When did I know, for the first time, I was going to be a writer? It might have been the day a crow flew into my classroom. It was my last year of high school and we were studying Hamlet. We were cramming for a test, as always. Our teacher was the crammer; we were the crammees. His name was Mr. Partridge. I'm not making it up.
The crow landed on the windowsill.
Rwwk!
He strutted along the sill and stuck his beak into the pencil sharpener. What a clown. The class went wild. The crow cocked his head and stared at us, as if we were all nuts sitting inside on a beautiful spring morning.
“Compare and contrast Hamlet and Laertes.”
Rwwk!
“What did Shakespeare mean when he –”
Rwwk!
Poor Mr. Partridge. He didn't stand a chance. He marched down the aisle and shooed the bird outside. He closed the window, in case there were any other birds out there planning to interrupt our cram session. We were all buzzing, but he soon had the class under control. Except me.
“Oh, sir. Oh, sir.”
“What is it, Mr. Wynne-Jones?”
I stood, even though I didn't really know what I wanted to say. My mind was full of that big black bird.
“It's like … this crow, it's so … it's sorta like …”
“Your point?” Mr. Partridge did not look amused. We had a lot of ground to cover before the bell.
“The crow was so … so neat!” I managed at last. “Neat” was a Beatle word, like fab and gear. “I mean … a crow in the classroom. And we're reading Hamlet.”
I sat down. It was as far as I could get.
The room went quiet. Mr. Partridge looked over the top of his glasses. “I take it you're finished?”
You can't blame him for being impatient. To the Partridges of the world, the crow was just an interruption. To me it was … what? I couldn't explain, but somehow I had made a connection. Unfortunately, I couldn't put it into words. Words come in handy if you're going to try to explain something.
This kind of problem occurred to me regularly in English class that year. It was my worst subject. I ended up with a grade of 47 percent. I'm not kidding.
Don't get me wrong; I loved the stuff we read. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Boy, when you've finished reading that, you sure know what a metaphor is! And then there was Paul's Case by Willa Cather, about this kid who robs a movie theater in Pittsburgh and goes to New York, where he stays at the Park Plaza until he walks along a railroad track and gets himself run over by a train. I think he leaves a rose or something on the track. What a great story.
I even liked the poetry, especially one poem by Theodore Roethke called “A. Field of Light.” We must have been cramming for a test when we read “A Field of Light” because we didn't discuss it; Mr. Partridge just explained it to us.
“Oh, sir. Oh, sir.”
“What now, Mr. Wynne-Jones?”
“Sir, you said that the still pond is the central image of the poem and that it's a symbol of death?”
“Yes.”
“But, sir, it's early morning.”
“Actually it's half past ten.”
“No, I mean in the poem first thing in the morning, sir. So how could it be about death? I mean, this guy is out for an early-morning walk and he stops to look at a pond and … I dunno … it's so … so neat.”
The still pond was like the crow. It meant something something more than the teacher was telling us. Bells went off in my head when I read it, but I couldn't explain why. I might as well have stood up and said, “Oh, sir, oh, sir. Bong, bong, bong.”
A threshold is where you cross from one place into another. In those days, all I did was trip over thresholds. What's this? Oh, a threshold. I wonder what's in here.
Bong!
When things like that happened to me, I would get kind of lost. It was as if we were on a guided tour of the Museum of English Literature and there I was, tagging along, joking and shoving like all the other kids in line while the teacher/tour guide showed us stuff, and then suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, there would be this door, open just a crack. I'd slip out of line to steal a peek. I'd catch a glimpse: a whir of black wings, a glint of green water, a rose lying on a railroad track. Then “Mr. Wynne-Jones!” and I'd be dragged back into line.
After the crow, the class marched on steadfastly through Hamlet, but I found myself drifting off. I couldn't keep up. I wanted needed to slip back to that room that wasn't on the tour, push open the door that was only open a crack. I closed the door behind me, while I was at it, so no one would disturb me.
What was inside?
Not the crow at least not right away. There was a pond in early morning's half-light. Moss and leaves floating and planks sunk in the sand the whole works. It was “A Field of Light” a perfect replica. There was a lot of early-morning mist, so you couldn't even see the walls of this secret room. All you could see and smell and hear and feel was a still and wild place. I walked along the edge of it. There was a chill in the air. I could feel the dampness through my running shoes. Nothing lapped. Nothing chirruped. It seemed dead.
And yet there was something someone there in the room with me. A guard? Maybe this place was off-limits.
“Hello?” I said.
Then I waited. The waiting is important if you want to find out what there is in a room, which is actually a poem.
“Hello? Is someone here?”
Then I saw a shadow coming out of the mist. A man. Not in uniform, but in a scruffy cardigan and unironed pants.
“Mr. Roethke?” I asked, timidly. I wasn't sure if you were allowed to talk inside a poem.
“Hi,” he said. “Thanks for dropping by. Don't get many visitors.”
I didn't say anything else right away. There didn't seem to be a rush. I decided to just listen to the quiet. Then something on the pond gurgled. Something rustled in the bullrushes. A bird tweeted. A frog croaked.
“Boy you sure woke this place up,” said Mr. Roethke. He chuckled a bit. “People mostly think this place is dead. Can you believe that?”
“No,” I said.
“Especially at this time of the morning,” he added. I couldn't tell him how happy I was that he spoke in italics, just like me. “Some people don't always remember that the true nature of a symbol is its ambiguity A symbol is like a bright coin you flip in your mind and, as long as it's in the air, it is always heads and tails.”
“So the pond is death and life?”
“You got ’er, son.”
“Neat! Thank you for that, sir.”
“Call me Ted,” he said. “Come on. I've got something to show you.”
Suddenly I had a new tour guide. This one didn't seem in much of a hurry. I didn't get the feeling there was going to be a test. We stopped to smell some wild roses. They were heavy with dew, but when you looked closely, some of the petals had been eaten away by who knows what.
“Y'up for a bit of a hike?” he asked. The grass was thick and soggy. Wetness soaked clear through to my socks. But the air was warming up a bit; the mist burning off.
“Sure,” I said.
The room, it turned out, was endless. I worried about getting lost. Ted didn't seem too worried. I guess if you're a poet, you know the way back to places.
He knew the names of things. This wasn't rock, it was rose quartz; that wasn't a wildflower, it was monkshood or common moonseed; and that wasn't a butterfly, but a Sooty Azure.
A Sooty Azure. Can you believe it?
The mist, by now, had burned off and we were in this wild high meadow. It smelled great. I looked overhead. There were heaped-up, billowing clouds moving in from the east.
“Altocumulus,” I said. I had learned that in science.
Ted was impressed. “We might run into some rain up ahead.”
And then I saw the bird.
“A crow,” I said.
“Close,” said Ted. “A raven.”
We were climbing now and the way got rough. I could hear
the sea, and soon enough we emerged onto a rocky headland. The crow I mean, the raven flew on ahead. He would stall on the wind, watching us clamber over the rocks.
Rwwk!
Below us the sea pounded against the cliffs. The sun only reached us between breaks in the clouds and a chill wind blew in my face. Ted seemed a little out of breath.
“We could turn back,” I said.
“It's not so far now.”
I was kind of tired myself. My feet ached. Boy this was not like any poem I had ever read before.
Then Ted stopped and pointed up the coast. There was a castle. The raven was heading towards it.
“Elsinore,” said Ted.
The rain arrived before we did. We pulled ourselves, weary and wet, up to the castle gate. The drawbridge was down; the gates were open; the portcullis, with its wicked teeth, was up.
Rwwk!
Echoing within the castle walls, the raven's shrill cry seemed to bid us enter. I was pretty nervous. Here I was with a 47 in English and an elderly American poet, about to enter a medieval castle. We had seen no signs of anyone at home: no smoke from the many tall chimneys, no guards on the ramparts. How loud our footsteps sounded on the weathered planks of the drawbridge!
I don't know what I expected to see in the courtyard Hamlet? Shakespeare? Yeah, that would be it. Another poet. I could ask him what he meant when he
A whinnying sound broke my train of thought. I stopped dead in my tracks. There was a blinding flash of lightning and, in the next instant, a tremendous clap of thunder. I know what that's called: pathetic fallacy.
And there stood a giant knight on a mammoth black horse. His voluminous black cape was whipped around by the winds. He wore a helmet that shone golden in what drizzly bit of sun made it through the clouds. His visor was down. His vast chest was plated in mail. The stallion pawed the hard-packed earth violently as soon as we entered the yard. Smoke came from the horse's nostrils. Our raven, from his roost on the giant's shoulder, cried shrilly. I thought it was our raven, but then a second one fluttered down from a perch on the wall and landed on the giant knight's other shoulder.
Rwwk!
The second raven poked his beak into the knight's ear.
“That's him, is it?” said the knight. And he stared right at me. I couldn't see his eyes through his visor, but I could feel his gaze. I grabbed Roethke's hand and yanked him back towards the entranceway But even as I did, there was a low rumbling and the portcullis dropped with a sickening thud, barring our exit.
“In such a hurry?” said the knight.
His voice was Darth Vader with a Scandinavian accent, speaking at the end of a tunnel with a cold after smoking six packs of cigarettes.
“Oh, sir,” I whispered.
“Silence!”
Both the ravens screeched and fluttered up from the giant's shoulders. I was launched backwards by the very force of his voice, pulling poor old Ted to the ground with me. We were a long way from his still pond.
The rain began to pelt down. Naturally. The huge horse pawed the ground more strenuously, as if he would have liked nothing better than to charge across the yard and trample us to death. Looking at him from my new vantage point, I saw what I hadn't noticed before he had eight legs.
“I have been waiting for you,” said the knight.
“For me?”
There was another flash of lightning. One, two
Kaboom!
The thunder shook my teeth. And suddenly the knight slapped his thick reins against the flanks of his mighty steed. “Onward, Sleipnir!” he shouted.
The horse came all eight legs of him pounding closer towards us. I was on my feet by then and I backed up against the wall. Ted just sat there, leaning back on his hands, his chin on his chest. I was afraid he would be crushed, but the horse and rider stopped a dozen strides from us. I had to crane my neck to look up at the visored face.
“I am Odin,” he said. “The Danish God of War.”
“I'm sorry to hear that,” I murmured to myself.
The smoke from Sleipnir's nostrils billowed towards us. Ted started to cough. The second raven, which had been picking at something on his claw dried carrion, I bet looked directly at me.
Rwwk!
He poked his beak in Odin's ear.
“Doesn't recognize you, eh?” said Odin. He turned his attention back to me. “Every day, I send out my raven friends, far and wide, to hear what there is to hear and see what there is to see.” He inclined his head slightly to the right. “This is Munin,” he said. “This is Hugin,” he added, indicating the talkative one on his other shoulder.
Rwwk! said Munin.
Rwwk! said Hugin.
“Hugin and Munin,” said Odin. “Thought and Memory.”
My eyes were teary with the smoke. Ted was coughing pretty badly by now. I whacked him a couple of times on the back. He had slithered over to the wall, but he made no attempt to stand up. He knew his way here, all right, but he seemed as surprised as I was to run into the Danish God of War.
“I do recognize you, Hugin,” I said. The rain gusted against us now. I had to shout to make myself heard. “You flew into my classroom.”
Rwwk! he said. Then he whispered something to Odin.
“You called him a crow,” said Odin.
“Didn't know any better.”
There was a third bolt of lightning, so bright it dazzled me. When I could open my eyes again, Odin had dismounted and was standing an arm's length off. Sleipnir had clomped a pace away. The smoke was clearing. Odin threw back his cloak and drew out a two-edged sword, with a blade as wide as a man's hand. Now that we had been smoked, I thought, we were going to be butchered and served as tidbits at some Teutonic cocktail party. All this because I dared to slip away from the official guided tour.
Odin held the mighty sword, two-fisted, above his head, disturbing Hugin from his perch.
Rwwk!
“Silence!” Odin shouted. He was talking to the sky.
The rain stopped.
“I am also the God of Storms,” he said. He sheathed his sword, and Hugin alighted once more on his shoulder. Munin had never left. I guess Memory is less flighty than Thought.
I breathed a sigh of relief and wiped the rain out of my eyes. Then Odin lifted his visor. He was ridiculously handsome.
“You'll have to excuse me,” he said. “This whole god-of-war thing is a bit of a throwback to my early days. I used to be nothing but frenzy and fury and rage. Ah, youth.”
Sleipnir whinnied loudly, as if he wished they were back in the old days.
“Shh.” Odin slipped off his gloves. “To the ancient Danes, I was also looked upon as the God of Intelligence, Wisdom, and Poetry.” He smiled beguilingly at Ted. “I was famed for my eloquence. It was I who ordained the rules that governed human society”
Rwwk!
“I am getting to my point.” Odin swatted Hugin with his glove. The raven squawked and fluttered into the air before resettling on his master's shoulder.
“The point, child, is this,” said Odin. “The story of that unmannered but glorious young prince that you know as Hamlet does contain ‘crows’ as you so unwisely called Hugin. There are ravens throughout the play because, of course, my spies were everywhere in the drama, whispering in people's ears, spurring Hamlet on in his fight against the world.”
I stared at Odin, my mouth hanging open. I stared at Ted, now more or less recovered, although his face not to mention his cardigan were stained with smoke and rain. He nodded at me, in case I hadn't believed my ears.
“You mean I was right?”
Rwwk!
Rwwk!
Now both ravens were making a noise that sounded as if they were laughing. There was laughter in Odin's voice, too, when he spoke again.
“Not right,” said Odin. “You didn't express yourself well enough to be right. Besides, there is no wrong or right. A play is what you make of it. Those who think there is a right or wrong to a play generally refer to it as a work.
But you were, at least, sharp enough to realize that art is not just what is on the page. To the others, it was merely coincidental that Hugin should arrive in your classroom. But you saw that there was a connection.”
Yes! “When I am reading a story, it is part of my life,” I said. “It happens to me.”
“Like the raven happened,” said Ted.
“Exactly,” said Odin. “If you have learned that, the years have done you well. Teachers, in my long experience, do not expect so much from a student. They are not always prepared to deal with it.”
Rwwk! Hugin whispered in Odin's ear. “Stupid, you say?” He chuckled.
I was elated and it made me charitable. “I don't think that Mr. Partridge is stupid.”
“Oh, not him,” said Odin. “You.”
And that was enough to get Munin into the conversation. He shrieked with raucous delight at the joke. Thought and Memory were laughing at me. Even Ted smiled and patted me on the shoulder.
Odin stroked the two birds until they quieted down.
“You featherbrains,” he said, affectionately
Before my eyes, the two birds turned their beaks under their wing feathers and seemed to go to sleep instantly.
Sleipnir whinnied impatiently. When you have eight legs, standing around must seem like a complete waste of time.
Odin looked at me searchingly “So now you know,” he said.
I nodded, though I wasn't sure what I knew. Something about how a story is going on inside of me, taking over my pulse, borrowing my bones. I wasn't reading Hamlet; I was Hamlet, even if I understood only a quarter of the words. When that bird arrived in the room, I was the Prince of Denmark and I knew it was a sign, somehow.
I wanted to tell Odin that I wasn't so good at analyzing a story because when you're inside a story, it's hard to be objective. Surely a god, the subject of a thousand legends, would understand that.
The portcullis rumbled behind us. I turned to watch it being wound up into the castle walls by unseen hands. When I turned back to the courtyard, Odin was once again mounted on Sleipnir. It seemed our meeting was over. He nodded at me as they passed by.
“Good-bye,” I called. “Thanks.” But I doubt that he heard me over the blasting of four pairs of hooves on the oaken drawbridge.
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