Janus-faced Imaginations

"How many words are there?" my son asks when we are driving to the kindergarten.

It is a French kidergarten, free of charge, because the French government pays for the teacher and the city of Tampere for the rent. Pascal and Nady, the teachers, are specialised in Montessory pedagogy. In other words, we have luxury in our life.

Anybody can get their children in there. Anyway, they don´t. The simple reason is that luxury does not look like luxury when it is too near and too easy to reach. It is normal and normality can make things invisible and difficult to detect.

When a child starts wondering how many words there are, it is likely that he is learning to identify differences that make a difference as Gregory Bateson says.

"Imagination is strange. Think of Bill Watterson (the creator of Calvin and Hobbes), for instance. He must have Bill Watterson´s imagination and he must also have the imagination Calvin has." my son says in the car another day.

Obviously the car was an ideal place for deep thinking and sharing ideas. At least it was a place where the next occurence did not immediately wipe out the ideas talked about. They had time to become registered and remembered.

Once more we were on our 15-minute drive to the French kindergarten. My son asks:
"Mother, do you know what you should do when you feel really bad?"
"No."
"You should spread it as wide as possible."
"That sounds interesting."
"Yes, that is what Calvin says we should do."

If you ever have children buy them Legos and read them Calvin and Hobbes. Intelligent children are fun when they are small and a challenge when they grow up. When grown-up they make choices that inevitably make you wonder if they use their intelligence reasonably.

I do not mean that we should be overly rational all the time. I mean that it is extremely easy to seriously mess up one´s life for short-term benefits. Life will offer much more than we first believe possible. Being intelligent, obstinate and in a hurry can result in an accumulation of unnecessary life burden.

Little children think clearly. I do not know what my children were doing. I just overheard them: "There you have a problem." my son states in amatter-of-fact way.
"How are you going to solve it?" he asks.
"With rhetoric and reason." my daughter says without the slightest hesitation.

Her method is perfect. The only problem is that there are people who are not reachable either by means of rhetoric or by reason. God save us from them. May he keep them just rare anomalies that do not disturb what is normal.

Bill Watterson´s imagination came to my mind when I read Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann
(Finnish edition Murha laitumella). Maybe you should not read how the book has been presented. I knew practically nothing about it beforehand. It had never occured to me that the sheep really must have an eye on us human beings. If they didn´t, they would not get along in life.

In Spain my friends have sheep that are taken care of by a couple of shepherds. In Scotland I have seen sheep taken care of by dogs only. I know a sheep shearer from New Zealand. So far we are not personal friends, but maybe one day. He is a very entertaining and highly appreciated organisational trainer. Perhaps, his skill to share information and experience with his audience has its origins in the intelligence and imagination of the sheep he has shorn.

As sheep seem to smuggle their way into this text it is well worth mentioning a book I read in winter. It is Bulibasha King of the Gypsies by Witi Ihimaera (ISBN: 0-14-025432-3). It is an introduction to a world you may never have known to exist.

Life is more or less the same anywhere where people live - and anyhow - there are differences that make a difference. And there are people who are able to describe those differences to us. It is luxury, especially if you think what ambitious writing means in practice. I just finished reading El mundo by Juan José Millas (ISBN:978-84-08-07596-7).

He says "... escritura abre y cauteriza al mismo tiempo las heridas." Writing simultaneuously opens and heals wounds.

Millas also describes how he as a child, by chance, found out what happens to people when they have died:

"Los muertos vivían en otro barrio, pues. Había un barrio ocupado por ellos." ... "Las calles, en aquel lugar, estaban empedradas (en mi barrio, la mayoría eran de tierra) y los edificios, altos y distinguidos, tenían en sus bajos tiendas cuyos escaparates no podías dejar de mirar." There was a district in his town - Madrid - where the dead people lived. It was almost like the district where Millás himself lived, but not exactly.

The secret of rich and luxurious life is hidden into the concept "exactly alike, just a little different."

The origin of the differences that make a difference lies somewhere outside ´you´. You need somebody else to mark out the differences that make a difference. Having been marked, we tend to think that it was me who found it. It is just that shared experiences become our personal experiences and what are you able to own if not your experiences...

Writing is solitary work. People who read lead a priviledged life. They are never lonely, for instance.

We all are lucky to have so many words that can be combined in so many ways to point out so many slight differences that may construct new experiences.

At eleven-thirty I had to put on the lights. Nights are getting dark again. So far the summer has been cold, but beautiful. This is quite normal, athough we would prefer having some hot weather sometime, too. Not for too long, just the normal 11 days a year. So far we have had just two of them.

If you live in Madrid, just look around to see whether your barrio es un barrio de los vivos o de los muertos. The difference might be a bit difficult to detect at the first sight, but I´m sure you´ll learn to pick up the real differences that make a difference.