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Stars Shining Bright Above You...
It's still the season of footie pajamas here and the Felix is tottering around, smacking me in the jaw with his firm, firm skull and learning clever things. This week he figured out how to open doors and I'm wondering if I need to do something about that, and if I do, what that something might be.
But that footie loungewear (I was mistaken when I called them pajamas- everyone knows they are Not Intended for Sleepwear) makes him look so much like a character that has only recently popped back into the front of my mind.
My family had a book of reproductions of a fabulous cartoon that was published in the early 20th century called "Little Nemo in Slumberland." I never knew how the book found its way into the house though it wasn't a complete surprise; comics did occasionally make an appearance. We also had huge anthologies of Batman and Wonder Woman comics, but nothing like Little Nemo. The cartoon was drawn and written by Winsor McCay, who is apparently wildly influential. You can see traces of McCay's innovation in Calvin and Hobbes and all kinds of other artists and cartoonists have found his work inspiring. (McCay himself was something of a phenomenon beyond his Nemo work.) The images were astonishing, vividly silly and scary. Perfectly dreamlike, which is what they were: iterations of a little boy's dreams. They contained almost no story and were mostly concerned with experience. It is almost pointless to try to describe them because of the lack of plot. Each episode is a trip to dreamland- some blissful, some nightmares, some full of petty embarrassment that even young boys must fret about- ending with Nemo waking up to an exasperated parental voice but the dreams are exquisite.
When Felix was a few months old, I wrote here about imagining him as a smart little creature, hoarding a world of secrets and talents (beyond the obvious: Why won't you sleep? and What are you complaining about now?). That phase has ended. He is turning again, and in many ways seems younger than he did in his early blobby state. (Really, when a creature is limited to silence and screaming it is just too easy to think he is keeping something from you in that superior way that the silent or at least wordless person is actually more powerful... I'm thinking here about Strindberg's play "The Stronger" but with wailing. Once words start appearing and the first ones turn out to be "bubble" "banana" and "uh-oh" the glimmer of mysticism evaporates.)
Anyway, now I watch Felix and see him thinking. When I peer at him at night, I can see him dreaming, and something about him in those timeless footies reminds me of Little Nemo.
Nemo is bouncing in the Zeitgeist right now, anyway. A new, gigantic and gorgeous book (21 inches tall, 16 inches wide) has been published that carefully restores the cartoon. I gave my husband a copy of Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays! this Christmas, but I find I can't help staring at the gigantic pages full of crazed craziness with Felix's dreamlife in mind.
posted by Elise at 6:17 PM
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