The Wart did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him to talk. He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him like a baby, but the ones who just went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He has the glee of a porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.

This reminds me of my own childhood. No, I was not nicknamed The Wart. My parents and their friends never talked down to me, so I learned the vocabularies of my schoolteacher mother and pastor father. I really appreciate that knowledge these days as I write my poetry and tutor a couple of students. I still love words; I still have the glee of a porpoise.

I was too smart for my own good. I could always argue myself into doing the sexy, futuristic thing instead of being a nice, mundane, nonaffiliated
individual. Too smart to settle down, take a job and watch TV after work, spend two weeks a year at the cottage and go online to find movie listings. Too smart is too restless and no happiness, ever, without that it’s chased by obsessive maundering moping about what comes next.

I can understand that restlessness, that rebellion against the mundane. For instance, watching TV every evening seems a waste of time to me, especially when the Internets are begging for my attention.

save

I’m dancing as hard as I can,
and grace has nothing to do with it.
Grace flew out the window in 1992,
the year I turned thirteen,
and I ain’t been the same
since the day
my eyes leaked saltwater
while reading The Cay.

I learned to dance from Gord Downie;
I learned poetry from Bono.
I pick mentors like I pick party food:
gotta be quirky and falling off the map.

While I’m talking about food,
let me open up this tasty can of worms:
I seem to deal with my
emotions
only through movies and music and
poetry.
Maybe that’s why I blow through
two plus movies a week,
and have music wired directly into my head.
Doesn’t explain why poetry has eluded me
for three weeks in a row, though.

I’m dancing as hard as I can,
sweat falling off my eyebrows.
You try dancing to U2 and The Tragically Hip,
and you’ll see that grace has nothing to do with it.

‘Why, only just now I saw a sardine-opener on the kitchen dresser, quite distinctly; and everybody knows that means there are sardines about somewhere in the neighbourhood.’

That’s my kind of logic. Or illogic. Whatever.

Rat really shines in this chapter, both as a good friend to Mole, and as someone who can improvise and make the most of things. Although they can only find sardines, crackers, beer and one sausage in Mole’s long-abandoned home, Rat considers those items a veritable feast:

‘There’s a banquet for you!’ observed the Rat, as he arranged the table. ‘I know some animals who would give their ears to be sitting down to supper with us tonight!’

Maybe the real reason I am impressed with Rat is that he uses exclamation marks often in this chapter.

. . . he took the opportunity to tell Badger how comfortable and home-like it all felt to him. ‘Once well underground,’ he said, ‘you know exactly where you are. Nothing can happen to you, and nothing can get at you. You’re entirely your own master, and you don’t have to consult anybody or mind what they say. Things go on all the same overhead, and you let ‘em, and don’t bother about ‘em. When you want to, up you go, and there the things are, waiting for you.’

This passage can work pretty well as a description of escapism. Escaping into a novel or movie is just like spending time comfortably underground.

In other news, I’m pretty convinced that the main theme of this book is the idea of home. I’m not even done Chapter Five yet, and so far, several homes have been mentioned or discussed:

• Mole’s home, which is named Mole End. I love that name.
• Rat’s home in the riverbank. Sometimes it floods, and Rat has to move out for a while.
• Toad Hall.
• Toad’s canary-yellow gypsy caravan.
• Badger’s impressive underground home.

. . . it was that regrettable sort of conversation that results from talking with your mouth full. The Badger did not mind that sort of thing at all, nor did he take any notice of elbows on the table, or everybody speaking at once. As he did not go into Society himself, he had got an idea that these things belonged to the things that didn’t really matter. (We know of couse that he was wrong, and took too narrow a view; because they do matter very much, though it would take too long to explain why.)

Why can’t fellows be allowed to do what they like when they like and as they like, instead of other fellows sitting on banks and watching them all the time and making remarks and poetry and things about them? What nonsense it all is!

To the moderately well-read person Kenneth Grahame is known as the author of two books written in the 1890s: The Golden Age and Dream Days. In his spare time he was Secretary of the Bank of England. Reading these delicately lovely visions of childhood, you might have wondered that he could be mixed up with anything so unlovely as a bank; and it may be presumed that at the bank an equal surprise was felt that such a responsible official could be mixed up with beauty.

Haha. I like the idea of being mixed up with beauty.