Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Paper Mache Dinosaurs

When I was a child I used to build paper-mache dinosaurs. Quite simple process really: take a few small balloons, blow them up with air, and then wrap these balloons up with wet, sticky strips of newspaper. Then, finally try to form this blob into the semblance of a Brontosaurus or a Tyrannosaurus or whatever horrible prehistoric vision your imagination can muster. When your creation dries, the sticky glue forces the structure to hold its form. If you feel particularly crafty, you may paint your dinosaur any which way you deem fit.

On my bookshelf sits a dinosaur I made when I was 9. It is a Brontosaurus and it was painted bright red by an unsteady hand and an unsure eye. My 9-year old breath, so pure and so full of childish hopes and idealistic dreams, I surmise, still sits trapped inside this Brontosaurus which sits preserved like a time capsule, or a Trojan horse, housing someone’s beloved toy soldiers and tin Indians and assorted worthless knick-knacks such as paper clips and bottle caps, buried in a back yard somewhere only to be forgotten. I remember seeing this on PBS: in certain savage nations, warriors will eat the brains and sinewy tendons of conquered foes. The theory is, I suppose, they will absorb their opponent’s strength. Hmmm, with mind racing I wonder devious thoughts. Perhaps if I drilled a small hole in my paper mache Dinosaur and hurriedly sucked out MY encapsulated 9-year old breath in one huge inhalation, would I re-absorb the bright-eyed vigor of my youth, even for an instant? Would the cynicism and jaded hopelessness that come with age be wiped away, even briefly, like a sponge or a wad of “triple absorbent” paper towel wiping away a stain, as you usually see on TV? The twisted, obtuse rationale here would probably be the equivalent to eating a child from a conquered village in the hopes it could somehow slow the impeding, plodding, agonizing approach of age?

Now imagine if you will, somewhere far off in the multi-dimensional expanse a 9-year old boy, brushing his teeth dressed in Superman pajamas, looking in the mirror grudgingly preparing for bed. All of a sudden, the earth rumbles and the lights flicker off, and this child is privy to an apocalyptic vision yanked right out of his own nightmares. What he sees - what this sweet, innocent, unprepared child witnesses this fateful moment on this fateful night: an ugly, desperate, scary man with HIS dinosaur he made for HIS daddy clutched between long fingers. The ugly man this child sees scarily distorted in the bathroom mirror is bent over like a gnarly stick, or a hunchback with dark penetrating eyes gazing deep into his own, lips pressed up against his beloved creation, as though he is thirsty beyond reason lost in the desert, drinking from a canteen. A grotesque image. This man’s chest rising and falling like a pathetic fish sitting in the dry sand, surrounded by life giving oxygen, but dying from suffocation.

20 comments:

LeeLoreya said...

strange how a lot of people remember childhood but not being a child. The child self is usually a strange kid that you wish to hug until you realize it is you.
hum.

Hermes said...

LeeLoreya. If I made the realization this strange child was I, I would want to hug him even tighter, and perhaps take him under my wing and be the father I never had.

LeeLoreya said...

(man that's a beautiful sentence]

I tend to cry stupidly when I see that chubby short haired little girl who looked like a boy and wonder sometimes how it was to be her/me.

Hermes said...

LeeLoreya. Obviously so do I.

SierraBella said...

This was my personal favorite of the stories you've written.
All I can say is WOW!

LeeLoreya said...

I would assume, hermes, that you didn't dress like on that postcard picture back then?

Scribe Called Steff said...

I still have this clay nativity scene (again with the Catholicism) I'd made when I was about 6 or 7. It's in my china cabinet, all gnarled, broken, and pieced together, a headless Christ child and an armless Joseph, with a lump resembling a woolly-massed sheep, and fallen Mary.

It's pretty amusing to look at, but I remember the night I made it, the fierce dedication with which I attacked the creation, and then how I left it out for Santa with milk and cookies, and how Santa left a note saying that he wasn't taking the scene, but leaving it "as a present" for my parents. :)

But dude, I think the monsters in your closet seemed to take up some serious real estate... Wow. Good post, though. Evocative in all the right ways.

thelastditch.blogspot.com

Adrian said...

A painting in an attic may work just as well.

I used to love dinos. The rents took me to the Museum of Natural History in NYC when I was little. I love that memory.

Being a kid was a good time.

Joe said...

By the time I was half finished with reading this post, I'd already had my smart ass comment figured out. The second half of your post made my snark completely irrelevant.

The image of the man in the mirror is savage, vampiric. It's disturbing picturing you that way.

But then again I just recently learned that you have an actual body, and you're not really a typing cigar.

Hermes said...

Sierrabella. I'm glad you liked it.

LeeLoreya. No, the person in the postcard is much different than the child residing in my heart.

Steff. Wow, thanks. Isn't it funny how we value these relics from our youth, even though they may be falling apart and otherwise worthless except to ourselves? Especially things we made. It's like temporarily seeing through those young eyes once again for even but an instant.

Aydreeyin. Being a kid was the best. Summer vacations. Building forts. No JOBS. Silly crushes.....

Digitalicat. You always have something smart-ass to say. However, it's always tasteful, respectful, and incredibly, fittingly clever. Thanks for the feedback, I do appreciate it.

Instead of a typing cigar, I'm now a headless, tattooed body.

WordWhiz said...

Oh to go back to being a child. Back before skepticism. Back when America was the PERFECT country, the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black (so you could tell them apart), policemen were always there to help you, neighbors knew and watched out for each other, summer vacation lasted for two months and Santa Claus could make it all the way around the world in one night.

Yeah...I miss it.

Scribe Called Steff said...

Yep, Hermes. I do have several things around my place that evoke not only my childhood but times throughout my life. I have this huge entertainment hutch that looks like a massive armoire, and when you pull the 2.5x7-foot high door open, inside you find papers and concert tickets and photos of the last 10-15 years of my life papering the interior.

I may have had a difficult life at times, but I love knowing where I've come from and how my worldview has shifted.

Clearly you do, too. :)

(I replied to your reply to my comment about your cigar being evocative of a blowjob for me, a couple postings down below. Heh. ;)

RuKsaK said...

great post as usual - I often wonder what I'd try to tell the me-as-a-kid, but always see my-adult-self getting arrested for it.

Hermes said...

Steve. I understand what you're getting at completely.

Like you I get a little scared when I look at pictures of myself as a kid, then I realize it's probably because of the goofy clothes my mom dressed me in. I mean...suspenders?!?

Sar. Thanks. You know what? Now that you mention it, Yes, I do think I'd make a great dad. There are moments I act goofier than any child. Plus, I love comic books and video games and ball. Who wouldn't want to have me as their dad?

Don't you sometimes wish you could turn back the clock and be a child again briefly BUT with people you've met later in life?

Wordwhiz. It's funny you mention that. When I was a child I was TERRIFIED of war and nuclear strikes. I was rather paranoid.

Steff. We have to remember our roots...where we came from.

Also, isn't weird how when you're a teen, you'd find your parents embarassing, but as an adult, the things they liked you adopt as your own...suddenly you look back and realize how cool they actually were? Or maybe it's just me.

Ruksak. "I often wonder what I'd try to tell the me-as-a-kid, but always see my-adult-self getting arrested for it." Great line. lol.

Fuck, I'd probably buy MYSELF beer and cigarettes.

Kirsi Marcus said...

Beautiful post Hermes. Thats why I think children must have guardian Angels. Too many people only want to hug them. Why do people stop wanting to hug us as we grow older?

I had a farvorite doll house doll as a child. He was the handsomest, and I named him Caleb after a boy who worked in the pet store (who now is one of my closest friends), but we (my sister and I) loved him so much his legs fell off, and his felt cloths shredded up. So and I called him Hot Naked Crippled Caleb. He still sits by my bed, as the handsomest boy I ever knew.

Kirsi Marcus said...

We love our brocken toys, not because they were once beautiful, because we love them.

Hermes said...

Kirsi. I agree, "because we love them." You phrased that profoundly beautifully. Caleb would be proud of you.

Because these toys are a part of our being, and a physical manifestation of our memories.

Sar. I'm sure there are still people out there who want to hug you because you're cute. People you've known all your life, in whose eyes, you are still that adorable wide-eyed little girl, and will always be.

Hermes said...

Tacit. Alas, I don't own the dinosaur anymore, God, how I wish I did though. I kept it for many, many years. However, I think I stupidly threw it out as an ungrateful, impetuous teenager. You know what I DO have though? Photographs my grandma took of me actually making the dinosaur and also pictures of the finished product. Perhaps one day I'll scan them and post them. That'd be a trip, huh?

Thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it. And, oh... aren't we all OCD? At least I know I am, fuck, I peel the skin off chicken.

Hermes said...

Sar. Well if that's the case you can have mine. Only if I get your pizza crusts though.

emeralda said...

i did what you wrote in one of the responses to comments to your recent post and reread your posts from the first three months....now i can't withstand the temtpation to comment even after so many months have passed....
it reminded me of how my ex in berlin told me, that i am one of the rare persons he knows whose former self (the child self) would like and appreciate if she 'd meet me.
that was obviously a compliment but me starting smoking was enough to smash this idea of his. there are obviously plenty of things you wonder how you'd explain them to yourself. but it s so convenient to give up facing the many layers and crusts you have to cut through to get there...thats why materialistic things such as your brotosaur have a channeling effect sort of....like in the moive amelie, the little box with all those worthless things that meant the world to the guy who hid this box in the bathroom and who decided to meet his daughter and his grandson because he cut right back to his childhood seeing these things again...
yeah.
wonderful
and yeah, how much do we hate ourselves? how much do we love ourselves?
my love now, dany, could relate so well to what you write. i know that. he s been there done that and dang, somebody needs to learn how to love himself.
not only the child. but everything.
because as lame and old it might sound, there d be no darkness without light....
piranha

yeah you were great back then too.....