My brain is tired tonight, mostly, I think, because I used it so little today. I spent most of the day painting a dresser for Emma Grace’s room, and then organizing all of her toys. Her room looks much better, and we will be a happier family for it, I’m sure. But for now, my brain is tired.
Moreoever, Bill didn’t come home tonight, so I had to do the bedtime thing All By Myself. Which was fine, and tiring. Emma Grace and I read a protracted version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which included a somewhat horrifying tidbit about the wicked queen eating Snow White’s lung and liver (she thought they were Snow White’s, but they in fact belonged to a hapless boar). And then I read the boys another chapter of Alice Through the Looking Glass.
I had started reading this to all three of the children, but it’s too hard for Emma Grace. In fact, it’s probably too hard for Everett. Frankly, I’m not sure I get it at all. Alice makes her way from one encounter to the next in a dreamlike, almost creepy way. Things fade into other things. In the scene we read tonight, Alice began in a shop, wanting an egg, and walking toward one that was sitting on a shelf at the back of the store. But as she walked, the egg became larger and larger, the floor turned to forest, and lo and behold! Humpty Dumpty!
The ensuing conversation is very funny, and just plain bizarre. But I liked this part, because it’s about words, so I’ll quote it here.
“‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory,'” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t– till I tell you. I mean “there’s a nice knockdown argument for you.”‘
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knockdown argument,” Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean– neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master– that’s all.’
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute, Humpty Dumpty began again. ‘They’ve a temper, some of them– particularly verbs, they’re the proudest: adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs. However, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!’
‘Would you tell me, please,’ said Alice, ‘what that means?’
‘Now you talk like a reasonable child,’ said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. ‘I meant by “impenetrability” that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.’
‘That’s a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
‘When I make a word do a lot of work like that,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘I always pay it extra.'”
To that I say, Machiavellian polymath. Get it?
