Book Review: What's in the Attic?

OK, I haven't got the review on me. I left it in my basement. Give me a day or so and I will type it in. Too bad, because it is an important morality tale which should precede the following inappropriate, heretical bits of this page. In the meantime, you can go and order that wholesome book "What's In the Attic" on amazon.com The cover is pictured here.

OK, I found it. Here it is:

Folks, The Library is proud to offer "What's In the Attic?" a sturdy square book by the famed children's author David Romanelli. (Illustrations © Warner Bros.) The book was published by Landoll last year and we have just received our copy today.

What's in the attic?

In my attic, I have a mother raccoon and her four babies, bats, and a handful of large black bumble bees.

The attic of Romanelli's world is likewise maternally and animalistically infested. This work is a prime example of fine literature, speaking to the reader on many levels. on the surface, it's a simple, whimsical story of a child's wandering imagination, infusing the unknown with delightful, fantastic properties. A closer reading reveals a dark, freudian tale of frustrated youth doomed to disappointment and confusion.

In the story we never actually find out what's in that attic. The book instead chronicles the child's attempt to GUESS what might be in the attic, after repeatedly witnessing his very attractive parents (whom we only see from the waist down) sneaking up there for unspeakable (or at least untold) activities - "A tug on the string and where do they go? What's in the attic I'd like to know!"

The forbidden Attic. The secretive parents. A "string" to "tug."

"Whenever I ask her Mom shakes her head, "No." She says to keep waiting until I grow." - The (false) promise of wisdom and knowledge to arrive with adulthood.

"So one of these days I will yank on that string! I'm just inches away from the world it will bring." - Again! The string to yank on? Inches away? Can we get any more freudian than that?

I'm sure you'll agree after reading this that "What's in the Attic" is a deep, dark psychological study of the primal traumas and frustrations of childhood, arrested just before the moment of true discovery, the sunshine before the typhoon. All the more chilling because we adult readers have been to the attic, through the typhoon, and we know. And here we are confronted by the naivete of this child. We want to scream "Run! don't worry about the Attic! Set fire to the house!" Because it's too painful to think about. A work of absolute genius. Read it and weep.

Dream of The Stone Diplodocus.

• The Dream itself.
• What might have motivated this dream.

The Dream Itself:
I am walking in a dusty desert, bright blue sky, a range of hills before me. Thunderous Black Fighter jets fly in formation over them, towards me, but they just pass and drone on out of sight behind me.

I reach the range, walk around a mountain on a path paved with large, perfectly square flagstones. The path, now skirting the side of this rounded, dry brown hill (dotted with a few trees), takes me to the other side of the range, where a huge lake of crystal clear water is on my left. The path goes away from the mountainside, into the water, I am wading waist deep.

It is now just a path by itself, coming up out of the water again, like a diving board/pier, ending out there elevated over the water. So I stand and look at the brilliant light shimmering on the calm water. And then I realize what I'm standing on looks like the neck of a giant diplodocus/brontosaurus. Then I see that it, in fact, IS a GIANT diplodocus, and the round dry mountain part is its body, the flagstone path I've been on is its spine from tail to head, and I am now on the nape of its neck, its shining eyes in front of me.

And it lifts its long neck. It rears its head up, it's camoflauged body breaks away from the rest of the mountain range it was attached to, and the whole thing starts to frolic in the water. It rears and plunges its head into the water and out again, splashing, and I'm straddling it, riding it, holding onto it with my thighs (yes, a huge rearing phallus, what a trip! This kept going on for a while, what a dream, just the ride, the ride, the plunging, the straining).

So you see this kind of sterile environment of dirt and water suddenly infused with action and splashing and shreiks and laughter, and then out of nowhere comes a GIANT green marble puppy dog, and it starts playing with the diplodocus (which is still bigger), and I'm just holding on through all of this. And the diplodicus splashes with the puppy, and then starts licking the puppy's genitals as if it were also a puppy (the puppy - rolled over - nipping occasionally at the diplodocus, yelping).

I dunno, is this a life affirming dream? Perhaps I am not all despair. When I woke up at first, I thought, wow, was that erotic, or what? Only later did I realize that the diplodocus was none other than GOD visiting me, showing himself to me, playing with me. Yes, God is a giant earthen diplodocus who likes to lick the privates of marble puppies while you hold on for dear life and with sheer joy. You see? This was his attempt to throw me from my anthropomorphosizing conception of God. He is a living stone dinosaur (extinct, but alive, stone but animate), and also, he's a path (the flagstones).

Put another way, the path that one walks on, if divine, is not fixed. If you sense you're at the end of the path, the path itself gets up and moves and is alive. The barren mountains are alive, and there is much rejoicing and frolicking with puppies in crystal clear water. (And while it was phallic, it was also a phallus with lips that kiss, which somehow makes it female, too, or something - or at least not a purely threatening selfish phallus. Not that phalluses are all threatening and selfish or anything, but...). Also, the path was playful, but I had to hold on pretty tight or I could be thrown from it (and land in the water? Not so bad) (and then I could have been trod on by it...)

What you have here is a really cool multi-dimensional metaphor with a range of implications that still sparkles for me when I think about it.

What Might Have Motivated This Dream:
While this dream could mean many things to many people, I know where it comes from for me: My own ambivalence about the divine and something I was struggling with while I was reading "The Artist's Way". This book has many spiritual overtones. It encourages you to connect with the creative force of the universe. One of the chapters (Week 6, I think, "Recovering a Sense of Abundance.") encourages us to pray to God. Yes, God. The author was gentle about this, allowing that some people have negative connotations about God. Bad experiences with a whacked minister or whatnot.

So, you had to get over it and write up "My Artist's Prayer" and say it every day, addressed to the divine (I was ambivalent and addressed it "Oh Beloved!"). There was a template there which had: "I trust you will be with me always and lead me. I trust that it is safe to be moved by you." So I was struggling with that prayer, and my rigid views of the divine, and the answer was the diplodocus dream. Very nice.

More lines from the prayer that can be seen in the dream as well. For example: "I know you generated me and that generosity, creativity and irrepressibility is your nature and my own. I ask you to unfold my life as you unfold your own mystery, in brilliant, brilliant ways." Heck this is an all around cool prayer. I will see if I can reprint the whole thing. Pending permission.

Also, pending animation for the diplodocus dream. That would look cool!

Paul's Coffee
OK, I know you're dying for a pornuccino. Well, sadly, I don't have a scanner yet, and my friend who does have a scanner is a Muslim and refuses to be party to scanning such sinful images. So you'll have to wait until I find an amoral Jew or lapsed Catholic or flaming pagan. Hold on.