You can love someone, satellite your whole life around them, and not even like them (3 steps to a bad time). Isn't that weird? I spent years talking myself out of—and into— the experience I was having.
What that tells me is that I'm good at ignoring things. Also that loving anything, in spite of something big at the forefront, doesn't really work.
And currently I'm ignoring 2 square feet of my body and trying to love all of me and it isn't working.
Yes I have a reconstruction surgery in April; my instinct is to strap in and then hope my feelings shift. That's a passive hope. Todays are what life is. Todays are imperfect.
Colors and themes
AP and I did a critical reading of The Lorax every night for a week.
https://archive.org/details/thelorax_202003/page/n9/mode/1up
The Once-ler’s eyes, visible in the end sheets (pages directly next to the book covers) and a few pages when he's telling the story in the present day, are bright yellow. We decided that yellow is a color that anchors the plot points. The Lorax and the Truffula trees are partially yellow. The coins when the Once-ler makes his first profit of $4 for selling off a piece of paradise are yellow. The last Truffula seed at the end is yellow. The moon is yellow and visible at the beginning and end. Our silly take: “The moon made me do it. That's my story and I'm standing by it.” -The Once-ler
“The Once-ler is magic for evil and the Lorax is magic for good.”-AP
Contrast at the end
Take and give: The Once-ler takes and takes throughout the whole book. He even requests money from the boy to hear the story from him. At the end he gives one seed, hand to hand. Hands and axes are more core images of the book.
Sight: What I find so interesting about the book is that the Once-ler is explaining to a child his own series of unforgivable, irreversible mistakes. The book bludgeons you with them. The forlorn animals’ faces. The direct results of his actions are plainly in front of him and he refuses to see them (his eyes are obscured).
Bookending events:
I recently read a book I really enjoyed. The author said in an interview that his mentor taught him to have the first and last sentences of a piece speak to each other: that if you flip to the first and last sentences of a book, they should be related. The Lorax does this with core plot points:
Tree-cutting: The Once-ler cutting down the first Truffula tree and the last Truffula tree; the Lorax pops out of the first stump with an ax beside it, and leaves forever when the last tree is cut by a machine with an ax. The Lorax seems to be nature's caretaker/parent (“Now listen here Dad.”)
War of words: The Lorax tries to reason with the Once-ler (the narrator and villain) with words for the entire book. The Lorax is the hero and he loses! On gray and purple pages (the colors get grimmer as the pages go on). At the end he jumps through a gap in the clouds, showing a blue sky (hope). ‘Has the hope left with him?’ We ask.
But he leaves one more word “Unless” (which looks a bit like Thneeds. The words mirror each other). That word is what makes the Once-ler give the boy the last seed.
“Unless” is how it seems like he justifies his bad actions to himself, like “unless I make money and then it's fine”. And then it's not fine at all and he finally hears the Lorax’s message.
I am I
AP loves Dr. Seuss books. I like he likes that they're long and complicated. They're tricky and circuitous. Sometimes with a story arc and sometimes with a threadbare one. He has an air of mischief when he picks one.
Happy Birthday to you! is about one, finite today. And a magical bird showing us how to love ourselves (maybe the real audience for the book is adults), which children seem to already know.
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