'Now,' she said, 'you step into the bucket. You don't have to take your shoes off or anything. Just step in.'
It did not even seem like a strange request. She let go of one of my hands, kept hold of the other. I thought, I will never let go of your hand, not unless you tell me to. I put one foot into the glimmering water of the bucket, raising the water level almost to the edge. My foot rested on the tin floor of the bucket. The water was cool on my foot, not cold. I put the other foot into the water and I went down with it, down like a marble statue, and the waves of Lettie Hempstock's ocean closed over my head.
...
I was holding my breath. I held it until I could hold it no longer, and then I let the air out in a bubbling rush and gulped a breath in, expecting to choke, to splutter, to die.
I did not choke. I felt the coldness of the water--if it was water--pour into my nose and my throat, felt it in my lungs, but that was all it did. It did not hurt me.
I thought, This is the kind of water you can breathe. I thought, Perhaps there is just a secret to breathing water, something simple that everyone could do, if only they knew. That was what I thought.
That was the first thing I thought.
The second thing I thought was that I knew everything. Lettie Hempstock's ocean flowed inside me, and it filled the entire universe from Egg to Rose. I knew that. I knew what Egg was--where the universe began, to the sound of uncreated voices singing in the void--and I knew where Rose was--the peculiar crinkling of space on space into dimensions that fold like origami and blossom like strange orchids, and which would mark the last good time before the eventual end of everything and the next Big Bang, which would be, I knew now, nothing of the kind."
Those words aren't mine. They are Neil Gaiman's, excerpted from The Ocean at the End of the Lane. They encapsulate the feeling with which I'm left after finally reading this book. I bought it--signed by Neil himself--at a reading he performed and talk he gave at the magnificent Majestic Theater in Dallas a few years ago. Somehow I'd forgotten to read it then. But then I noticed it on my bookshelf recently and was moved to read it now.
Drinking deep. Drinking so deep he's filled with Lettie Hempstock's ocean. And he needs saving, not dissimilar from Charles in A Wrinkle in Time needing to be saved from the IT. And as the battle with the hunger birds ensues after he and Lettie exit her ocean, she indeed saves him, and then he hears someone humming a tune "from a long way away," and it's an old nursery rhyme: Girls and Boys Come Out to Play.
"...the moon doth shine as bright as day.
Leave your supper and leave your meat,
and join your playfellows in the street.
Come with a whoop and come with a call.
Come with a whole heart or not at all."
And that nursery rhyme is one I know, too. Sort of. It turns out that it's clearly the inspiration for, and loosely smooshed together with, Wee Willie Winkie (the reference to which I only discovered as I was reading from a children's book my daughter has), in a song called Babylon by an old band called Clandestine that I used to go see play in Austin years ago when I lived there. It makes me wonder how many other nursery rhymes are conglomerated into this dear song. I've found two references now in this one song that's always made my heart sing. Maybe I'll come across other references as time marches on. In the meantime, I'm loving the ongoing serendipitous connection. The Wee Willie Winkie reference is in the fifth stanza, and the Girls and Boys Come Out to Play reference is in the eighth stanza. And astonishingly, and unwittingly, the sixth stanza pretty much sums up this part of Ocean quite nicely. Babylon was released by Clandestine years before the Ocean book, and I'd be shocked if Neil ever heard the song, but I suppose one never knows.
As soon as I finished reading Neil's Ocean yesterday, I went and listened to Babylon, singing quietly along, every word by heart, and all the while connecting the dots and juxtaposing the two, drinking in the metaphors. Filled up with my own deep ocean.
Here are the lyrics... it's hard to find a version of the song to listen to online, of course, if you don't already have it at your fingertips like I do, but it's worth the effort....
"How many miles to Babylon?
- Threescore and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
- Yes, and back again.
How many miles to Babylon?
- Threescore and ten.
Down on the carpet, you shall kneel,
While the green grass grows at your feet.
Stand up straight, and choose the one you love,
And choose the one you love.
If wishes were horses and beggars could ride,
I'd be over the sea with you at my side.
But if "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans
There'd be no work for a traveller.
How many miles to Babylon?
- Threescore and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
- Yes, and back again.
How many miles to Babylon?
- Threescore and ten.
Up all night, and running through the town -
Upstairs and downstairs, in my nightgown.
Peering through the windows,
And crying through the locks,
"Oh, where is my sweetheart, it's eight o'clock!"
Lavender green, lavender blue
If you love me, I will love you.
I'd skip over ocean and dance over sea,
All the birds in the world can't catch me!
How many miles to Babylon?
- Threescore and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
- Yes, and back again.
How many miles to Babylon?
- Threescore and ten.
Come out with me, and come out to play -
The moon, it shines as bright as day.
Oh, leave your supper, and leave your sleep;
Come down with your friends now,
Here in the street."
"Babylon"
by Clandestine
No comments:
Post a Comment