“MINE!”
She stood there, arms raised in defensive posture; legs apart; tears streaming down her face.
“MINE!”
She cried again, as she defended “her” stuff (not yet bought; in the shopping cart) from the invader (a young boy twice her size, merely moving forward as the line moved ahead).
“Mine” is not a word that is used around my little niece Eliana at home, so it’s fairly easy to trace it to her interaction with other children at daycare. And we avoid the word for good reason: in context, it is a noxious thing to say. Especially in public. Especially to strangers. Especially in respect of things that, well, you don’t even quite own yet.
But … the sheer courage of my little niece in standing up to the perceived attack on herstuff was remarkable. This was not a whiny, “mommy, Jack took my toy” kind of assertion of ownership; she stood there, all of 2.5 years old, arms up, determined to defend her stuff against perceived aggression by a much larger foe.
Another amazing moment in the life of my niece, who is the source of much of our amusement and enjoyment these days.
And another year gone by.
In some respects, this has been an uneventful year – the good sort (no illnesses; no disasters). Professionally, matters are calm (lost only one significant constitutional case; have not been fired yet); personally, things are quiet (no major trips; no serious announcements).
Since my Washington trip back in March, the only excursion worth noting was to Neuschwanstein. This is the famed cliff-top castle of the mad Ludwig of Bavaria that inspired Disney’s cartoonists and architects to come up with the turreted symbol of the company and to shape our collective idea of what a “fairytale castle” looks like.
Ludwig – whose brother died of madness and who was eventually sent to a sanatorium, where he perished (along with his psychologist) – had the original medieval cliff-top castle torn down so that he could build an, er, authentic one in its place, modelled and inspired, for additional authenticity, by Wagner’s operas. The castle looks magnificent and, indeed, “medieval” and “fairy-tale” like in its setting; it reminded me of all those “artist’s conception”s that we see of distant planets and gruesome murders: from the outside, it certainly looks like a XIX c. “artist’s conception” of what a medieval castle might look like new and, for that reason, it is beautiful and faintly reassuring.
Inside, it’s a different story. An entire floor was never finished (after Ludwig was committed, building stopped and the rest of the castle was turned into a museum); Ludwig’s room, covered in panelled and carved wood, took four years to finish; each major room has a different Wager opera motif. All of this is amusing, if mildly ludicrous, though neither remotely authentic nor aesthetically pleasing. I think all of the excesses of the castle, including the Wagnerian obsession, would have been easy to take and, in some measure at any rate, to admire, were it not for the pièce de résistance, the coup de grace, if you will: an indoor grotto. Yeah, really, including dripping fake stalactites. I always wanted to see the place; and I did. Proved yet again that listening to Wagner too much could be hazardous to your mental health.
And so it is – with a dubious artistic comment – that I bring to a close this note and my year.