Anyway, after one of Parker's dance classes, Suzy brought home a flyer announcing that there would be a 90 minute lecture/presentation on the history of magna and anime that would address how it has become a worldwide phenomenon. Maryn was immediately interested, but I told her that it might not be what she thought. It seemed like it was going to be more on the dry, academic side and not as fun and kid-oriented as she might imagine. She persisted though and hounded Suzy and I a little bit even though it was Parent/Teacher Conference that night and we weren't sure when we'd be done.
Suzy and I finished just in time at the middle school, and Maryn and I headed over. As I suspected, this was no anime convention. Rather than teenagers dressed like Naruto characters, the lecture was attended by a combination of the aforementioned older Birkenstock lovers and some black-clad young men with their arms self-consciously folded over their chests. (Obvious anime fans who seemed to feel out of place with the older set.) The lecture was given by a guy who is a chemist at Dow who was in his early 60s. He discovered anime at the age of 50 and basically made himself into an expert. He obviously had time, money, and the indulgence of his wife and so he collected movies, comics, graphic novels, you name it. Since discovering this new passion of his, he's attended conventions, published papers, and given presentations on the subject.
He gave a brief history of comic books, cartoons, Japan, magna, anime, and the globalization of these products. He was knowledgeable and friendly. He wasn't trying to be something he wasn't. He knew a lot and wanted to share it with people. The second half of the presentation was a series of clips from a variety of different types of anime - cartoons aimed at children, young girls, young boys, men, women, and even senior citizens. Apparently, Japan has an anime genre from everyone. Who knew? Not me. The clips were really strange and mostly really visually beautiful. The guy kept stressing how true anime is made for the Japanese and doesn't make concessions to other cultures. They retell Japanese fairy tales and folklore, the have incredibly long pauses in dialogue for apparently no reason, they have types and conventions that are foreign to our western concept of heroes and villains. The clips were, in every sense, foreign.
Anyway, despite it's more academic, sophisticated content, Maryn really enjoyed it. She came away eager to look up some of the series online and at the library. We've already rented My Neighbor Totoro from the library and I fear we may have created a monster. Parker is asking for it by name and Avery walks around the house randomly saying, "Cat bus!"
Anyway, the whole of point of this is me explaining why I was happy to take Maryn to see this thing. I wanted her to see it because of Emily Dickinson. Once, when asked by one of the visitors she entertained at her family home how she defined poetry, Dickinson replied, "If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way?"
That feeling of the top of your head being taken off, that encounter with something strange and beautiful and otherworldly - that's what I thought Maryn might experience. I remember seeing a Ricks College production of The Diviners when I was in junior high and literally feeling as though I walked out of theater a different person. Not "better" or "worse," but changed because a work of art had altered the way I saw the world. I felt as though the top of my head had been taken off.
Probably around that same time, I had my first experience with anime. We were on some family trip in Salt Lake City, staying at a downtown hotel, and Jason and I somehow convinced my parents to let us walk to the nearby arthouse movie theater and see an eleven o'clock showing of Akira, a Japanese science fiction cartoon I'd heard a lot about. Looking back, I have no idea why my parents agreed to let their two teenage sons wander around downtown Salt Lake at midnight. Whatever convinced them, we went to Akira and came out of it utterly unsure of what to think. It was emphatically not for kids. Violent, trippy, and just generally unsettling, it has stayed with me for years, the striking images rolling around in the back of my head.
When I was eighteen, I went to Seattle for a week for a senior trip and spent a morning wandering around the gorgeous Seattle Art Museum looking at a Dale Chihuly exhibit. I had literally never seen anything like it in my life. They pieces were massive, curling glass creations that looked like squid chandeliers from Mars. It was alien, beautiful, and dreamlike. I left that place a slightly different person than I went in.
In Jim Papworth's Intro to Poetry class (the first place I ever met the beautiful and powerful Suzanne Day), so many of the poems were strange and off-centering and lovely. James Dickey's "The Hospital Window," James Wright's "Laying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota," Robert Hass's "A Story About the Body," Adrienne Rich's "Diving Into the Wreck" - and a dozen others at least all utterly changed not just my worldview but my course in life. I probably never would have pursued an MFA in poetry if not for the things I read in that class.
There was something about each of those experiences that suggested that there was mystery in the world, that there were big and wonderful and strange things and ideas out there that I was just beginning to experience. It's a weird feeling -- unsettling but exciting. Maryn is 13 now and is at the point in her life when she may begin to have similar experiences. I hope she does. Obviously, she's not going to be moved necessarily by the same kinds of stuff I was, but I want her and all my girls to have as many encounters with art and beauty and strangeness in the world as they can.
Sadly, at least for me, the older I get, the less of that top-of-my-head-taken-off feeling I experience. I think as you get older, there's just less mystery in the world. You've heard of things, seen things, experienced things and there isn't as much that's brand new and foreign any more. Maybe that's why people travel when they get older - to recapture that feeling that there's mystery and the unexpected just around the corner.
The last time I remember having that feeling was when I was in Arizona for the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference. Certainly, the giant cacti and the orange rock mountains looming above town were pretty strange, but specifically, it was when I went to Frank Lloyd Wright's house and took a two hour nighttime tour. I just sort of floated around, trying to absorb every little detail. It was mysterious and wonderful.
So the next time Maryn wants to start watching Doctor Who or try out for a play or start a club or visit someplace new, I hope the circumstances allow it. I want her and all my daughters to see that the world is full and it's just waiting for them.
