A Beautiful Pea Green Boat

I love words. I always have. When I was little my parents had a set of children’s books. I don’t remember the series’ name but I remember the books. I loved them too. There were 7 or 8 in the set. They were thick and heavy and covered in a hardback binding of red faux leather. My favorite volumes were “Things to Make and Do,” and the one that contained Fairy Tales and Poems. My favorite story when I was little was “Hansel and Gretel.” My favorite poem was “The Owl and the Pussycat.”

 

I told this recently to a psychologist friend of mine and he teased, “Freud was right. It’s always about aggression and sex.”

 

I shot back, “I refuse to be reduced to such simple terms! I insist on being complex. I loved ‘Hansel and Gretel' because I was terrified at the thought of being lost in the forest and separated from my parents. I loved it because in the end good triumphs over evil, the children outsmart the witch and without any grown-up help, they save themselves. It symbolizes the struggle of the powerless in the face of the powerful who would exploit them; it speaks to the reality of making a plan, of strategizing a contingency and of the damn birds that come and eat the crumbs and screw it all up.”

 

And then I said, “The Owl and the Pussycat? OK…I’ll give you that one.”

 

The Owl and the Pussycat sailed away in a beautiful pea green boat. The Owl and the Pussycat sailed away in a beautiful pea green boat. I thought it was the best sentence I’d ever heard. I didn’t know how an owl and a pussycat could fall in love, or how it could work out, but that they thought it could was romantic and optimistic.

 

I loved Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell because of their words. The music was secondary. The images that they conjured up, the stories and ballads, the sharpness of a few words to create a vision full and rich with color and movement:

 

“In the church they light the candles, and the wax rolls down like tears.” Joni

 

“With your mercury mouth in the missionary times. And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes.”  Bob

 

“It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down the trees. And they’re puttin’ up reindeer, singing songs of joy and peace. Oh, I wish I had a river, I could skate away on.”  Joni

 

“Oh you’re in my blood like holy wine. You taste so bitter and so sweet. I could drink a case of you. And I would still be on my feet. O, I would still be on my feet.”  Joni

 

“She opened up a book of poems andhanded it to me, written by an Italian poet from the fifteenth century. And every one of them words rang true and burned like glowing coals, pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you.”  Bob

 

Doire tangent: More like an aside actually. I dreamed of Bob Dylan last night. Hardly a surprise. Since Modern Times' release, not a day has gone by in which I have not listened to him (well, this I do everyday anyway), read about him, and seen him on television. He's everywhere! As it should be. I dreamed I was living on Grove Street in Rhode Island with my daughter (who is almost always a child in my dreams). Dylan simply appeared on my doorstep one day and moved in. He was sweet and funny. He sang at night. In the dream, my son was away at school, but he came to visit often, when he found out Dylan was living with us.

 

Anyway....

 

When I am lecturing, the words pour out, sometimes in spite of me. Words come out in class that I have never used before in my life and yet, in that moment, it is exactly the right word. This week, it was “spurious,” and “epochal.” And I am as surprised as anyone in the room at their use.

 

I had a student once who sat in the back and just took pleasure in the words too. He’d laugh out loud every time I said one that was impossibly multi-syllabic, or one he’d never heard before. Like multi-syllabic, or perspectival, or fecundity, or hermeneutical. And I’d see his delight and try to outdo myself, just to get him to laugh.

 

It’s also one of the reasons why I lament, just a bit, that I am so busy right now, I have little time for writing everyday. But I’ll find my groove and make the time and once again peruse the precipice of provocative lexicon and make merry the linguistic locus of my inner being.

 

In the meantime, I’ll remember the Owl and the Pussycat and sail away with them in a beautiful pea green boat.