There are tigers in the woods behind my house. They tell me no, but I don’t believe it because they say there are bears but I have never seen one there so a tiger or a lion never seen is just as likely as a bear.
There is a bird–a homely one, I can’t remember which–that if I close my eyes and only listen makes me believe the lawns and maple trees are in reality a jungle. Or at least, the jungle that I consider when I think of jungle learned from movies and tv. Close your eyes and try it; live within the boundaries only of your self and seek out your environment through the sound alone and what you know of it.
Besides the tiger there are elephants who hide beyond the yard in day and romp together within the fenced in tundra of the neighbor’s field at midnight. Why not? They are somewhere out there just beyond our vision and maybe they are closer than we think. What we cannot see a thousand miles away is no more unseen than that beyond the treeline. And there must be giraffes I think, because the trees are tall and fresh with leaves for browsing, and you could hear their silence if you listen well.
I sit and look out deep into the woods behind my house and watch and hope to someday see the tiger living there.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
This is enjoyable. And it brings memories of a SF? writer of my younger years: Ray Bradbury. He too worked with the just beyond there inhabitants of the everyday world. (Those carnivores could be real, as in that once famous short story, The Veldt.) His is a time that does not belong now.
Since I work with out of print children’s books, I know of a very good story made into a book from the 60’s whose plot is about a tiger. The young child at the center of the novel sees and lives with his tiger, and do we, because of the inspired imagings of the author(ess). Very few authors can see inside the fragile world of the child’s fantasy.
I’d forgotten Bradbury–a favorite at one time. After I wrote this I thought of the movie “Jumanji” which is similar, I believe, in the world beyond the walls.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could regain that innocent sense of wonder and belief we held as children? What great writing would come of that, untainted by the adult sense of reality!