The Tale of Primeval Projects

I am reminded on this grey, uncertain January day of three ‘projects’ I had in my youth. When exactly, I cannot say; my best estimate is sometime between my eighth and fourteenth year. And, of course, I did not have them all at once.

The first one I called The Continuing Dream. In an effort to make myself more interesting, I feigned that I had a dream every night that was continued the next night. I would tell them to John and Kenny (never Mike; he wouldn’t have stood for it – the skeptic!). I struggled to keep the tale going. I have a visceral memory of recounting some of it in the twilight privacy of the Toy Room. I eventually dropped it, I’m not sure why; lack of interest or I just got tired of it, I suppose.

The second was The Wonderful Wind-up. This was a toy or music box that partook of the nature the Groovie Goolies Cling-Clang music box or The Marvelous Toy or “the animated Valentine card Snoopy clips out of paper; which was, perhaps, the ultimate origin of a fantastic wind-up toy I imagined that was basically an entire kingdom with a castle, figures, a wood, caves, a dragon, and an encircling river complete with sea monster.  It was an image that, for a while, I never ceased to add to and meditate on.” A concept I never instantiated, of course, not even a drawing or plan.

The third and last Primeval Project was The Infinite Map. This one, I know, came after The Hobbit and after I got the Map of Shakespeare’s Britain. This was one where I actually did something. I had been drawing a lot of maps. But this one was ever-expanding. I’d fill a page, put another by that, and fill that page. They all connected up. By the time I ran out of steam I had about nine pages, all put together rather flimsily with Scotch tape. I must admit that by the end the ‘add-ons’ were getting rather scanty with wide open spaces, not as crammed with features as the early sections. I put it on top of the china cabinet for safe keeping, then one day Mom cleaned up the cabinet and just … threw it away.

Looking back on these improbable, impractical plans, plans that maybe only the mind of a child could conceive, I am struck by the thing they all have in common. They are of a nature to be infinitely expanding, endlessly elaborated, almost never-ending in their potential for growth. What a wild ambition! Nowadays I am happy if I can get to the end of a short story. Perhaps in some kind of paradisal afterlife I will have the time and talent (and memory) to bring such plans to life. It’s an unlikely but encouraging thought, and a rather wistful fancy on this grey, uncertain January day.