No, this isn’t a post about the Avengers… but that’s a cool idea. I just haven’t seen the new movie yet. I will… so be patient. You probably don’t really need a lot of comic-book fan-boy love right now anyway… That is such a nerd-need, and you are not a nerd… at least, I haven’t been corrected about nerd-things on my blog, which leads me to conclude there are no nerds reading my squishy-goofy-gallywumpas. This post is about my daughter, the Princess.
Specifically, this is a post about the Princess’ hair. You see, the Princess was unfortunate enough to be exactly between two opposite extremes of hair-genes. She inherited her mother’s thick, dark wire-hair, but the wild-hair, mind-of-its-own crazy go-every-direction hair she got from me. She inherits the worst hair-features from both of us. So how do you to tame your hair in the mornings when you have thick, unruly hair that not only refuses to be tamed, but will willingly grab the brush out of your hand and throw it across the room? Well, you apparently borrow your brother’s comb without permission and give the hair 500 rat-nest-dislodging yanks and then lose the comb so that your brother is mad at you for the rest of the day… I mean, the rest of the week… er, the month, the year… maybe the rest of the Princess’ life.
This morning;
Me; “Please don’t eat your brother’s comb when you are finished doing that. Put it back on the sink in the bathroom before we go to school.” (This is a helpful dad-statement used every morning when I watch her battling the hair at the breakfast table, but inevitably the comb is missing the next time brother Henry looks for it. She must eat it when my back is turned to go start the car.)
Princess; “I will, Dad… Geez…. But I can’t believe all the hair I have now on my pants and shirt. How can I lose this much hair every day and not be bald?”
“Princess, you are really, really good at growing hair.”
“Oh, I know it. In fact, I’m pretty sure when I pull out one hair, three grow back to take its place.”
“Wow! That’s like mythological, or something. Do you wake up in the night to find little Hercules-type guys climbing up on your pillow trying to cut your hair with swords?”
“Yeah, it keeps me awake at night. But you know in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson Books, the hydra has to be turned to stone or be burned with fire to defeat it.” (I cannot, of course, argue this point as she has read all of the books and is an irrefutable expert on the subject of Rick Riordan’s mythology.)
“Oh, mercy! You mean the little Hercules-guys are climbing on your pillow with torches?”
“Yes, but I got a bunch of little Minotaur-guys to fight them off, so my hair hasn’t been burned.”
“Well, that’s good… but what about all the little cow patties they leave in your blankets?”
“Dad, hair problems are hard. You can’t expect to have it all easy, right?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right.”
Flying the Magic Flying Carpet
There are many ways to fly. Airplanes, bird wings, hot air balloons, bubble-gum-blowing goldfish… well, maybe I am really talking about flying by imagination. The more my six incurable diseases and old age limit my movement, my ability to get out of bed and do things, the more I rely on reading, writing, and the movie in my head to go places I want to be.
Sometimes the wings I use to fly come from other writers. I get the flight feathers I need not only from books, but also from YouTube videos, movies, and television shows.
This magic carpet ride in video form is by the thoughtful creative thinker Will Schoder. In it he carefully explains how Mister Rogers used the persuasion techniques of Logos, Ethos, and Pathos to talk to elephants and convinced a congressman intent on cutting the budget to actually give Public Television more money for educational programming. This is a video full of warmth and grace and lovingly crafted magic flight feathers that anybody can use to soar across new skies and blue skies and higher skies than before. I hope you will watch it more than once like I did, to see how beautifully the central explanation spreads its wings and gives us ideas that can keep us aloft in the realm of ideas.
It is important to stay in the air of fresh ideas and new thinking. The magic carpet ride that takes you there is the product of vivid imagination, cogent thinking, and the accurate connection of idea to better idea. So instead of falling from the sunlit sky into the darkness that so easily consumes us on the ground, keep imagining, keep dreaming, and keep flying. You won’t regret having learned to fly.
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Filed under battling depression, commentary, dreaming, humor, imagination, insight, inspiration, metaphor, Paffooney, philosophy, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as flying, imagination, love, nature, poetry