Curiouser and curiouser,
down the rabbit hole
furiouser and furiouser,
losing your mind and soul,
filling your lungs with panic,
nameless, lost in the wood,
swapping depressed for manic,
hoody for riding hood.
Barely understood
tears form bleeding tears.
Fight through the turgid wood
of your teenrager years.
There is another train, mummy!
– Yes, there is. But it is not our train.
– Why is it going, then?
The world that is travelled together
is a new world.
A new world for the new explorer.
Before you
I was fearless.
I used to teach my friends how to drive
because I could sit next to them
and quietly suggest attending to the brake
when the breaking distance was no longer certain.
They appreciated that.
I used to go up to high places
and dangle my feet over the abyss,
enjoying the view.
No more.
I have to survive to protect you.
I have to be careful.
I cannot take stupid risks.
I never had nightmares before –
at least not the ones I could remember.
I have nightmares now.
I dream that something happened to you,
that the absurd indifference of the world
that destroys so many
caught up with you.
I wake up with a start,
drenched in sweat,
my heart racing.
I can no longer afford the freedom born of indifference.
The freedom to tell the world to fuck off and leave its emptiness behind.
It is no longer empty because you are in it.
You fill it to the brim
with fear of death and injury
and courage to face the possibility of these
because I have to take you places.
With anger and tenderness,
sadness and happiness,
love and regret.
With all those feelings that push and pull me
and limit my choices.
I can no longer be that person
who was light and free and empty
because you fill me to the brim.
Good riddance.
There is not much point in stealing gold –
gold is a soft metal, not very good for tools or utensils.
It is given value by people who can shape it and make it talk.
I do steal shapes.
I hoard them in my library,
I pore over them, hunched, giggling, rubbing my hands together.
I line them up and recombine them
and when I hit a lucky combo
my giggle turns into a laugh.
That’s when I take the new shape out
and get you to look at it
and the light of your eyes
turns the base metal into gold.
We erect fences around construction sites.
We put signs on fences.
Bright yellow warning signs, easy to see,
attention-grabbing
with screaming carmine letters:
“DANGER!
CONSTRUCTION SITE.
KEEP OUT
AND KEEP YOUR CHILDREN OUT!”
Construction sites are inherently dangerous.
Things change.
New things appear out of the dust and confront you unexpectedly.
Old things break and fall
and hit you on the head if you are not careful.
They are like that.
Children have to be protected.
As you think of danger,
of all the unexpected, deadly things that can happen to them,
your breath catches and your heart skips a beat.
You erect fences
and put signs on these fences.
But it is never enough.
The world changes so fast now-a-days
that you can’t keep up.
New things appear daily.
The things you don’t understand can hurt you
and your children.
As the future is being constructed,
you have to build more and more fences
and put up more and more signs
screaming:
“DANGER!
CONSTRUCTION SITE.
KEEP OUT
AND KEEP YOUR CHILDREN OUT!”
Eventually, you end up in a cage,
crouching in the corner, teeth bared,
terrified, but ready to protect your children.
It’s all for them, to keep them safe, to keep them near.
The world under construction is fenced off,
blocked off by the screaming signs.
That’s when they leave.
They climb the fence quietly, stealthily,
trying not to hurt your feelings
or break through the fence
with all their might, screaming defiance.
In the final count, it doesn’t matter.
They leave.
They have no choice.
Their lives are there,
in the changing world being constructed for and by them.
With pity or hatred in their hearts
they leave you in your cage.
Anger turns to dejection.
They will visit.
They will bring your grandchildren,
ignoring the signs:
“DANGER!
CONSTRUCTION SITE.
KEEP OUT
AND KEEP YOUR CHILDREN OUT!”
It’s a strange world,
made of echoing emptiness
pulling itself together,
like Baron Munchhausen
pulling himself out of the swamp by his hair.
You cavort through it,
creating it as you go,
a cartoon character
picking up tracks from behind
and laying them in front
for your train to keep going;
an oblivious demiurge
sensing the world into being.
Every time you make a handstand –
you stand on the edge of the precipice.
Every time you laugh –
you laugh in the face of death.
It fills me with awe,
and joy,
and terror,
and utter amazement
at the strangest thing of all –
your ability to see this world as rock-solid.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
Leonardo da Vinci
You are a work of art, you are my voice
combined with yours, a self-creating song.
I will abandon you, but not by choice.
You’ll sing the song yourself before too long.
One of the main tasks of childhood is to learn how to deal with monsters.
This is why dinosaurs are so fascinating for children –
they are monsters, concrete and palpable.
There is nothing human about them,
they kill with teeth and claws, not words, greed and cowardice.
They are easy, training monsters,
a menace you can understand, a threat without ambivalence.
What do you do if you meet a monster?
Do you run?
Do you fight?
Do you train to be stronger than them?
Do you learn to be smarter?
After going to the Museum of Natural History
and learning about T-Rex
you couldn’t stop laughing:
running around with your arms pressed into your sides,
waving your hands feebly at chest-level,
saying, ‘itty-bitty hands!’
I think you chose the best option.
I think you will be all right.
