Today I bake, tomorrow I brew,
The day after that the Queen child comes in;
And oh! I am glad that nobody knew
That the name I am called is Rumpelstiltskin !
I’ve always had a place in my personal library for Grimm’s Fairy Tales. There are two hundred an eleven tales in this volume. Like my mirrored bathroom image that has changed the last seventy two years, Grimm’s tales reveal a different aspect every time I read them. Whether it is Tom Thumb, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel or Rumpelstiltskin to mention a few, first read at my young age, next at my parenting age, and now at my grandfather age, each of the tales resonates differently for me at the different times read.
Today it must be asked why Rumpelstiltskin? Might it be a continuation from last month’s focus on mindfulness and the self awareness of the changes transpiring in my neighborhood? Childhood civic lessons about our United States and the virtues of our representative democracy, have today, morphed into a blend of autocratic socialism. Divisions in our neighborhoods are widened by fiscal decay. Rumpelstiltskin’s talent of spinning gold from straw is easy to metaphorically align with the helicopter fiat currency being manufactured from our government, banks and the Federal Reserve’s political hot air!
However, as I continue to plumb the Great Principle aspect called Mind as it relates to my self-awareness, I find that I have to stay aware of you and all the you who connect personally and impersonally through daily dramas viewed, listened to, and read on ……I pads, I phones, I watches, old fashion television, really old fashion radios, and relics called newspapers. All that constructive connection requires communication.
I have written before how I believe our written and spoken words with each other is very linear. (Shallow, if you will.) Having said that you must ask me why do I have passion for the written word as constructed in a story or a novel? My interest for the well written story comes from the apparently limitless ways great writers can spin and weave different words thus creating magical worlds from such shallow linear threads knitted from word yarn.
There you have it! Was the following life lesson we all go through as a toddler though childhood, learning to read, a waste of time? Using myself as an example; I first learned the alphabet of my understood language. ( English.) Then I learned to put words together to form sentences. Next I learned to put sentences together to form paragraphs or concepts. I went further and learned to extend paragraphs and concepts into book form. Voila, I was reading. Adding two more ingredients to this reading recipe, imagination and attention to details, voila (again), I was writing.
Of course it was not a waste of time. I feel learning to read and write is only the beginning of our quest for great communication and understanding. And Grimm’s Fairy Tales lead the way to the next step, understanding symbolism.
Another example of words inspiring keys, unlocking our emotions and relieving the tension in our lives, is swearing. When our daughter and sons were expressing their displeasure at their usual high volume, a favorite parental expression of mine was, Use your words! Well around the age of eight or nine they learned from their fellow eight and nine year old colleagues (and maybe me) words that vented the same tensions; Shit! F**k! G**damn it! Wow, what language! Substitute words so shallow, linear, yet again so marvelous, came to the rescue. Good grief! Oh my word! Shoot! For Heavens sake! Mercy me! Did I parent our kids into using these and so many other substitute phrases? No, afraid not, but I did attempt to parent by example while limiting my need to curse out loud in multi generational company. (Ya right!)
This month I began reading Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises. I must confess I never took the time to read this novel until now. I am enjoying his genius for sentence creation and the dialogues he penned between his characters of the novel.
One Hemingway novel I read as a young man, The Old Man and the Sea, will be read again, soon. As I mentioned earlier, I look forward to reading it with my old man eyes. I enjoyed Hemingway’s story as it related to the old man as a fisherman along with the great fish’s fight for survival! This summer I will re-read that same story as an old man and empathize with more symbolism understood now, missed by me then.
My Lighthouse reflections enlighten me with this; Yes, we use our words and they can be stitched together by masters in many magical patterns, but we communicate with ourselves and others symbolically by using all our senses and our intuition. I need to be more aware of those symbols in my life!
Be in peace and joy!
Thank you for reading.
Mark