Benjamin Bear and Emily Rabbit in Time Travels

An Homage to Philippe Coudray

            Once upon a time there was a bear and a rabbit. They lived in transatlantic Lon Ny land. Bear loved poetry and rabbit loved children’s books.

One day, bear and rabbit visited the Poetry Library in Lon, and rabbit was reading a children’s book journal when she stumbled upon the magical comic-book world of Philippe Coudray. Suddenly she realised that bear was Benjamin Bear of whom Coudray had written so much. Benjamin Bear (BB) is a paradoxical thinker who could find ingenious solutions to fuzzy problems; but sometimes he got a bit confused by reality. Not long after, bear named her Emily Rabbit (ER) after BB’s friend in the books.

Not long ago, Benjamin Bear and Emily Rabbit went to the Antiquarian Book Fair in the ny part of lon ny. There they feasted their eyes on fabulous books from the distant past.

The Botanica stall showed beautiful pictures of Californian nature from the 20s and 30s, reminding Emily Rabbit of mum and home. A map stall displayed a colorful 1650s pic of the Americas (wow – all the major American cities like Cartagena and Cuzco), the first geological map ever (of Southern England) and a unique metal pocket globe. Bear and rabbit adored the Dickens-enalia. Bear got interested in a first edition of Finnegans Wake, and the recovery of Greek texts after the fall of Byzantium by Venetian Italians. And Emily Rabbit found a few children’s book stores, even discovering Alison Uttley’s The Adventure of Hare.

When the fair was over, Benjamin Bear and Emily Rabbit got on the down-world train so they could escape intensity city (once known as mannahatta, its verticality and fast pace is anathema to rabbit) and find some of Benjamin Bear’s goodies in alternative city (once known as breukelen after the dutch).

Emily Rabbit said:

-Bear, I’m tired.

To which Benjamin Bear responded:

-I know, Rabbit. I wish we had Brigitte here so she could put us in a comic book called Benjamin Bear and Emily Rabbit in Time Travels. Then you’d take me to the Victorian period and we’d meet Dickens, and I’d show you their Gothic interests, and use that as a portal to take you to the Medieval period.

-Oh bear, that would be so good; but the weekend just isn’t long enough to go on such adventures. I wish there were just more time…’

-Rabbit, that’s it! You’re brilliant.

Bear reached into his pocket for the Infinity Device (Infinity! after the infinity of the internet, phone calling, etc) and began plugging away. After some time, Bear showed Emily his idea.

Emily Rabbit was amused. Bear had opened a calendar, but unlike any calendar you ever saw. Every week had eight days. Yes, eight days. That’s forty-five and a half weeks in a year. And three days of weekend.

-See Rabbit! Even though we’re Jewish, we don’t have to follow the abrahamic calendar. Was it the Incans who developed that amazing calendar based on the sun AND the moon?

-No Bear, it was the Maya.

-Oh right – a great Mexican invention! Delicious food too. The Milpa field and all that. Anyway they showed us the way. Since when do we have to adopt the seven-day calendar?

-Oh bear, if only. I think there should be one day for resting, one day for errands and one day for adventuring. But why do you want to change the week? I think it’s a myth that the five-day working week is good. I would do it so much better if I only had a four-day week.

-Emily Rabbit, that would make it hard for me when I become a lawyer. How am I meant to fit a 55 hour week into just 4 days? That’s too hard.

-Bear, I wish there were more hours in the day. You yourself said that the studies have shown we are built for 25 hour days. You can’t argue with that.

-Yes, rabbit. But then I wouldn’t just have to change the laws of this country, but the laws of this solar system!

-OK.

Bear, take me away to the land of the Working Time Directive…

Yes, Rabbit – that’s the only way our time will travel together.

Rivers

Living near a river is a source of great renewing pleasure. Letting your eyes run along the lapping waves, water threading in and out, in and out, is to move your mind from the flux of its own consciousness to the flux of more eternal matters.

(To any of my tutees reading this, I recommend wandering down to the Thames every so often to calm the mind between revision sessions.)

Rivers have inspired innumerable passages of fine writing and even fine cinema. I could probably write a small book on rivers; but don’t worry I won’t bore you with my essay on how Renaissance river poetry documents the gradual transfer of power from court to the country’s active citizens. Instead I’ll concentrate on just two small works by my favourite living English poet Alice Oswald.

Dart (2004) is one of the most democratic English poems to have appeared in recent years. Oswald recorded conversations with people all along the river Dart. She then crafted a voice for the river which interacts with and channels phrases and statements from the recordings.

The book is a delight of mobile form and living scene. Rather than adopting a repeat form, she makes each segment’s form responsive to its content – quatrain; short-line; prose-poem; etcetera. The scenes dart from near its source – meet mythic boogeyman Jan Coo! – to bathers diving on their Sunday off – to the sewage-men and hardened crabbers at the estuary.

Her other book on a river is A Sleepwalk on the Severn. Whereas Dart is about the river in daytime, A Sleepwalk is subject to the moon. It’s a short work but captures an ethereal perspective on English life – starting with a dispute between an amateur birdwatcher and fisherman, and moving onto images such a  crowd rushing to see a moon so powerful that it shifts large tides on the river (“like the interstellar cold come suddenly into the world”).   It’s riveting, and surprising on a reread.

When I came to see her after a reading of Memorial, I asked Alice what she was working on next. She said: “A dictionary that undefines words.” Her answer was characteristically unexpected. It takes a very sceptical mind to undermine the very grounding of language in this way, in a manner as contrary to a lawyer’s work as can be. But on further thought her proposed dictionary is much like the river, removing the ground material that we take for granted and moving it in an unexpected direction.