Read one of the library books today which was mentioned earlier in the month: The Lying Carpet, by David Lucas. It’s a long format story, in several parts, with illustrations on every page. Several per page, in fact, including some lovely ‘close up’ (and labelled) pictures to underline certain aspects of the story.
Metaphysics for kids? I don’t know what my audience thought, exactly, but I was transported by it. By the notion of being a statue that has come awake, but cannot turn its head. It relies for advice on a tiger carpet behind it. But is the carpet telling the truth? Different versions of the truth? Multiple truths? Or is it all lies?
I won’t spoil the plot by explaining further – go and read it for yourself. I found myself caught up in wondering what it would be like to be the statue – or the carpet – with a limited view, and limited mobility. Having not been well in the last week or so, and having met elderly relatives recently, it took on a more personal meaning to do with life with limitations – and how one might deal with that.
What really caught me was the line ‘…the right words in the right order at the right time’. Isn’t that what we all long for as writers? Both for us to find them, order them, reveal them, all a-right, and, even more miraculous, for the audience to perceive them as such.
I have a copy of The Happy Prince, by Oscar Wilde. I find I am unable to read it aloud without crying before the end. There is something so powerful in a metaphor – metaphysics even – wrapped in a children’s story. I am adding The Lying Carpet to the same category – less crying, perhaps, but no less profound, in a different way from Wilde’s tale.
I realised also, in reading the tale, that writing is equally about something of us remaining. The statue Faith implores the carpet:
” ‘Tell me I won’t be forgotten,’ she said,
‘tell me the door will be opened and someone will find me
and hear me and believe that I’m under a spell.’ ”
Whether or not we see ourselves in either character, the writer longs not to be forgotten. That instead of a door, their book, their article, their work, will be opened, and someone will find it and hear it – and believe the words within it.