Canto 4 – The Road to Cornucopia
The rooster riding was easier than Poppy had anticipated. These chickens were not quite the same as the ones she had known back in the Necromancer’s city of Mortimer’s Mudwallow. And Seltzerwater and Tannehauser were both apparently smarter than any chicken she had known in the Necromancer’s little river town.
Still, the first day’s progress was slow. The cornfields that they navigated were often obstructed by foxes, pheasants, and an occasional farmer on a tractor.
They would end up making camp along the southern bank of the creek the Fairies called Pallas’s Slow Water. They were somewhere to the West of Mortimer’s Mudwallow. Poppy’s sister, Derfentwinkle, was now the ruler of the Mudwallow after helping the good Fairies to capture it and destroy the evil Necromancer. It made her wonder why Flute hadn’t led them there for the first night’s rest. They would surely be welcome. But maybe he had some reason for not wanting her sister to know she was traveling with her new masters.
As camp was set up by Flute and Tod, Glittershine and Poppy settled the roosters. Their reins were tied to long ropes of at least three English-measure feet so the roosters could scratch for weevils, aphids, ants, and worms. Glitter was talking softly to Tannehauser, so Poppy tried talking to Seltzerwater.
“You were a very good boy, Seltzer. Tod let me guide you with the reins and I had no problems controlling you. You are very unlike the chickens we had in Mortimer’s Mudwallow.”
“I understand you had a very hard life in your previous home,” Glitter broke into her conversation with Seltzer. “Can you tell me a little about it?”
“Very little. When Derfie, my sister, rescued me from there, the White Stag entered my mind and removed most of the memories of the times when the Necromancer abused me. And since that was almost all of the times I was ever with the Necromancer, I can’t even remember his name.”
“That must have been terrible.”
“Yes. Even with the memories removed, I still have nightmares.”
“You know that you and I are supposed to work on your spellbook this evening. To do that, we must remove the garments that shield our minds and bodies…”
“Oh, good! I will get to be naked once more.”
“I was afraid that your trauma might prevent you from doing that. I understand that the Necromancer controlled your mind and body…”
“Yeah. But I was always freeist whenever I could take wing with nothing on my body but sunlight. These clothes are the things that make me panicky and uncomfortable. I don’t remember it, but the Necromancer had strange fetishes that involved putting things on me.”
“Well, I am glad it won’t be a problem then. There’s a space under those purple thistles that will work fine for our session of magical translations.”
Poppy was delighted to bounce over to the indicated thistle patch and shed what little clothing she wore. Glittershine had a double-layer riding dress on, and that took her longer. She was, however, quite graceful and beautiful once she was nude. And she took care of laying out the spellbook and writing quills.
“Poppy, you must say or sing the spells in your magical imagination. The spells will come to me by magic, and I will let them flow through me, so that I might write them down on the paper. That is how we translate the magic within you into words in your spellbook.”
“What is magic… exactly? What is it made of?”
“That’s a very good question. In fact, that is part of Prinz Flute’s magical quest. We have talked endlessly with the White Stag about codifying magic in a way that makes it like the Slow Ones and how they developed the thing called Science. It allows them to have their talking wires and tellybizhions and caddylacks and things.”
“So, Science is Slow One Magic?”
“Or Fairy Magic is Fairy Science.”
As they got into it, Poppy sang out the beautiful magics she held inside, the ones the Necromancer never found out about. And none of the magic the Necromancer taught her was still there in her head, messing up her mind with muddy magic.
Page after page after page filled with Poppy’s own signature magic. By the time she could remember nothing more, half the spellbook was already full.
“You have an amazing amount of spells here for an apprentice, Poppy. But your strongest spells seem to all be about polymorphing.”
“Polymorphing?”
“Yes, changing the shape of other Fairies, animals, other Fairy creatures, and even probably yourself. You can actually change Butterfly Children into birds and back again if you need to. You can give wings to frogs and spider-legs to rabbits. Though, I doubt we will ever have a need for that.”
“I suppose I can use my imagination. But, my imagination might turn a little dark at times… thanks to my past.”
Glitter smiled at Poppy as Glitter slipped her clothing back on.
“We have set up separate lean-tos for each of us. We need to get in them and sleep. Flute and I will share the watch during the night. You two have to recover from the magic generation,” said Tod with obvious concern for how tired they both looked.
“In the morning, then,” said Glitter.
And the temporary camp settled down for the night.
.
Catch a Falling Star 
Why Do You Think That? (Part Two)
In my short, sweet sixty years of life, I have probably seen more than my share of movies. I have seen classic movies, black-and-white movies, cartoon movies, Humphrey Bogart movies, epic movies, science fiction movies, PeeWee Herman movies, Disney movies, Oscar-winning movies, and endless box-office stinkers. But in all of that, one of the most undeniable threads of all is that movies make me cry. In fact they make me cry so often it is a miracle that even a drop of moisture remains in my body. I should be a dried-out husk by now.
I wept horribly during this scene. Did you?
And the thing is, people make fun of you when you cry at movies. Especially cartoon movies like Scooby Doo on Zombie Island. (But I claim I was laughing so hard it brought tears to my eyes. That’s the truth, dear sister. So stop laughing at me.) But I would like to put forth another “Why do you think that?” notion. People who cry while watching a movie are stronger and more powerful than the people who laugh at them for crying. A self-serving thesis if ever there was one.
Movies can make you cry if you have the ability to feel empathy. We all know this. Old Yeller is the story of a dog who endears himself to a prairie farm family, saves Travis’s life at one point, and then gets infected with rabies and has to be put down. Dang! No dry eyes at the end of that one. Because everyone has encountered a dog and loyal dog-love somewhere along the line. And a ten-year-old dog is an old dog. The dogs you knew as a child helped you deal with mortality because invariably, no matter how much you loved them, dogs demonstrate what it means to die. Trixie and Scamper were both hit by cars. Queenie, Grampa’s collie, died of old age. Jiggs the Boston Terrier died of heat stroke one summer. You remember the pain of loss, and the story brings it all back.
Only psychopaths don’t feel empathy to some degree. Think about how you would feel if you were watching Old Yeller and somebody you were watching with started laughing when Travis pulls the trigger on the shotgun. Now, there’s a Stephen King sort of character.
But I think I can defend having lots of empathy as a reason for crying a river of tears during Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. You see, identifying with Quasimodo as the main character, hoping for what he hopes for, feeling like a monster and completely unloved, and fearing what he fears connect you to the story in ways that completely immerses you in the experience. This is basically a monster movie.
But the film puts you inside the head of the malformed man, and you realize that he is not the monster. Righteous Judge Frollo and the people who mistreat Quasimodo for his deformity of outward appearance are the real monsters. If you don’t cry a river of tears because of this story, then you have not learned the essential truth of Quasimodo. When we judge others harshly, we are really judging ourselves. In order to stop being monstrous, and be truly human, you must look inside the ugliness as Esmeralda does to see the heroic beauty inside others. Sometimes the ideas themselves are so powerful they make me weep. That’s when my sister and my wife look at me and shake their heads because tears are shooting out of me like a fountain, raining wetness two or three seats in every direction. But I believe I am a wiser man, a more resolved man, and ultimately a better man because I was not afraid to let a movie make me cry.
The music also helps to tell the story in ways that move my very soul to tears. Notice how the heroine walks the opposite way to the rest of the crowd. As they sing of what they desire, what they ask God to grant, she asks for nothing for herself. She shows empathy in every verse, asking only for help for others. And she alone walks to the light from the stained glass window. She alone is talking to God.
Yes, I am not embarrassed by the fact that movies make me cry. In fact, I should probably be proud that movies and stories and connections to other people, which they bring me, makes me feel it so deeply I cry. Maybe I am a sissy and a wimp. Maybe I deserved to be laughed at all those times for crying during the movie. But, hey, I’ll take the laughter. I am not above it. I am trying to be a humorist after all.
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Filed under cartoon review, commentary, compassion, Disney, humor, insight, inspiration, movie review, music, philosophy, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as empathy, movies that make me cry, Old Yeller, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Toy Story 3