Explore fiction to add wisdom and entertainment to real life

I DELIBERATELY avoid writing along the lines of name, shame and blame in these times. The list of failures is grim, dour and endless. Optimist that I am, I picture a paragraph of fictive escapism my mind in the shape of stories, myths, legends, fables and the endless rhythmic cadences of nursery rhymes. It is an escape valve that has kept me sane in this world of crumbling values, and lack of direction or accountability.

Readers may remember my story of the little red hen who found kernels of wheat after a harvest, and set about looking for help in her quest to bake a delicious oven-loaf bread. Everybody she approached for assistance had an excuse to opt out, until the bread was baked through her own efforts and persistence. When it came to the actual eating, the reluctant helpers gathered hopefully, but she exacted reprisal by sharing the bread only with her chicks. This generic nursery tale is often referred to as cautionary.

There is another category called cumulative or formula tales. One such tale is called The Little Old Woman and her Pig. It is told that, long, long ago, a little old lady gave her house a thorough cleaning and, in the process, uncovered a long-lost crooked sixpence. She decided to go to the market to buy herself a pretty little pig.

On the way home, they encountered a hurdle in the form of a stile. The pig refused to go over. Frantic, the old woman bewailed the fact that she had to convince the pig to cross the stile, or she would not get home ’til midnight. She first appealed to a stick. “Stick, beat the pig so he can cross the stile, or I shan’t get home ’til midnight.” The stick refused. She turned to fire and said: “Burn the stick because it won’t beat the pig.” The fire refused. The appeals escalate to water that should kill fire (and refuses) to the ox that must drink water. No go. So on to the butcher to kill ox. Still no help. So next is rope to hang the butcher. No go. Followed by a rat to gnaw the rope, whose refusal leads her to cat.

“Kill the rat,” she orders, expecting another rejection. But no. The cat agrees to kill the rat if she will provide him with a saucer of milk. Which she does. And the whole sequence goes into reverse, where cat kills rat, rat gnaws rope, rope hangs butcher and so forth.

Now why did I regale you with this apparent nonsense. Precisely because it is nonsense. But it is fun. It can be altered in terms of national collective experience, in the sense that it could (and is) told as a Russian, Scottish, Turkish, Japanese – indeed the whole human spectrum – tale.

The more erudite could spin philosophical interpretations, creative folk could make drawings or act out the tale. The variety is only as limited as the willingness of the participants who wish to put the weary world behind them. I am painfully aware that some readers will begin to question my mental condition, but trust me, these tales are easily accessible in books. Books do not need to be recharged with non-existent electricity. Books don’t need passwords to open them. Books do not break if they fall or are stepped on or treated unkindly (although there are also lessons regarding the proper care of library books in there somewhere).

I have other escapist strategies. I explore songs, especially the old ones which had intelligible words. And told tales of love and loss. Songs that keep alive memory, and nostalgia, both viable entities. So my tale for this week is the same old one: find yourself a better world, instant wisdom, self-assurance, direction, love, forgiveness, strategy, tact, patience, altered relevances – the list is as inventive as you are. Find it between the covers of a friendly book. It doesn’t solve problems, but it brings relief that is free and endless.

Happy exploring.