You are currently browsing the daily archive for February 26th, 2007.
Recently I’ve been tooting a horn about a book called “The Phantom Tollbooth’ and about Pacific Northwest Art. There is a connection for me. Like
Milo, I too had a journey to the Lands Beyond. It took me through time and space to another land and place and state of being.
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When I was a boy, my grandparents’ house had a 3rd floor, which was used for storage and attic stuff. I recall hoards of furniture, and trunks of books; it seemed a treasure trove. Thinking of C.S. Lewis or Lewis Carroll, I spent some time looking for secret tunnels or passages that may lead me to other places. I did find one; in a pile of magazines.
In the attic were stacks of LIFE, Boy’s Life, and Walt Disney Comics. I thought them ancient, but they were mostly from the 40s and the 50s. The astonishing ads and the articles sometimes seemed beyond my understanding. I felt like an archeologist discovering the scrolls of some ancient culture, a rival to Ancient Egypt or some other long ago civilization.
Every time we visited my grandparents I would visit this attic and sit, reading these magazines. The Boy’s Life seemed to call me. I was intrigued by the squeaky clean 50s boy scouts in their khaki uniforms, doing all sorts of butch scouting activities. I was in scouting myself at the time, and it amazed me that some of the same cartoons and features were still running 20 years later.
I kept returning to a cartoon series called “Kam, of the Ancient Ones”. It was about a young Native American from the Pueblos of the Southwest. In his adventures he travels the western half of the pre-Columbian North American continent. The magazines were not in order. One issue would have Kam on the prairies of Montana, and in the next magazine he is seal hunting in
Alaska. (Apparently I wasn’t bright enough to put the magazines in order, or the ‘where will be this time’ took precedent over logic).
In this series Kam goes to the Pacific Northwest, and lives for awhile with the various peoples of that region. This riveted me. I somehow connected to these people and their ideas and culture - and most of all – their art style.
To this day the Native American Pacific Northwest draws me. In my analytical work I used Raven and the Mythos of that realm to work through some archetype work; “Apparently these relate to your more than the Greek (myths). You must have been Haida once upon a time” said one professor.
Well, regardless of what really happened in that attic in northern Michigan 30 years ago, I am grateful for being in theLand of Pacific Northwest, or at least in spirit. I thank you Kam for being my guide to some of the Lands Beyond, mentioned in the Phantom Tollbooth.
