Under the Garden

What sets a life in motion? In Under the Garden, a seven year old boy goes through an experience much like Alice's in Wonderland; he crawls under an enormous old tree and encounters two peculiar people, one mute, another who seems like a combination of the White Knight and Humpty Dumpty, handing down prescriptive statements that seem to defy ordinary common sense.

Cláudia has pointed out that the protagonist has a "wild itch" (his last name being Wilditch) to go exploring across the world, an urge implanted in him by Javitt, the emperor of the peculiar underground kingdom. The adult Wilditch has been diagnosed with cancer, an interior mystery - Cláudia suggests that in travelling back to the origins of his story, he is trying to solve a deeper mystery.

The story puts me in mind of these lines from Yeats from The Circus Animals' Desertion, which I have quoted before:

I must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

Further thoughts on the story will be in comments, since I know it's only some of my readers who are reading the Greene story. For next time, which will be May 30, let's read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Story Collection The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and her Heartless Grandmother. I am going to keep Titus' suggestions in mind for the time after.

Variant, my nexus of consolation

The original phrase makes more sense with the illustration, I hope you will read it on this post at A Room of One's Own.

That ain't natural

Cats don't belong in nests! The doll is changing...there is a hint in what Bosco is sitting in. More mystification later.

In other news, you may be seeing more drawing here for the next little while, my camera's shutter has the hiccups. It's under warranty though, I was thrilled to find out. I swear it's taking the pictures of teeny tiny things that caused it to blow up.

Old Man with a Beard

There was an old man with a beard

Who said it is just as I feared

Two owls and a hen,

Four larks and a wren

Have all built their nests in my beard

                         -Edward Lear