (you have to be careful of yourself and those around you, after all), or perhaps it was when I  began making an effort to crawl into bed at a “reasonable” hour (so as not to be tired the next day, of course), or maybe it was when I stopped being scared of thunderstorms (they will pass eventually, as they always have).  Regardless of the exact moment, I reached a point where rules, which had previously been irrelevant, started to make sense.  I lost the compulsion to ask “why?” as often as I had in the past, a normal, yet terribly unfortunate sign of “adulthood”.

Last night Hayao Miyazaki reminded me of what I had forgotten.  Ponyo (2009) is a magical story about a little goldfish (Ponyo) that loves a young boy (Sosuke) so deeply that she becomes a human so that she can be with him.  While the love story is sweet, the beauty of this film is its ability to see the world through the eyes of a child, one who has not yet learned the boundaries of society.  Sosuke finds Ponyo trapped in a glass jar, cutting his finger in his effort to get her out.  One she has been freed, she licks the boys bleeding hand and the wound immediately heals, the first of many miracles that Ponyo will perform throughout the course of the film.

She eventually goes home with Sosuke and his mother and we watch the two of them watching her with wonder.  Ponyo’s complete lack of social etiquette is juxtaposed beautifully against the traditions of Japanese society.  She grabs food from Sosuke’s hands, eats dried noodles off the table, and falls dead asleep whenever and wherever she feels to.  At one point Sosuke says to his mother, “Ponyo comes from far, far away,” a simple yet poignant observation.  She comes from a place that has not learned to live by societal rules, she acts purely on her sweet and benevolent nature.

As you might expect, Ponyo eventually gives up her powers to become a real human, a happy ending to the childhood love story.   While this movie, intended for children, may seem nothing but sweet and naive at first glace, there is so much that can be taken from it in regard to our own war-torn situation.  We have become so deeply entrenched in the rules that politics, capitialism, society (pick your poison)  have set for us that we forget what is possible if we stick our heads out of the water and look around.  We could use a little Ponyo to heal a few of our wounds.