The Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme is a mystery to me. The way that I see it, Humpty Dumpty must have been royalty of sort. I suspect he was the brilliant spoilt youngest son of a very pompous sovereign. The problem with the Humpty Dumpty’s rhyme is that the real lesson or moral of the story takes place before he climbs up onto that wall.
The moral of the story is not about falling or how useless the king’s men are. No, the story is about how Humpty Dumpty got up on the wall in the first place. What sort of life did he live that he came up against the wall? Why was the wall there? Was he a dreamer? A rebel? Was he running away from stifling sovereignly duties?
I knew a Humpty Dumpty in my childhood. He was an architect, possessed with grand visions about the importance of architecture and his own brilliance. He possessed a fine appreciation for art and nature. He was the first person I met, who felt there was absolutely no separation between the two. Art was nature. Nature art.
His family and mine were befriended from the time of my birth. Life was fascinating when he was around. For example, he would take us children out digging for Arawak and Carib Indian artifacts. We would be out under the hot afternoon sun, getting mud under our nails, fire-ant bites on our legs, all the while trying to pry the pottery shards from the grips of the earth. He would transport us back hundreds of years to the time when the Arawak and Carib Indians populated the island.
Then he would reprimand us severely if we whined about heat or thirst or hunger. We were explorers, archaeologists, and not sissies. He could get incredibly angry about things we couldn’t comprehend.
In the evening, having changed into more formal attire, he would charm a
room full of dinner guests. He would talk art, history, and politics. It did
not matter what the topic of interest was, he knew everything there was to
know. Or, at least so it seemed to me as a child and young adult.
Eventually, I began to see the wall on the horizon of his life. His furious intelligence turned to fury. His magnificent visions became hallucination. He started to climb his wall built with bricks of egotism, self-centeredness, megalomania, dementia, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer. Tragically, all the King’s horses and all of us king’s men, we couldn’t put him back together again.
(This is a blog post from 2008 that I am republishing under my Growing Up and Growing Old project)
Lia, I am SO freaking out that you wrote this, because my dad's burning question during the last few weeks of his life was "Why was Humpty Dumpty an egg?" I know he was dreaming about the "brokenness" of his body during those days. We had to look up the origin of the nursery rhyme, and he asked every visitor their opinion. It is so weird that you should bring it up today, which has been one of my tougher days, emotionally, since his death.
ReplyDeleteDearest Yogamum, I remember your posts about your dad. Do you think he got any answer to his question that gave him comfort? The man I am talking about in this piece was someone from my childhood and into my adulthood who was larger than life in every way. His demise was tragic. Yet, if I was to answer your father’s question, why was he an egg. I would absolutely because his shell was both strong and fragile, his heart beautiful and bold, his life complex and tragic.
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