Where the Hidden Things Are

The delightful Caitlin Firedragon took me along to an exhibition yesterday, following the mandatory handover of Tim Tams. The last of the twenty packs I left Australia with. The space and weight in my baggage has been taken up by books and American candy for my daughter, so it sorta evens out.

We went to the Maurice Sendak exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum - great gift shop, by the way, I particularly loved their YO SEMITE t-shirts.

Oddly enough, i hadn't heard much about Maurice Sendak until last Saturday night, when I went into Books-A-Million in Kansas City, picked up Where the Wild Things Are, and read it to Jay.

As we came in, we read about Maurice's "Other Story" underlying the published one. I particularly liked a quote up on the wall: "When you hide another story in a story, that's the story I am telling the children," Sendak once said. "It's the two levels of writing - one visible, one invisible - that fascinate me most. There's a mystery there - a clue, a nut, a bolt, and if I put it together, I find me."

The rest of the exhibition examined this. The hidden clues, the dark images, the naked men. All telling stories that weren't quite visible.

Caitlin thought the images were quite dark, but I thought about it some, and decided that Sendak was actually illuminating the darkness within us all. The night fears, the terrors, the imaginings of the child in us all.

I thought a lot about the exhibition, once I said goodbye to Caitlin. Caitlin, beautiful Caitlin whom I have now metten on three continents. She bought me a pumpkin latte at a local coffee outlet. It's almost Halloween.

And I wondered about my own current work in progress. Suddenly it clicked into place. The Monster that Quint is not going to be unable to slay is not the monster I talk about in the book. No, it's another one.

And the America I find in Lamberts? It's not the one I write about.

Thank you, Sendak. Thank you, Caitlin.