Tuesday, November 29, 2005
The Other Side of Everything
While thinking of possible themes for a children's book that I'm hoping to make for my nephew this Christmas, the first thing that came to mind was the idea of another side to everything.
I have very clear memories of sitting on my dresser with my eyes closed and willing my hand to go through the mirror and into the room on the other side. I thought the sky was a screen, on the other side of which was space. I thought that somewhere in my house there had to be a secret door that would take me into another, different house.
Now, the question is, was this a universal experience? Do all children believe that there are other, unseen sides of everything? Or did I read too many books?
Of course the mirror experiment was a direct result of Alice in Wonderland. But the other attempts to break through? The world is absolutely full of books for children that involve getting out of the regular world and into a world where the child takes on adult autonomy and responsibility, then returns to their own world where all of their newfound power is totally useless, but I guess they learned something on the way.
Why do the children have to become adults? Why can't they stay in their own world and be children? It worked for 'Where the Red Fern Grows', except for the whole dead dog thing.
// posted by Amethyst Vineyard @ 5:48 AM 
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It does mirror the structure of their lives, though, doesn't it? Although I am oppressed and controlled by adults most every waking minute, there's another (fantasy) place where I am powerful and competent, needed; necessary, even. Just like I'll be when I'm an adult.
I found a tiny door in our huge coatroom when I was a kid, hidden behind all these old coats. It went into a small room where kids had colored all over the walls.
You know, I hadn't even thought of that. I take things really, really literally, and it is probable that this is what these books are actually based on. That's so true, most play time is actually spent putting oneself in adult situations (pirates, cops and robbers, house, etc.) But when I read these books it seems very different from the experience of pretending to be an adult as a child, or watching children pretend to be adults. My nephew's most adult-imitative activity is to put play-doh on his George Foreman grill, smash the crap out of it, and then scream 'Anybody want a hot dog?'. Hardly Oz.
Blogagaard, I think you're lying. If you're not and you really did find a secret room, you have already lived my dream. I'm really jealous.
Well, The Wizard of Oz is supposedly an allegory of labor relations and only incidentally a children's book.
I have heard that; the tin man is the heartless industrial worker, the scarecrow the uneducated agricultural worker, the yellow brick road the gold standard used at the time. I was listening to Studio 360 the other night and they did a show on Oz and Frank Baum in which they sort of discredited this theory, but it does fit in a little too well for it to be completely made up. I guess that would make the land of china figurines symbolic of the fragile Victorian social mores sweeping the world at the time.
I'm not lying. I wrote about this room in Other Dreams, my second novel completed at age eighteen. It was an awesome little room. Once we heard tornado warning sirens and I hid in there all afternoon, listening to the radio with my sister.
All I can say is, some people are born lucky and live in houses with secret rooms. The rest of us have to pretend to have secret rooms, or build a fort in the woods out back that promptly falls down, or just tell ghost stories about our dead great-grandparents in order to make ourselves more interesting to other kids.
Didn't your secret room help you to deal with the divorce in some way? That's what secret rooms are supposed to be for.
I was a Chronicles of Narnia fan when I was growing up, so I'd always sneak into people's closets and tap the back wall in the hopes that I'd be transported somewhere else.
Never worked, but it did give me some freaky ass dreams.
Never worked, but it did give me some freaky ass dreams.
Michele, I have spent half my life trying to get to wherever the backs of closets will take you. I never read the Narnia series until I was an adult, and I still tried to get through the back of my closet, in my second-floor apartment, while my then-roommate had loud horrible sex in the next room. Narnia would have been such a relief, even with all the preaching.
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