{"id":18585,"date":"2016-12-02T06:34:43","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T11:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=18585"},"modified":"2016-12-02T06:37:40","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T11:37:40","slug":"the-stream-a-river-a-torrent-this-puddle-the-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/the-stream-a-river-a-torrent-this-puddle-the-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stream, a River, a Torrent, This Puddle, the Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"'Jimmy's<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “Jimmy’s Fairy Tale,” by Woodford Yang. Found it on Flickr<\/a> (used here under a Creative Commons license). The artist\/photographer — the user who posted it, anyhow — offers absolutely no context for it: where it was taken, what it depicts, who “Jimmy” might be\/have been… nothing at all. (The user profile indicates that he is based in Taipei, and I found numerous references to that exact name around the Web; but I really have no details to offer.) Whatever it “means,” I like that the train’s label — referring to van Gogh’s painting<\/a>, presumably, or to the Don McLean song<\/a> about it — echoes (or is echoed in) those softly glowing overhead lights.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a> (italicized portion):<\/p>\n

Critics who treat <\/em>adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up…<\/em><\/p>\n

A critic not long ago said in praise of a very serious fairy tale that the author’s tongue “never once got into his cheek.” But why on earth should it?—unless he had been eating a seed-cake. Nothing seems to me more fatal, for this art, than an idea that whatever we share with children is, in the privative sense, “childish” and that whatever is childish is somehow comic. We must meet children as equals in that area of our nature where we are their equals. Our superiority consists partly in commanding other areas, and partly (which is more relevant) in the fact that we are better at telling stories than they are. The child as reader is neither to be patronized nor idolized: we talk to him as man to man. But the worst attitude of all would be the professional attitude which regards children in the lump as a sort of raw material which we have to handle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(C. S. Lewis [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Lied Vom Kindsein<\/em> (Song of Childhood)<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the child was a child
\nIt walked with its arms swinging.
\nIt wanted the stream to be a river
\nthe river a torrent
\nand this puddle to be the sea.<\/p>\n

When the child was a child
\nIt didn’t know it was a child.
\nEverything was full of life, and all life was one.<\/p>\n

When the child was a child
\nIt had no opinions about anything.
\nIt had no habits.
\nIt sat cross-legged, took off running,
\nhad a cowlick in its hair
\nand didn’t make a face when photographed.<\/p>\n

When the child was a child
\nit was the time of these questions:
\nWhy am I me, and why not you?
\nWhy am I here, and why not there?
\nWhen did time begin, and where does space end?
\nIsn’t life under the sun just a dream?
\nIsn’t what I see, hear and smell
\nonly the illusion of a world before the world?
\nDoes evil actually exist,
\nand are there people who are really evil?
\nHow can it be that I, who am I,
\ndidn’t exist before I came to be
\nand that someday
\nthe one who I am
\nwill no longer be the one I am?<\/p>\n

When the child was a child
\nit choked on spinach, peas, rice pudding
\nand on steamed cauliflower.
\nNow it eats all of those
\nand not just because it has to.<\/p>\n

When the child was a child
\nit once woke up in a strange bed
\nand now it does so time and time again.
\nMany people seemed beautiful then
\nand now only a few, if it’s lucky.
\nIt had a precise picture of Paradise
\nand now it can only guess at it.
\nIt could not conceive of nothingness
\nand today it shudders at the idea.<\/p>\n

When the child was a child
\nit played with enthusiasm
\nand now
\nit gets equally excited
\nbut only when it concerns
\nits work.<\/p>\n

When the child was a child
\nberries fell into its hand as only berries do
\nand they still do now.
\nFresh walnuts made its tongue raw
\nand they still do now.
\nOn every mountaintop it had a longing
\nfor yet a higher mountain.
\nAnd in each city it had a longing
\nfor yet a bigger city.
\nAnd it is still that way.
\nIt reached for the cherries in the treetop
\nwith the elation it still feels today.
\nIt was shy with all strangers
\nand it still is.
\nIt awaited the first snow
\nand it still waits that way.<\/p>\n

When the child was a child
\nit threw a stick into a tree like a lance,
\nand it still quivers there today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Peter Handke [source<\/em><\/a> (among many other citations, including the script of Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Jimmy’s Fairy Tale,” by Woodford Yang. Found it on Flickr (used here under a Creative Commons license). The artist\/photographer — the user who posted it, anyhow — offers absolutely no context for it: where it was taken, what it depicts, who “Jimmy” might be\/have been… nothing at all. (The user profile indicates that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Fairy tales of children (and adults): 'The Stream, a River, a Torrent, This Puddle, the Sea'","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,250,5,251,4159],"tags":[1697,2177,2324,3832],"class_list":{"0":"post-18585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-art","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"category-essays","13":"tag-wings-of-desire","14":"tag-c-s-lewis","15":"tag-peter-handke","16":"tag-vincent-van-gogh","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/jimmysfairytale_woodfordyang_thumb.jpg?fit=480%2C360&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4PL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18585"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18593,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18585\/revisions\/18593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}