Another friend of mine: The Little Prince August 21, 2007

Of all the little boys in children’s books, the Little Prince is the greatest heartbreaker, but his tale leaves you happy-sad. Patiently, he travels from planet to planet learning grown-up ways, and just as patiently, he turns them on their head.

The characters he meets in outer space are the shards of human weakness that make up our delusions — the conceited man who wants to be admired, the tippler who drinks to forget that he drinks, the businessman who thinks he owns the stars, the lamplighter who must light and extinguish his lamp every minute because his planet revolves so quickly.

Unfazed by extreme personalities, the Little Prince soldiers on until he reaches the earth. Here he befriends a fox and a man he finds lost in the desert. In typical Little Prince logic, the gifts they give each other cannot be seen or touched — only felt. The Prince teaches the man to trust, leading him to a well in the heart of the Sahara. The fox teaches the Prince about attachment, begging the little boy to tame him.

No sooner do we get to know the Prince (and like anyone worthwhile, he’s hard to get to know) than he has to leave. Before splitting the scene, the Prince asks us to believe that he is not dead but merely traveling back through space.

The joy of this book lies in the fact that it covers heavy ground (love, death, yearning) without being earnest or maudlin. Like a good friend, it makes you an accomplice in a secret language and forces you to be understanding toward peculiar ways. After The Little Prince, you’ll want to draw everything (no matter how clumsily) and question everything.

And you’ll never see the stars the same way again.

A book for precocious grownups August 19, 2007

Happiness is more than the absence of pain*;  it is a radical shift from one state into another. It’s a move from darkness into light. It’s a smell like lavender or a freshly baked pie. It’s the feel of a new dress or the wag of Rileydog’s tail… anything that jolts introspection and forces you up and out.

When I want to feel happy I try to change my context — move into a ray of sunlight, thrust through the air on a swing until my toes reach clouds, read a book in a bubble bath, saucily swing dance with Sneakered Prince, or go to the lake and think of a place I’d rather be.

If all else fails, I reach for a stack of children’s books and let them take me to that realm of lighter spirits. A good picture book makes you laugh and think and smile. They give you good impulses: to chase invisible dragons, laugh at your own bad jokes, paint autumn leaves pretty pink, wear cowboy boots and flamingo lipstick to the supermarket, or treat a pebble beach like a jewelry store and select faux diamonds and pearls for your moonstone tiara.

Sometimes being true to yourself means looking a little eccentric to the outside world. To do this you need a very supportive crcle of imaginary friends. Eloise is one of mine.

Everyone talks about finding your inner child, but what a new-age hocus-pocus image that summons up. Better to excavate the naughtier incarnation of the inner brat. Eloise is the best brat of all because she has tangled hair, a potbelly, and a bad-girl attitude that makes a mockery of adult ways and leads us back to the sandbox where snobby airs are shed and the most important of all Very Important People is a pet turtle.

Eloise is dead sophisticated. She raises pigeons in the bathroom in the bathroom of her suite at the Plaza Hotel, wears a necklae made of champagne corks, orders one raisin and seven spoons from room service, gets her sneakers cleaned and pressed, and reads the Herald Tribune.

Despite the fact that Eloise dines at Maxim’s and has had a dress designed for her by Christian Dior (sans tassels), she’s no snob. She knows how to make a pair of skis out of two loaves of French bread and order up a whiskey for her nanny. The best thing about Eloise is that she is an uptown girl with bad hair. Her witticims sum up a life of casual swagger and a flagrant disregard for the ordinary:

ELOISEISMS
“You have to eat oatmeal or you’ll dry up. Anybody knows that.”
“Getting bored is not allowed.”
“Paper cups are very good for talking to Mars.”
“I always travel incognito.”

Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you about another friend of mine, The Little Prince.

*Plato