Rootabaga Redivivus

--  Jeepers, creepers -- whereja get those peepers?

-- Got ‘em off the Peeper Tree;

   Tater-Face Blindman  giv’m t’me.

[If you can hearken to such a hypnotic jingle, and sense the theophany  within its wisps,  then you might enjoy our series of poems and essayettes  in the Rootabagian vein;  beginning here:

https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/10/rootabaga-saga-incipit.html ]

Zora Neale Hurston meets the Rootabaga Stories

Death,

that strange being

with the huge square toes,

who lived       way in the West.

[from:  Their Eyes were Watching God (1937)]

After a Night of Sleet

O no    the Icemonster   ate up all the squirrels !

Now the world is sad !!

On the same cat, sunning herself, on the same spot, again

  On the same cat, sunning herself, on the same spot, again

    Will you look at that cat … !

    Can you top that ??

    I can’t !

[Appendix from English literature]

The lady-mother of the kitten  sat sunning her white bosom

in the window,

and looked round  with a sleepy air of expecting caresses,

though she was not going to take any trouble for them.

-- George Eliot, Silas Marner (1861)

And, with the sunlight itself  being depicted as a cat:

All the windows in the villa were open.  Sunlight made itself comfortable in unexpected corners of the room.

-- Vladimir Nabokov, King, Queen, Knave (1968), p. 227

Tales of Winter, in Rootabaga Country

One winter back then, it got so cold, all the snowmen froze to death;  and the moon  stuck to the sky.

‘Nother time, Time froze, so it looked like we’d have winter forever.

But then the Blind Man had a good idea.  He broke out the firewater, and soon all was well.

There’s another story somewhere but I can’t tell it cos I can’t thaw it.

So those are the tales they tell, out in Rootabaga Country.

Folks around here  believes them all;  so I reckon they must be true.

~

[Update, even deeper into winter.  February the Frigid.]

I finally arrive at work, after trudging in from a far parking-lot.   I tell my podmates (whose upturned faces observe what must look like an entering yeti):  “Ask me if it’s cold.”

Exchanged glances.  Then, dutifully, someone recites:  “Is it cold?”

Momentarily I act nonplussed, as though the question made no sense.  “Is it -- ‘cold’?  Relative to what?  It isn’t cold relative to Pluto;  this would be like a summer’s day to them.  On Pluto, the oxygen is in a solid state, like peanut brittle;  to breathe, you have to break off a chunk and chew.”

Everyone allowed as how we’re lucky it isn’t that cold right here right now.

Psychological Epigrams (weiter erweitert)

From random reading, things worth noting -- things worth quoting.

(Plus some of them I made up myself.)

(0)

If analysis worked, the Japanese would long ago have adapted it, and flooded the market …

-- Ernest Gellner, The Psychoanalytic Movement (1985; 2^nd edn. 1993), p. 205

(1)

The self-betrayal of another  is sucked in through all our pores.

-- Theodor Reik, The Search Within (1956)

(2)

In localities where people belch at meals,

it is unwise to ask after the womenfolk;

and in localities where people are asking after the womenfolk,

it is unwise to belch at meals.

-- Eric Berne, Games People Play (1964)

(3)

Fat people  are more inclined to eat their object  than to bite it.

-- Theodor Reik, The Search Within (1956)

To appreciate the epigrammatic force of this,  you need to know that, in psychoanalytic parlance, “object” refers, not to an object,   but to a human being.  -- The basic idea behind the epigram, is that of Caesar:  “Let me have men about me that are fat / bald-headed men, such as sleep o’ nights …”

(4)

The dream is not prophetic of ill  but is ill itself.  It is bad to dream certain things.

-- Jonathan Towers, characterizing shamanism; in Io viii (1971)

(5) Re joining the “Magic Mountain” sanatarium for consumptives, Hans Castorp (etwa the naïf of the novel) observes:

Manche gewöhnen sich nie, sagte mein Vetter mir gleich, als ich ankam.  Aber man gewöhnt sich daran, daß man sich nicht gewöhnt.

-- Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg (1924)

 (6)

The quicker  second childhood kicks in,

the happier U will B.

-- Bozo the Button Buster

(7)

Prostitution ist ja eine Angelegentheit,  bei der

es einen grossen Unterschied macht,

ob man sie

von oben sieht ….

od-er    von ….

un-ten  betrachtet …

-- Robert Musil, Der Mann ohneEigenschaften (vol. I: 1930)

*

Falls Sie im Doktor-Justiz-Sammelsurium

weiterblättern möchten,

Bitte hier klicken:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/Deutschtum

*

(8)

Observe the curious working of history:  Archimedes’ death is familiar  because of Plutarch’s interest in Marcellus;  of Marcellus  it is generally remembered  only that  one of his soldiers  murdered Archimedes.

--  James R. Newman, ed. World of Mathematics (1956), p. 179

(9)  Freud on Nacktheitsträume and the origins of Paradise:

Diese  der Scham entbehrende  Kindheit 

erscheint unserer Rückschau später  als ein Paradies,

und das Paradies  selbst

ist nichts anderes

als die Massenphantasie  von der Kindheit des einzelnen.

-- Die Traumdeutung (1899)

Actually, if that were true, you would expect an individual’s conception of Heaven to correlate strongly with his personal experiences in early childhood;  but seemingly they do not. 

I myself, for example, had quite a nice childhood, with storytime and Pooh-bear and my very own coonskin cap.   But my idea of the Afterlife  is purely that of doing math, with the insight of angels.

~

Was für Krimi liest wohl Dr. Sigmund Freud?

Schauen Sie mal!

Sigmund Freud und Sherlock Holmes

~

(10)  

Civilization consists in progressive renunciation;

 contrariwise  the superman.

-- Sigmund Freud, letter to Wm Fliess, 1897.

(Note:  Very early in his career;  don't call him on this.)

(11) Finally, one perhaps pardonable autocitation:

Every normal male must repeatedly withstand the beckonings of his testes, and is the better for having learned to do so.  Yet some of those who do not share his natural inclinations,  are proceeding extraordinarily far in punishing and repressing that inborn bloom, on the strength of which -- and without which, not -- civilization has managed to survive and thrive, through wind and wars and pestilence.

-- Dr J, Looking at Someone Up and Down

Rootabaga Exegetics

To understand the Rootabaga Poems,  it helps to know a considerable number of hoboes;  but sometimes a knowledge of basic QED comes in handy as well.

Thus, consider this monostich from the Field Notes to the collection:

“Now Tommy, you put that bickerjingle   back into the bickerjingle jar.”

Funny word, that;  like “snapdoodle” or “whipperginnie”.  But, instead of spreading wings like these (as indeed it does not deserve to, as the space of human fantasy is already sufficiently crowded as it is) -- instead of breaking free from the fragile setting of its virtual birth -- it goes right back in the bickerjingle jar !

The Land of Whipperginny

The ancients had a haiku, said pretty much the same thing:

Virtual photon:

so soon as it’s emitted

it gets re-absorbed.

Yet there is another, gentler lesson here:

In Rootabaga Country, each thing, each least thing  has its proper and appointed place: 
if only, as for the humble bickerjingle, its own appointed jar.

Der Schneekönig

Leafing through one of my favorite books (Karl Wildhagen’s German-English dictionary),  I happened upon the following expression:

Er freut sich wie ein Schneekönig

he is as merry as a grig

Now -- grigs are proverbially merry;  but why should the Schneekönig be that way?

We looked into the matter, and found that the explanation is really quite simple:

The Schneekönig is much beloved among the snow-bunnies.

Round and around and around him they run,

till his silly head is spinning,

and he is dizzy with love and laughter.

(And the hop-happy sandboy  laughs along with.)

~

O my gracious !  Just stumbled across another allusion to snow-bunnies  in that same fine reference source:

der Osterhase

Easter-hare (that lays the Easter eggs)

Not many people realize where Easter eggs come from  but now you know!

~

Heavens to Betsy -- Yet another covert snow-bunny reference from that wonderful book!

  ~  schlohweiss  ~

This is a word  impossible to define (I invented it myself, before I was born);  but Dr. Wildhagen does his best:  he calls it “white as snow".  The tricky part is: “schloh” by itself  isn’t a word;  to say ‘snow’, you say Schnee.   So,  schneeweiss means ‘snow-white, white as snow’.  Whereas schlohweiss means:  white as snowbunnies.

Now, many things are white, and some are quite white;  your laundry might be ‘whiter than white’ if you use the new Tide.   A few things are even:  blindingly white.  But only snow-bunnies are exactly, precisely as white as the snow.  

And that means you can’t see them -- a scientist would explain.

But the real reason they’re invisible is:  they’re shy.

Be very gentle with snow-bunnies if you see one (you won't),
because they're really very, very shy.

Rootabaga Poems

[Note from the Raggedy Man, who found them in a barrel:

These are not all one big long poem, except in the same way that all of life is one big long poem.   The only reason they’re all printed here  all jostling up together, is that our family is too poor to afford more paper.  Each single piece between the little stars, is its own individual special lone personal poem.  Some of them are social, but most of them would just as soon be left alone. 

So, they shouldn’t ought to be read  one after the other  in rapid pitter-patter succession   like wolfing down peas off a knife.  Rather, read one, then go off and do things for many years, and later, if you’re still alive, read another one; or not. 

Better yet – they should all be split up, and each one given  to people on different planets, each planet would have its own lone special poem.

So here we go.]

***

Look – It’s Bozo the Button Buster!

whistling softly, sadly smiling,

all amid a pile of busted buttons.

*

[A couple of hundred years pass – you get the idea.]

*

“No-one knows the secret of the Thimblefolk, save the silentminded sleepypeepered Muffin Man.”

-- Hmmpf.  Did a cat tell you that?  Don’t believe it.  Never believe a cat.

*

Sometimes the sun’s so sad and slanty

it sends rays right through the windows in my head

*

The barrow-boy Nice ‘n’ Tiny  is tiny & nice:  whence the name.

But he knows something he is not letting on,

and it furrows his forehead like rain.

*

[Remember – We’re on another planet, now…]

*

So where does a cat go when the sky snows? – That way.

And who does the time flow if the mind blows? – This one.

*

In their burrow,  bunnies cluster,

whispering rootabagastories.

*

So dark, so dark!  Yet, like the night,

the green moon  sheds its dreambeams.

*

Oh oh!  Oh no!  It’s the Sandwich Man!

He’s come to sell us his sandwiches!

Run, children, run run run run runrunrunrunrun.

*

How well I recall, when we were but young,

laughing on the lap of the Potato Face Blind Man.

How he used to tell lies and lies!

*

Do – oo – oo . . .   you know,

Who – oo – oo . . .   it is ?   ?    ?

- - -  I do !!

IT’S :    the Potato Face Blind Man, with a sack on his back,

come to sell brushes to our mother.

*

One day    a terrible  Thing  happened;

but then it went away.

& the next day   a

sun shone     and

flowers blooming   bunnies zooming

all the mushrooms  getting married

several simply  hedgehogs happy

ducks & rainbows   getting dizzy

mice and moonbeams    feeling sleepy …

(Say goodnight to One-Horse Pappy.

-- Shush – don’t talk – you’ll wake the baby.)

*

“No-ow, I’m as generous as the next man,” said

(thumbs hooked in his vest pockets  decorated with dollar signs)

the Evil, Grasping, Stingy Stinking Miser;

“But I draw the line   at handing a dime

to an orphan on the point of dying for lack of a donut.”

The Rootabagan Creation-Myth

Time was, Time itself

was all curled up around inside itself,

like nectar in a flower.

And there it lay dreaming,

an age and a day.

Till along one day  dropped by

the sweetly silent, slyly smiling

honeybumble mumblebee:

and It

did sip

from that deep cup.

Then, Forth

from the flowerfolded   gentle-petaled

bud of All that Is,

came  tumbling & rumbling

a fanfare from the Horn of Plenty --

moonstones, sunbeams,

tinymice and bunny-babies,

stems - stalks - stars - storks

taffycats and caterpillars

on and down and out and

being born,   being born,

being born …

Conclusive Proof, that All the World is but a Footnote to the Rootabaga Stories

Ladies, Penguins, and Gentlemen of the Jury:

If it please the Court –

In the Rootabaga Stories, we find foreshadowed, everything that has ever been thought or written  before or since.  Evidential examples:

=> Scrooge McDuck: a straightforward rewriting of Johnny the Wham, who slept in his money bin, covered with money.

=> The Catcher in the Rye: an obvious ripoff of the “ball towns hidden in the tall grass.”

=> Homer the Bard: a knockoff of the Potato Face Blind Man, minus the accordion.

=> The Riemann Hypothesis: just like the grasshoppers that learned to count, and kept on  counting and counting.   Same basic idea.

Go ahead – just try to stump me.

“OK try this one:  ‘Four score and seven years—‘ “
“—The Potato Face Blind Man said that.”

“ ‘To be or not to—‘ “
“—Dippy the Wisp said that.”

You see?

Does any man argue to the contrary?  No?  Good then.

I  rest  my  case.

The Theology of Rootabaga

The Lord loves flapjacks.  How’d I know?

Potato Faced Blind Man 

told

me

so.

Field-notes

I went out into the wee wide world, with my listening-ears on, to hear what our fellow-folk were saying, in the fields and feedlots, dimestores and dram-shops,  hayrides and waysides  and over cakes and tea.   So here you have it:  Statements overheard  on the broad clean streets  of our everyday own town,  right here in Rootabaga country.

“I hear tell Bozo the Button Buster is sweet on Flossie the Feather Duster.”

“I’m hearing much the same thing.”

“Mrs. Portly is proud  of her prize plump pumpkin.”

“As well she might be!  The prize pumpkin’s pleased as Punch with her.”

“… just like the Blind Man said.”

“Now, … which Blind Man might you be referring to?  Old Potato Face, or the other one?”

“…and old man Weatherrumper, with a sly eye, just like he was a-knowing something.”

“Oh yes, he knows, but he ain’t lettin’ on!”

“… sittin’ on a fence post, just as pleased as he could be!”

“Cushionhead – you’re a man of sense!  So let me ask you:

whether quick Sally Klippspringer,

or sly Solly Rippledinger,

will win the prize this year.”

(chucking her under the chin) “So say, Mother Wamperknuckle, tell me what have you fixed  for my own fine dinner.”

“Aw, g’wan with you!” (pleased, though). “Just spuds ‘n’ goobers, with a little salt.”

“’Scuse please, me I’m just going to the moon, get me a piece of cheese.”

“Miss Millikins, you’ll do  no  such  thing!”

“…when who should I see  but Wee Missie Middlethumbkin,  fiddling with her bonnet string.”

“Now Tommy, you put that bickerjingle   back into the bickerjingle jar.”

“No no, not that one.   The big brass bong with the buttons on ‘er.”

So, all is as well as well might be, right here in  Rootabaga Country.

A Voice from the Pulpit

“… So you’ll find it all right  there,”  concluded the preacher,

closing the well-worn leatherbound volume, and thumping it familiarly with his palm.

“Right there in the Rootabaga Stories.”

A momentary confusion.

“I meant the Bible, of course.”

A Sorrowful Admission

Yes, well,

let’s be frank and manly about it.

No sense in crying about what’s done & done.

:

There is nothing that I have ever penned or said

that was not previously uttered, in so many words, by Bozo the Button Buster,

and probably twelve times better, if we can believe the duck.

An Unexpected Guest

Who’s that knockknocking   at my garden gate?

Why, it’s the Potato Face Blind Man, as I live and breathe!

Come on in, and rest your pegs, and puff a pipe awhile.

You do the listening, and I’ll tell the lies.

*  *

[Well, now, that was fun, and that was fine.   But sometimes a man has got to face facts,
and here they are:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-sorrowful-admission.html  ]

How Was I to Know???

How was I to know,

that every single thing I’d ever

do or say or think or feel or dream

was already present, to the letter, spelled out,

right there in the Rootabaga Stories,

exactly as I (centuries thereafter)

did do it, said it, thought it, felt it, dreamt it?

How could a body have possibly known that?

And so, like a fool, I lived a life all over again,

exactly as predicted by the Potato Face Blind Man.

~

[Liked that?  Sure you did.
Reckoned you would.
You'll likely like this too:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/10/an-unexpected-guest.html ]

C. Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories: the Verdict of the Committee

e e cummings but with whole words and without the funnyfancy typography eom

.

.

.

[Now, you've probably got some chores to do, so go run along and do'em.  Don't keep Ma waiting.
But when you're done, you can click right here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-was-i-to-know.html ]

Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories: A Centennial Assessment

Someone in a newspaper mentioned Rootabaga Stories, and I say to myself:  Why not just up and read this book?  So I go to the library and – next thing you know!

So I look at this book, at how nice it is and all, and set aside a time for crying, that I never did read this book as a child, nor was it ever read to me; although I’d heard tell of it.

            But then I read on a little more, and the next thing you know, an entirely different kind of idea is inside my head.  Which is:  that this book, no way it should be placed into the hands of any child beneath the age of forty-five.  He reads it, he grows up a Surrealist!  You talk like that book there, nobody can’t half understand what you’re saying, ‘cepting the Potato Face Blind Man – and he’s asleep!

            So no:  Your little ones want something to read, you give ‘em something straightforward and sensible, like Moby Dick.

[Like another slice of that pie?  Click here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/10/c-sandburgs-rootabaga-stories-verdict.html
Go ahead! 'Twon't bite you.

ROOTABAGA SAGA (Incipit)

I borrowed a book from the library, and learned a funny thing:  I no longer need to write anymore, because everything I have to say  has already been said – in Rootabaga Stories.  (Mr. Sandburg wrote that.)  Anything I ever have thought or put to paper, it’s already right there in that book!

But people are that ornery, that most of them refuse to read it, even though it’d do’m a power of good.  So I reckon I’ll keep on writing.

So anyhow  here’s a story you might not know,  even though it really did happen.

This very morning, in fact.

WOODCHUCK TALES

(1) The Tale of the All-scared Woodchuck

From the top of the hill, I perceive, at the bottom, the telltale furry blur of a browsing woodchuck.  He likewise perceives me, and, despite the distance, he takes flight.

(2) The Tale of the Not-scared Woodchuck

            Yet not ten minutes later, as I walk through the world, I come upon another, suddenly, around a bend, and well within danger distance.  But he does not make a break for it.  So I stop in my tracks, and whisk off my hat, and wave it, and bow, and start making my patented vegetarian not-gonna-eat-you sounds.  He considers, is satisfied, and resumes his browsing.

            This goes on for a while.  I take a step forwards; he considers; I pantomime universal peace between Man and Woodchuck; and he goes back to browsing, eventually not even keeping me in his field of view,  occasionally even coming a smidgen closer.

            Bond, bond, bond.

            And as heart-stopping climax to this suspenseful engagement – he leaves (with a certain waddly dignity) his little patch of grass, and crosses the asphalt path on which I’m standing, to reach (for reasons best known  to his own furry self) the similar little patch of grass on the yonder side.

            I now have a name for this particular woodchuck.  I call him, “My Special Woodchuck Friend.”

(3) The Tale of the All-scared Woodchuck, part II

            On the way back, I again encounter the first woodchuck, back at his browsing.  This time I’m too quick for him:  Before he can move a muscle – Off comes the hat, on comes the Vegetarian Pacifist sound.  Yet despite the utterly non-carnivorous tenor of my behavior (though admittedly a tad eccentric), he quickly scuttles off.

            I think I’ll call this one “Mr. Scaredy-chuck.”  See how he likes that!

[You want s'more Rootabaga, y'all just click right here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/10/carl-sandburgs-rootabaga-stories.html ]