RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,250
(the world we claim to inhabit)
For this one, I think, I'll
take my boots off. A long,
Wintry slog of tired feet
near to cover, no? My own
memory for this doesn't go
back that far, but I can well
remember the days of, like
1955 and such, when there
were differences to be had:
Things were called differently,
and had distinguishing names
in ways they no longer have.
Galoshes. Slickers and rain
boots. Those things with the
strange metal snaps that kind
of pulled-over on themselves,
with a little young-kid leverage,
to snap themselves shut; and
later open, in the same way.
There were thick, yellow rain
coats with those same snaps too,
across the front, riveted by some
means into that thick, yellow
plastic (it was more like rubber;
not plastic like we know today).
All these things fascinated me.
Sometimes the yellow slickers
I mention had hoods too, whether
detachable by snaps or not I
can't exactly recall - but it
seems like that, and I can recall
simply loving being under on
of those hoods. I remember the
word 'galoshes' always throwing
me off too - for it always seemed
dangerously close to 'girl-shoes',
yet I never knew why.
-
How is all that, I still wonder?
Is it the true realm of children
to not know how confused things
can make them? Do they walk
through that strange garden of
youth just mouthing back the
things they hear, or can thy
recognize all the hauntings
that keep them company, and
all those 'Goodnight, Moon,'
moments they live by? Bruno
Bettelheim was a writer, back
about 1972, who wrote a book -
quite important, and well-noticed,
at the time, entitled - 'The Uses
of Enchantment.' It was a pretty
cool book. I was in my Elmira
College German Literature
days then, and the lady who
gave the class - though it was
quite difficult to get across -
used the book as a sort of foil
by which to prod the 'American'
sensibility (she herself was
German) for its tendency to
partake of 'Disneyfied' fare
in regards to fairy tales and
the old, deep-forest, European
child-tales of lurking horror
and an almost Black-Forest
and terrifying view. She'd
point out how Euro-kids grew
up with terror and frightfulness
and the role of parenting included
that acceptance of those dark
times and night-figments by
a child's imagination grew and
was nurtured. All for a better
and more well-rounded maturity,
unlike American children who
remained naive and vacuous.
Much of the same points were
made by Bettelheim, and he (and
she) wove it all together with the
originally horrifying tales of the
Grimm Brothers (Grimm's Fairy
Tales), which over the years had
themselves been somewhat
sanitized.
-
I never knew much about that, but
I'd sit there wondering, in any case,
about what worse terrors there could
be. The stories of the American frontier
and settlements and Indians and slaves
and renegades and the rest, any of
that, to me, held the same ingredients
for fantasy and terror, as much as
any old-line European tales ever
could. I remember things that used
to enthrall, haunt and - yes - terrify
me too. There didn't seem to be any
difference. Kids here too slipped out
into the night and were never heard
from again - weird tales of Kentucky
backwoodsmen with their hatchets and
bloodpails, and the lurid stories of
pirates and sabres and beheadings.
People getting crushed by boulders
or lost in deep caves; to with an die
and starve along the way too. Poison
water, streams and bad wells. Dead
horses and hangings in the woods,
I had wanted for nothing.
-
The more I got to thinking about all
this, the more I realized I'd never
liked kids all that much - vain, plump,
show-offy, needy, wanting attention,
and, with so little behind them, they
sort of had little to remember. That
was a problem for me; I always
liked people with memories and
pasts. Be that as it may, these
readings and studies led me on
to other items. Childrens' tales,
and childrens' thinking for instance.
The sort of nitty-gritty street life I'd
been leading didn't show me much
of the soft-side of anything. All was
rough, raw, and adult. But, I learned,
there always had been people - yes,
besides the Grimm Brothers and
Bettelheim, who thought of 'kids'
and their thought patterns and imagry.
It was still outside my area of interest,
yet the minor role it played became
important anyway.
-
Some of it got pretty interesting, as in:
"When boys and girls are first exposed
to reading, they are most engaged by
stories about 'tables and chairs, plates
and telephones, animals they know."
That was an outgrowth past the 1930's,
when children's books still drew on
classic fables and folktales, providing
'moral instruction.' In 1935, there was
a school run by a 'scholar' named
Lucy Sprague Mitchell. It was called
'Bank Street,' though it was NOT on
Bank Street at all...rather on the
upper west side and run as an
experimental school of education.
The initial idea was to 'redefine'
early education by incorporating
insights from social sciences and
from research into the lives of
children. The hope was that the
new teachers would 'develop a
scientific attitude' and express to
children the attitudes of the artist
towards work and towards life.
-
Mitchell had said that (in 'The Here
and Now Story Book'), the children
needed stories anchored in the more
familiar before they can contend with
the 'fantasy of the unknown.' She
then went on, "It is only the blind
eye of the adult that finds the
familiar uninteresting. The attempt
to amuse children by presenting
them with the strange, the bizarre,
the unreal, is the unhappy result
of this adult blindness. Children
do not find the unusual of much
interest until they are first firmly
acquainted with the usual; they
do not find the preposterous
humorous until they have intimate
knowledge of ordinary behavior."
-
'Children don't really care about
plot. When listening to a story,
enjoyment comes not from any
awareness of a beginning, middle
and end, but from the pleasure of
the action itself.' Another writer
said that a child, at five, reaches
a point not to be achieved again.
'A keenness and awareness' that
will likely be subdued out of
them later in life. Here, perhaps,
is thestage of rhyme and reason...
'Big as the whole world; Deep as
a giant; Quiet as electricity rushing
about the world; Quiet as mud.
Those are the similes of
five-year olds."
-
Well, I guess you get where I'm
going with this. It stayed on my
mind for a long time, but I sided
with the Grimm Brothers, truth
be told. I always loved the ogres
and the outlandish genies and
imps and elves and spectres that
haunted my world in the same
fashion that - I believed then
and still do now - they haunt
this very world we claim to
inhabit.
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