Through the Firefly Forest: J is for Jabberwocky...
Whatever you do, don't look up...
This letter is part of my Through the Firefly Forest: The Creative Journey series, where I look at the gifts and challenges of the creative life (one alphabet letter at a time). Start here, at A is for Apple Tree.
'Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!' Lewis Carroll
You’ve heard the warnings, of course. But surely in a place as big and dark and deep as the Firefly Forest, Jabberwocky won’t catch you? Surely it won’t come near you with its jaws that bite and claws that catch and red, red eyes?
After all, there must be much tastier morsels than you — wolves and bears and boars, for instance.
Yet sometimes, you hear it in the distance. A thunderous, hungry roar that makes you freeze, squeeze your eyes shut and count to 100 until you’re sure it isn’t coming nearer.
And sometimes in the daytime it passes overhead, casting everything around you into shadow, making every living thing shiver. But you daren’t look up.
And sometimes, while you’re dozing by your campfire at night, the air stirs above you like the flapping of great, green leathery wings. But again, you daren’t look up.
Jabberwocky is the first thing you think of when you wake, your stomach tensing with dread. And it is the last night you think of at night. Even in your dreams you sense the enormity of it, its shimmering scales and curled tail, waiting just out of sight.
Beware the Jabberwocky in the heart of the droaming, where the wimmersings flicker and doltz…
Fear punctures gratitude, it makes it bleed. So you gaze at a half-rainbow shimmering above pines, then imagine Jabberwocky crashing through it in flight, shattering it to pieces.
Or you find a bush filled with plump blueberries, juicy and ripe for picking. But then you picture Jabberwocky diving down to swallow it in a single bite, tearing it up by the roots.
Or you sit by a brook to listen to its music, but can’t stop imagining hearing that hungry roar again, much closer this time — right-behind-you, in fact.
Jabberwocky feasts on beauty, it gorges on every morsel of joy. Its stomach is lined with thwarted artistic works that it scoffed down when they were barely a thought.
And then one day, as you drift wide-eyed and drained through the forest — no longer the real you but the fear-you, the paranoid, alert, jittery you — a thought creeps in.
My terror of Jabberwocky is worse than anything that beast could ever do to me.
For your fear is feasting on you much more slowly than any winged predator ever would. Jabberwocky is not the thief of beauty or joy or art — you are. You are the thing that looms right-behind-you, the shadow that passes overhead.
And when you realise this, you laugh and it seems for a moment that the fireflies encircle you in a dance. Yet it is almost completely dark now, so you find a clearing with a huge grassy knoll that you sit down and rest against. The air is thick with the scent of bluebells. You begin to sing a soft, silvery lullaby while an owl hoots from a nearby tree, almost in harmony.
And then it happens — a few inches away from your shoulder, a section of the grassy knoll parts to reveal a big yellow eye. It shines beside you in the dark, like an emperor’s gilded dinner plate.
And you realise that you are not leaning against a knoll at all — you are leaning against a curled up, sleeping Jabberwocky. Except it is no longer sleeping. And it turns out that its gaze is golden, not red. And this time, it is fixed right on you.
At first you are frozen with the old fear and then, at a loss for what else to do, you begin singing the same soft song again. Slowly, the big yellow eye glazes, the eyelids droop and close, then a rumble like a sigh runs through the creature.
If you can give Jabberwocky sweet dreams, if you can chase away its nightmares with your music, then your day has not been wasted.
So you croon for a little while longer. Then slowly, slowly, at the sound of those first deep, thundering snores, you tiptoe away…
I am sorry I have been away for so long, friends! These past few months I have been consumed with plans to leave Scotland and travel to Mexico for a new adventure. But I’ve finally arrived and am living in a city surrounded by misty mountains, where I hope to find some writing inspiration.
P.S. I’m charmed by Erutan’s whimsical musical interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky.
P.P.S. If you are enjoying these letters, then why not treat me to a small bottle of strawberry cordial to take along to the next Mad Hatter’s Tea Party?