‘Many years ago in Mytherranea, before the stars had names, when daisies were still called days’ eyes, and the moon stayed up all night to keep the darkness company, there lived a race called redbits…’So begins the tale of Rensal, a small creature trying to make sense of a big world. Running along one day, Rensal bumps into the Tall One, a wise and mysterious redbit who loves to talk. Over tea, toast, and berries, the friends discuss life, love, creation, dreams, death, and everything else that lies under the sun.This is a book that gets to the heart of what it is to be young, of the joys and sorrows and confusions of childhood, and of the questions that continue to be pertinent even when we are full-grown – how we live, how we love, and what – if anything – it all means.Rensal the Redbit captures the depth and magic of child psychoanalysis through the exploits of a miniature animal who befriends a “tall one” and enters into a series of daily dialogues that expand his psychological horizons forever.
‘Many years ago in Mytherranea, before the stars had names, when daisies were still called days’ eyes, and the moon stayed up all night to keep the darkness company, there lived a race called redbits…’So begins the tale of Rensal, a small creature trying to make sense of a big world. Running along one day, Rensal bumps into the Tall One, a wise and mysterious redbit who loves to talk. Over tea, toast, and berries, the friends discuss life, love, creation, dreams, death, and everything else that lies under the sun.This is a book that gets to the heart of what it is to be young, of the joys and sorrows and confusions of childhood, and of the questions that continue to be pertinent even when we are full-grown – how we live, how we love, and what – if anything – it all means.Rensal the Redbit captures the depth and magic of child psychoanalysis through the exploits of a miniature animal who befriends a “tall one” and enters into a series of daily dialogues that expand his psychological horizons forever.
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Overview
‘Many years ago in Mytherranea, before the stars had names, when daisies were still called days’ eyes, and the moon stayed up all night to keep the darkness company, there lived a race called redbits…’So begins the tale of Rensal, a small creature trying to make sense of a big world. Running along one day, Rensal bumps into the Tall One, a wise and mysterious redbit who loves to talk. Over tea, toast, and berries, the friends discuss life, love, creation, dreams, death, and everything else that lies under the sun.This is a book that gets to the heart of what it is to be young, of the joys and sorrows and confusions of childhood, and of the questions that continue to be pertinent even when we are full-grown – how we live, how we love, and what – if anything – it all means.Rensal the Redbit captures the depth and magic of child psychoanalysis through the exploits of a miniature animal who befriends a “tall one” and enters into a series of daily dialogues that expand his psychological horizons forever.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781782201885 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
| Publication date: | 11/30/2015 |
| Series: | Karnac Library Series |
| Pages: | 64 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.40(d) |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Many years ago in Mytherranea, before the stars had names, when daisies were still called days' eyes, and the moon stayed up all night to keep the darkness company, there lived a race called redbits. Mytherranea was so far to the East that some believed it was always the first to wake the sun in the morning. The redbits were not unlike our rabbits except that they were smaller and stayed small for much longer. There were grown-up redbits, of course, who were big, but the young redbits grew so slowly they could not imagine ever being big. Redbits loved to play in the grass. They ran around like flames dancing between the green columns and this was how they got their name. "There's a redbit," someone would shout, as if the grass had suddenly changed color. This mistake was repeated often and the name stuck (the world is probably full of colorful mistakes like these that nobody remembers anymore). The redbits had personal names too, of course, names such as Ludik and Silitar. But the redbit I want to tell you about was called Rensal.
One day, Rensal was running through the grass like one solitary red thread amongst many green, when he would have run headlong into the tallest creature he had ever run into if its shadow had not warned him ahead of time.
Rensal, though small, had a brave streak in him and he walked to the end of the shadow and looked up. The tallest creature he had ever seen was looking down. Their eyes met.
The tall one was, of course, a grown-up redbit. Rensal knew from past experience that tall redbits were very different from small redbits, not only in size but also in the way they thought. Rensal knew that if he asked, "Why is your shadow so big and mine so small?" that the tall one would say, "Our shadows depend on how high we are above the ground and how high the sun is in the sky." So he decided not to ask that. Instead, he asked, "Why am I scared of everything bigger than I?"
The Tall One scratched his chin, waiting for a wise expression to appear on his face, and said solemnly, "Your imagination plays tricks on you. You are angry that you are not big, so you believe the big are angry that they are not small."
Rensal knew that if he asked, "What is imagination?" the tall one would say, "It's all the wishes and fears in your mind turned into good pictures and bad pictures." So he decided not to ask that. Instead, he said, "Thank you for helping me. I know I will not be afraid of big things anymore," and he turned on his red heel in the green grass and walked confidently away.
He walked past tall trees and beside tall hills, always under the tall arch of the sky and he was not afraid. Rensal was happy that the big redbit had helped him.
He walked so far and for so long that he did not notice that the sun had climbed down to the lowest rung of the ladder in the sky and that the shadows were longer than ever, even his own. Suddenly, he began to tremble: Rensal afraid of his own shadow!
He ran and ran, back to where he had met the tall one in the grass and was pleased to find him still there. Rensal was short of breath but he gathered his wits and enough wind to blurt out: "I was not afraid until the shadows joined hands and became a solid wall of darkness."
The Tall One scratched his chin, waiting for a wise expression to appear on his face, and said solemnly: "I should have told you about the night. Night is all the shadows in the world gathering together when the sun leaves the sky. They wait patiently in the darkness until the morning birds return with the sun. Then they are free to return again to the daylight things that cast shadows. It is a game that light and shadow have been playing for years."
"But why am I so afraid of it, if it is only a game?" Rensal asked, his red tail wearing a puzzled expression.
"Young redbits are afraid the sun will never return," the Tall One said sadly and seriously. Rensal felt better. The Tall One's words made sense. He kept repeating them to himself as he ran home, redly, through the darkness.
Rensal fell into bed almost before reaching home. He was so tired, his red hair had lost a little lustre and his eyes had bags under them that seemed full of all the worries of his long day. He fell asleep and dreamed about yellow tiger lilies that were chasing red sunflowers up and down the ladder of the sky. He awoke suddenly, leaped out of his dream, and ran and ran between what seemed like columns of tiger lilies and bleeding sunflowers. He did not catch a breath until he reached the Tall One.
"Your words only helped for a while!" Rensal shouted. "When I fell asleep I was afraid all over again."
The Tall One scratched his chin, waiting for a wise expression to appear on his face, and then he said apologetically, "I should have told you about dreams. They are tall tales of wonder and worry that the mind spins out of the leftover wishes of the day when eyes have shut out the images of moonlight and starlight, and look for pictures within." Rensal did not understand these words, but he could hear the kindness in the Tall One's voice and he felt less scared.
He returned home and, if he had more dreams, he did not remember them by the time he awoke in the morning. Beforelong, he was outdoors, painting red somersaults in the moist air above the grass. The sun was mopping up the last traces of dew from the earth when Rensal came upon the fallen bird in the stream.
Rensal looked at himself in the mirror of the water and then back at the bird. Rensal put his hands on his shoulders, measuring the size of himself, comparing the feel of his body with what he saw in the water. He was still the same size as yesterday. He had seen fallen birds in the stream before. He knew they were dead but he would never say that word out loud to himself. It was as if his mind were two separate pieces and one piece might scare the other piece away if that word were voiced aloud. The fallen bird was a redwing, and the thought of anything red dying made Rensal shiver. He ran faster than ever like a red wind parting the blades of grass until he reached the Tall One.
"I saw a redwing in the stream. Dead." There. He was brave. He had said the word for the first time and not just to himself but to the Tall One.
The Tall One scratched his chin, but did not wait for a serious expression to enter his face. He had grown very fond of this curious young redbit. When he spoke, there was respect in his voice.
"I am glad you said the word for yourself. It is so hard to explain to someone who has not let himself hear the sound of it for the first time. Death for the redwing and for all of us comes when our eyes are too old to fling the sun back into the sky on that last long-lasting night."
Rensal knew that his words had made the Tall One sad, and it was he who broke the silence first.
"I am small and you are big. You have taught me about shadows, dreams, night, and imagination. Between us, we have four good eyes to light the sun with for many mornings. My red somersaults dance like flowers above the grass and your voice is wise and warm above me like a sheltering roof."
"You are right," said the Tall One. "The world is waiting eagerly for our laughter and our dreams. Let us go at once and pluck the purple nettles in the valley and make some tea."
CHAPTER 2Rensal began to visit the Tall One practically every day. It became a habit. Yes, Rensal knew what a habit was: he couldn't stop biting his nails at times, no matter how often he was told not to. A habit made a redbit special. Flowers were beautiful, but Rensal never saw a flower with its own habits. Redbits, on the other hand, had peculiar habits that made each one a little different from the other.
Most flowers lean on the wind in the same way. Redbits, on the other hand, play with the wind in a variety of ways. No two redbit somersaults look the same. No two redbits laugh or cry or smile or run or even think the same. Yes, Rensal knew about habits all right, and talking to the Tall One was a habit that was growing on him day by day.
Their first conversation about imagination, dreams, night, and death had whetted Rensal's appetite. To be sure, he was a little scared of the Tall One's candor and did not always understand the meaning of his words, but Rensal was a curious redbit, and he felt he could ask the Tall One almost anything.
This tall one was strangely different from most tall ones: he listened. Your words went into him. When he spoke, his words had rubbed shoulders with yours in his mind. What returned to your ears was a little of yourself, changed by contact with him, and a little of himself, changed by contact with you. It was a game, a wonderful game, and Rensal loved it. The Tall One called it conversation. Rensal had no word for it yet, but he loved it very much all the same.
One day, while gathering the purple nettles for making tea, Rensal surprised the Tall One with a simple question: "Who was your first friend?"
Rensal could practically see the wheels of the Tall One's mind turning backwards to retrieve the memories. Finally, the wheels stopped and the Tall One asked, "Including or excluding parents?" Rensal did not understand the long words beginning with "in" and "ex". So the Tall One made it clear: "Do you want me to count parents in or out?"
"That depends on whether your parents were friendly or not!" Rensal replied rather mischievously. "Were they?" he then asked, with no less mischief in his tone.
"Aha, Rensal, you're something else," laughed the Tall One. Rensal could not imagine what the Tall One meant by "you're something else," but there was no time to interrupt him anyway, as he repeated: "Aha, Rensal, you're something else. You keep me young and on my toes with all your questions. Who was my first friend? Were my parents friendly? Well, I never," and he began to laugh and did not stop until he noticed Rensal was getting offended.
The Tall One wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes and suddenly became serious. "At first, my parents were too tall to be my friends. I loved them and they loved me but we didn't become friends for years, now that I come to think of it. My first friend was, therefore, not one of my parents, but someone else," and he began to scratch his head as if the someone else were hiding under the hair of his scalp. At least, that's how it appeared to Rensal, who always thought that what you did and what you said were connected to each other.
"Your question has really got me going," said the Tall One in amazement. "Where do they come from, such questions? How do you think them up?"
"Well, said Rensal, "this morning I was saying to myself that Ludik was my first friend, when I began to think of Fair-Fair and I wondered if he would be offended that I put Ludik first."
"Who's Fair-Fair?" asked the Tall One.
"Fair-Fair is a satin doll I have owned for as long as I can remember. His real name is Zephyr but I couldn't say that at first. I said Fair-Fair instead and that's what I call him to this day. If I worry about his being offended, does that make him a friend, even if he's not alive?"
"You certainly have a point," conceded the Tall One, and then he began to chuckle. "There I was, wondering if parents were included or excluded and there you were, wondering if Fair-Fairs were included or excluded. What a pair we are!"
Rensal was happy and proud to be called a pair (whatever that was) by the Tall One, which is surely what made him say, "Maybe it's not the first friend in your memory that's so important but the friend you're with at this very moment."
The Tall One blushed a little and poured some some purple nettle tea into a pair of cups.
CHAPTER 3One day, when the Tall One was stoking the coals to heat the water for tea, Rensal said, "Fire and water seem alike to me."
"How so?" asked the Tall One, as the flames began to dance above the rake.
"They flow. They change shape. They are not solid like you and I," said Rensal.
"Yet, we do have fire and water inside us," said the Tall One.
Rensal began to touch himself as if he might reach inside and feel the fire. Finally, in disbelief, he chided the Tall One. "You can't fool me. The water inside us I can understand, but fire — you can't be serious."
The Tall One smiled. "It is difficult to picture fire inside us," he agreed, "but how else could we walk, run, talk, or somersault without a fire inside us to move the muscles, to lift the bones, to turn the wheels so to speak."
Rensal had learnt that whenever the Tall One said "so to speak," he was trying to make something difficult a little easier to understand. So Rensal thought for a minute about the wheels inside him and the fires that turned them.
Rensal always thought of himself as solid through and through. The Tall One was making him think of himself in a new way. Rensal was not sure he wanted to learn about fires inside him from a tall one who had obviously taken leave of his senses. The Tall One was mad. That explained it. However, the Tall One did not sound mad as he continued.
"Rensal, everything that's alive and can move must build a fire to keep moving. You can't move without energy. Energy is just another name for fire. Even a flower has a hidden fire inside it that helps it to grow and stand up straight in the wind. The flower sucks up food from the earth with its roots and burns it up with air from the sky, and light from the sun to keep itself warm inside out."
Rensal had an immediate picture in his mind of flowers with flames running from root to stem to petal and he began to laugh. He stopped laughing when he began to picture himself as a flower with a mouth instead of roots, lungs bellowing air in and out, and light from the sun entering through his pores into the darkness inside him to kindle the inner fires that moved his muscles.
It was a sober Rensal who finally broke the silence. "Fire and water seem alike to me," he insisted. "They flow. They change shape. They are not solid like you and me."
The Tall One placed his hand on Rensal's shoulder understandingly and asked him if he would like to freshen his tea.
CHAPTER 4One day, Rensal woke from a dream that troubled him and he could hardly wait to tell the Tall One. In the dream, God was laughing up his sleeve at the redbits who believed in him. Rensal awoke with a sick feeling. God's laughter seemed so evil and the sleeve was the kind of sleeve that could only appear in a dream, a sinister sleeve to say the least. And the poor redbits in the dream seemed so betrayed ...
Rensal was in a hurry to reach the Tall One and only washed about half the sleep from himself in his haste. He also knew that dreams had a way of finding perfect hiding places as the day went by. In the morning, he could catch a dream and hold on to it for a while. By afternoon, he couldn't be sure, so Rensal made an early start.
The air seemed young and fresh and not at all drowsy. The sun was beginning to climb the ladder of the sky, but the warmth of it still seemed far off. Rensal ran. The dew drenched his paws as he kicked his way through the grass. The Tall One was lighting his first pipe of the day when Rensal arrived, slightly out of breath from his running. The smoke framed their conversation with an envelope of scented currents as the dialogue began.
"Do you think God would laugh up his sleeve at redbits who believe in him?" Rensal asked, jumping right into the middle of his concerns.
"Such a God would not deserve the attention of redbits," answered the Tall One. He puffed his pipe a few times before he spoke again. "Why do you ask?" he finally said, an emphasis of curiosity on his words.
Rensal told the Tall One his dream, not concealing any of his emotions. The Tall One could see how upset the little one was and he spoke with the gentleness of breezes that pass over leaves without waking them.
"God is a piece of ourselves blown out of proportion. When we lean too heavily on any piece, it may resent the extra weight and before you know it, it turns on us in our dreams as if it were no longer part of us but a stranger."
Rensal heard the words, but the meaning passed right over his head.
"God is a part of ourselves that acts like a stranger?" Rensal asked in disbelief.
"Only sometimes," the Tall One corrected him. "Only sometimes." He chewed on his pipe a little before speaking again. "Most of the time, God is no stranger to us. He is as familiar as sunrise and the gossip of morning birds or streams tinkling in the forest, waiting for ears to discover their hidden bells. God is the familiar feel of your own hand under your chin holding up a hundred heavy thoughts. God is the empty space under blossoms reserved for apples. God is the friendship that has grown between you and me."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Rensal The Redbit"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Eugene J. Mahon.
Excerpted by permission of Karnac Books Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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