The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy)
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
An extract from my new book 'Forgotten, as a Dream'
I remember little of my grandfather, and this has been one of my great regrets. He was one of the family who encouraged me to read, and used to lie on the couch with me, home from work and perhaps sweaty, his working clothes still on, my head on his shoulder, reading to me and I guess teaching me words. I don't remember this, but can remember remembering for a long time, trying to hold on to the memory of him but slowly losing it. I called him Dad, which was what my mother called him, and I, having no one else to call Dad, followed her lead. I guess that he probably saw me as a son, or perhaps as a kind of return of his own fair haired second son Kenneth who had died as a baby.
.........
So what was Charles reading to his grandson while lying on the couch? The earliest book was probably 'Curly Kitten' who was 'never still; here and there he skips and plays'. Curly has many adventures, including climbing a monkey-puzzle tree and having to be rescued. The monkey-puzzle tree has fascinated me ever since, in my mind I think a tree like a vertical maze, where you could get lost or stuck, rather than one you could climb easily.
Possibly the next, for Christmas 1948, was 'The Runaway', the story of a pet rabbit who escapes and joins the wild rabbits in the woodland - 'Down the hill and through the woodland scampered Sandy free at last, thought no more of Little Michael, and his rabbit-hutchy past!' The same Christmas brought, extraordinarily, 'Black Beauty' a present from Mrs Ness. It had originally been a present to Edna Ness in 1931, and Edna having outgrown it, the book was passed on to me. Edna was the first person (then about 8 years old) my 8 year old mother met at Margaret River, the Nesses living nearby. They were friends until Edna died at a very young age.
A favourite in 1948 or 1949 was 'The Rupert Book' and my grandmother could remember my grandfather reading this one to me. The Rupert books were strange in having a picture, a couplet of poetry underneath, and underneath that two paragraphs of prose which gave the story in more detail. 'The little bear gets quite a fright, when cheeky Jack Frost pops in sight'. 'As Rupert rounds the tree he pulls up with a start, "Good Gracious, who are you?" gasps the little bear. "Wait a minute, I've seen you before! Aren't you Jack Frost?"' And so on.
The alternating picture, prose and poetry was designed to let the reader choose what level was most appropriate for the child being read to. But when I read it myself, the prose and poetry gave a strange feeling of being able to jump from one to another, both telling the same story but in different ways, and the mind make a jump as well. I couldn't choose which one I liked the best, both were equally valid tellings of the story, and I would be forced endlessly backwards and forwards between them. At some point about here, early, I learnt to read for myself, and one day when my grandfather came to read to me he was told I could read for myself. 'Cans't boy read?' he said, astonished, and perhaps dismayed. But I enjoyed him reading to me anyway, and would have enjoyed it even more, made more of it, could I have seen the future.
Dozens of other books followed. 'The Stories of King Arthur' came from a friend of my grandparents in England for Christmas 1951 for example, 'In the long, long ago, there were many small kings reigning over different parts of Britain. The greatest was named Uther Pendragon'.
A favourite in February 1952 was 'The Old Oak Paddock' a wonderful idyll of English farm life 'Jinny stood there perfectly still, remembering things, whilst cocks crowed, and dogs barked, and the moon moved slowly towards Mr Wigg's chimneys'. It deserves to be a classic work of children's literature, if it isn't, but for me it was just a much loved work to be read many times. It gained, perhaps even more than it might have done, a place in my mental furniture, coming, as it did, the year my grandfather died.
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)