The mother of Mary Poppins
Pamela Travers is kind of like my mother too, for it was she who first sent my wondering child-soul down the blown rose path of fantasia, the everquest into the mythic forest of the human. It was only much later that I discovered she was not only the maker of Miss Poppins, but also – if not a mystic or spiritualist – a scholar of myth and fable, and a questor of questing.
It took the internet for me to find out about her, even that she was a she, for I never really pondered the author of Mary Poppins as a child reader, just knew it was P. L. Travers – male or female, no matter. When I later found out she also had published a collection of essays, as well as the Mary Poppins books, I had to get it, out-of-print or not. Seventy foolish bucks later I had the new book in my hands. This is part of what I found, from the essay “Now, Farewell and Hail”, in her valuable volume What the Bee Knows:
Thus I danced the days of my life, seeking, learning, experiencing, always living and always dying, until the long setting of the sun. And again, facing the falling light, I felt the old familiar weight and paused in the gallimaufry.
‘Where am I?’ I asked myself and from somewhere came a voice not mine, a searching echo, ‘Where art thou?’
‘On! On!’ cried the dancers streaming by. But I stood still and let them pass, knowing that I had been hiding – hiding in the midst of the dance as in the rift of a dream, letting being take on the guise of becoming, homeless, looking for home.
‘Where art thou?’ That voice again!
And out, from under the leaves of Eden, I rose and was awake, awake and in my lost domain.
I am here. Now, my eternal instant, that holds what was and will be. I am here. Now, in the all that is here. Gilgamesh reaching for the scarlet flower and the serpent seizing it from him; Isis gathering back to herself the lost parts of Osiris; the Buddha watching the golden bowl making its fateful way upstream; Galileo muttering into his beard ‘Eppur si muove!’; Prometheus bringing down the fire that men, laboriously climbing, must carry back to Heaven, a son of Adam setting foot on the moon; another walking the sky; Demeter searching for her stolen daughter; Sabat Mater, heart-stopped, breath-stopped, waiting to take upon her knees her dead and living son; Halley’s comet still sweeping past; Aratus singing to his lyre, ‘Full of Zeus are the cities, full of Zeus are the harbours, full of Zeus are all the ways of men’; the fox stealing into his hole; the crested wren swinging in her hanging mansion.
I am here. Now, a lost child found, with that Something Else, that painful riddle, again at work upon me. Perhaps it is not, indeed, a riddle but rather an intimation. There are things that may not be understood, except by standing under them, watching, waiting and empty, as a shell that the bird has flown. I could be that my lack is, on its obverse side, my treasure, that which calls and calls me back to the sole and living moment. I shall not be given to know its name nor even to ask to know it. Somewhere within me it is known, it has no need of words. And that which knows it also knows that I shall not stay long with you, my homeland. I shall fall away again and again, drawn by the magnet of Tomorrow and the treacherous hope that it exists, and carries gifts and surcease from care. Sages and seers, Now, dwell in your pavilions. To such as I it is given only to visit them from time to time and know that I have slept – slept and forgotten my meaning.
Death, be my friend! I came, waking, if weeping, into the world. Let me, waking, leave it.
And you, Sweet Lethe, run softly when I end my song that I may not drink deep of your tide. For there is a thing that I would remember.
Now is the day of everlasting. Now is the day of salvation.
Thanks Mom,
LWIII
As a child I used to dread the sunset because of the longing that came with it. ‘There must be something else,’ I would say, not at all knowing what it was, but knowing, too, that as far as the wind blows and the sky is blue I would go and find it.
~ P. L. Travers
wow … thank you so much for sharing this!!!
You’re welcome Azyh! Did you know she was an Aussie? I practically worship her. That book’s full title is “What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol and Story”. Could it be cooler? (or neater, since I’m trying to make the word “neat” cool again. Still tilting at windmills.)
oh my gosh, Aussie & a neat title… I think will think of her when i re read my bee poem now. http://azyhpoetry.blogspot.com/2009/05/bees-have-been-here-pollen-dust.html
Mary Poppins was just my all time favourite movie. When I was five walking to school i would jump with my umbrella to fly in the sky. I think the umbrella was big enough and i was light enough for it to work out for a few seconds at a time on a windy blustery day.
i wonder if i drink the same water as she did… breathe the same air… buzz buzz buzz
thank you thank you thank you
Ah, this is such an inspirational and informative piece. I did not know P.L. Travers was a woman either. And such a gifted writer. Thank you, Tom. Promethean, indeed!
You’re welcome Darrelyn, and thanks for the comment. Anything I can to do get more people interested in the essays of Pamela Travers is a good thing. Maybe we can get them to reprint that book!
xoxo
I couldn’t find out what gallimautry means. So it must be in the general supercallifragilistic category, if not particularly experallydocious.
Thanks Ron! Turns out I typed it in wrong. It’s actually gallimaufry, with an f not a t. My eyesight failed me on that one. It means a jumble or hodgepodge, from the Old French for sauce, ragout.
But it is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Azyh, I love your bee poem. Thanks for sharing. “What does it take to be a bit of a bee?” Thanks for sharing that. When I was a kid I was terribly disappointed by the Mary Poppins movie, since I was too young at the time to realize the movie is never as good as the book. But when I grew up I saw Mary Poppins again and loved it massively. It fact it’s still my favorite movie of all Time.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ron C. de Weijze. Ron C. de Weijze said: @TomYHowe Reality can be a pain, but even Mary Poppins left the in the end, for the sake of all kids, small and large. http://bit.ly/1QXdKE [...]
Well, I’ll be darned, a comment from a robot. I guess that’s good. Thank you Ron!
Yes, their Élan Vital is growing by the day…
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1210345008392050115#
Hey Ron, thanks for putting that link in Twitter. It’s the first one that ever decided to come post itself in the comment section on my blog. It’s alive!
And that’s a cool Japanese walking robot. We’re getting there, though I was one of those who got sad when computers were first able to beat the greatest chessmasters. Matrix ho!
Suffice it to say, LW I like that she inspired you so.
I have a *Mary Poppins Bag*..tis famous amongst my younger friends.
My Artist friend has drawn a picture of it.
Tis just a bag…a Tardis bag..
Bags are as magical as the people that own em…
Your head is a bag…
I like your bag
I am a bag freak.
lol
nutz comment as normal
Truly
)
Hey Truly your bag is my friend! My bag is both a pal and an annoyance at times. Often I pull stuff out of there I wish would have stayed bagged, but that’s the way with magic bags, I guess. Thanks!