The Dong With A Luminous Nose

My Mother would read the Owl and Pussycat to me as a child, and then I read it to my child. It is a love story, but then, aren’t all stories love stories? It’s words of love charmed children for generations.

The poem was written by Edward Lear, a strange man with a large beard, who lived the 76 years from 1812 to 1888. Lear was a closeted gay man in a time when being gay was a crime, and finding love was few and far between. He was the 20th of 21 children, so speaking as the fifth of seven, finding yourself in a large family is often a quest to carve a corner of your own. There could never be enough attention. Never enough love.

Lear was probably on the spectrum as well, in a time when autism and it’s cousins were also not understood, if it is even understood today. It is said that if you know one person with autism, then you know one person with autism. We are all different, born with differences, and as “they” say, that makes all the difference.

Lear’s search for love and self lead him to create what he called his Book of Nonsense in 1846. Besides the Owl and The Pussycat, he wrote of the Jumblies, who went to sea in a sieve, as families will do. He also wrote a poem called The Dong with a Luminous Nose, and practically invented what we call a limerick.

In The Dong….a “man” searches for his lost love, a Jumbly Girl, and similar to a certain reindeer, he invents a long nose that lights up, offering him the light to find his lost love.

I could recite the Owl and Pussycat for many years, and parts of it still come back to me now. Lear’s beautiful words and drawings have influenced many, opening imaginations, helping strange children find themselves and others who spoke his hidden language. “There in the wood, a Piggy-wig stood, with a ring on the end of his nose.”

“And they sailed away, for a year and a day, to the land where the Bong tree grows.” Where does the Bong tree grow? In a foreign land for sure.

Canada is home to many people from foreign lands. Last year over 400,000 newcomers to Canada arrived, and to varying degrees assimilated. We are a nation of immigrants. Never perfect, but at least we try to commit to this vision of diversity.

When I worked at the bakery 23 - 30 years ago, I hired many people. Some were students, and many for some strange provenance were from Winnipeg, while others came from more exotic lands.

One guy came to offer his services to us as a cleaner, offering to clean what others would not or could not do. His name was Dong. He emigrated to Canada in the 80’s with his family from Laos. From 1979 to 1982, Canada welcomed nearly 8,000 Laotians as refugees. Supported by the federal government and private sponsor groups, they resettled in various parts of Canada. These folks were known as The Boat People. Dong told me of his harrowing escape from Communist Laos, swimming on his back across a river, while soldiers were shooting at them from the cliffs above.

Somehow Dong made it out, then he was able to get his wife and children out. Ding and his wife had a number of children, although many of them had died very young due to sickness and lack of food. He told me of having his babies dying in his arms.

From Laos, they made it to Vietnam, and from there, they went on a crowded boat to Japan, where they applied for refugee status from the Government of Canada.

From Japan they were flown to Winnipeg, and were given a house, which sounds very nice, but it was Winnipeg. Winnipeg is one of the coldest cities in Canada-many degrees below freezing, so when they arrived with nothing but the shirts on their backs, they relied on generosity of strangers. The house they were given had no heat or electricity.

In Winterpeg!

Dong managed somehow to get a bicycle, and would try to find work, riding on the snow covered streets without warm clothes in winter. There was little romance in this journey. They survived through a sheerwill to survive and find a home on the other side of the world.

Dong had a van when he introduced himself to me. He said he could clean every night. It was a set amount that he wanted, so I hired his company to clean. Every week he would come laughing and doing an incredible job. Slowly this weekly payment became larger as more tasks were added. Now he was cleaning inside and outside.

I met his son Hi. His last name was Ho. Hi Ho. His son was as hard working as he was. I soon hired Hi to work in the bakery, teaching him how to make bread.

One day Hi showed up in a luxury sportscar, with a tv in the car. How did he afford this? Well, he earned it, by working hard. His father Dong kept working in the evenings, arriving in his broken down van, always trying to have me add more services.

Dong wasn’t taking away anyone’s work, as It was impossible to get anyone to want to do the cleaning. He, like so many immigrants before and after him, were doing the jobs noone here would do.

When I hear people like Pollievre, and Trump, and Hungary’s Victor Orban talk about immigration destroying society, I can’t help but wonder what they see.

This world would not run without poor people from other countries coming to our country, and others, working under the table, riding bicycles in scant clothing in winter, just to get to a place where their children had an opportunity to live, and not die from starvation or gunfire. Dong’s story was dramatic, but so is the dories of the Mexicans and Guatemalans, and Syrians, and the list goes on and on and on. Fleeing starvation, war, climate changes, there will only be more and more people wanting to come.

Build it and they will come was the slogan of a Field of Dreams. But for many refugees, they cannot wait for us to build it, they must come, because not coming is even worse.

We are in the Christmas season once again. Many people get upset because it’s happy holidays, as opposed to Merry Christmas. It’s Santa and reindeers and stockings and lumps of coal, and not baby Jesus.

But the same folks who want counties built on Christian values, want to protect the unborn, but once they are born feel nothing, accepting the thousands of children killed in wars as sad but necessary collateral when they are killed in wars. Forgetting Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself, or do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

“Far and few, far and few,

Are the lands where the Jumblies live;

Their heads are green, and the hands are blue

And they went to sea in a sieve.”

We live in a world where Nonsense sometimes makes the only sense.

Please enjoy the following Lear. Read it aloud.

Thank you for reading THIS IS NOT MUSIC!

Then you to all my subscribers and those who generously sponsor my writing. I sincerely thank you all.

2023 has been a hell of a year. I look forward to the fresh sheet of 2024. More words. More music. Thank you for all your love and support as I fucked cancer, like it was never fucked before. As always, much love to my dear Michelle- you are the best and I love you.

To my daughter and family, I love you and thank you for being there for me.

And much love to all my angels. You know who you are. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

The Dong with a Luminous Nose

BY EDWARD LEAR

When awful darkness and silence reign

Over the great Gromboolian plain,

Through the long, long wintry nights; —

When the angry breakers roar

As they beat on the rocky shore; —

When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights

Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore: —

Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,

There moves what seems a fiery spark,

A lonely spark with silvery rays

Piercing the coal-black night, —

A Meteor strange and bright: —

Hither and thither the vision strays,

A single lurid light.

Slowly it wander, — pauses, — creeps, —

Anon it sparkles, — flashes and leaps;

And ever as onward it gleaming goes

A light on the Bong-tree stems it throws.

And those who watch at that midnight hour

From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,

Cry, as the wild light passes along, —

"The Dong! — the Dong!

"The wandering Dong through the forest goes!

"The Dong! the Dong!

"The Dong with a luminous Nose!"

Long years ago

The Dong was happy and gay,

Till he fell in love with a Jumbly Girl

Who came to those shores one day.

For the Jumblies came in a sieve, they did, —

Landing at eve near the Zemmery Fidd

Where the Oblong Oysters grow,

And the rocks are smooth and gray.

And all the woods and the valleys rang

With the Chorus they daily and nightly sang, —

"Far and few, far and few,

Are the lands where the Jumblies live;

Their heads are green, and the hands are blue

And they went to sea in a sieve.

Happily, happily passed those days!

While the cheerful Jumblies staid;

They danced in circlets all night long,

To the plaintive pipe of the lively Dong,

In moonlight, shine, or shade.

For day and night he was always there

By the side of the Jumbly Girl so fair,

With her sky-blue hands, and her sea-green hair.

Till the morning came of that hateful day

When the Jumblies sailed in their sieve away,

And the Dong was left on the cruel shore

Gazing — gazing for evermore, —

Ever keeping his weary eyes on

That pea-green sail on the far horizon, —

Singing the Jumbly Chorus still

As he sate all day on the grassy hill, —

"Far and few, far and few,

Are the lands where the Jumblies live;

Their heads are green, and the hands are blue

And they went to sea in a sieve.

But when the sun was low in the West,

The Dong arose and said;

— "What little sense I once possessed

Has quite gone out of my head!" —

And since that day he wanders still

By lake and forest, marsh and hills,

Singing — "O somewhere, in valley or plain

"Might I find my Jumbly Girl again!

"For ever I'll seek by lake and shore

"Till I find my Jumbly Girl once more!"

Playing a pipe with silvery squeaks,

Since then his Jumbly Girl he seeks,

And because by night he could not see,

He gathered the bark of the Twangum Tree

On the flowery plain that grows.

And he wove him a wondrous Nose, —

A Nose as strange as a Nose could be!

Of vast proportions and painted red,

And tied with cords to the back of his head.

— In a hollow rounded space it ended

With a luminous Lamp within suspended,

All fenced about

With a bandage stout

To prevent the wind from blowing it out; —

And with holes all round to send the light,

In gleaming rays on the dismal night.

And now each night, and all night long,

Over those plains still roams the Dong;

And above the wail of the Chimp and Snipe

You may hear the squeak of his plaintive pipe

While ever he seeks, but seeks in vain

To meet with his Jumbly Girl again;

Lonely and wild — all night he goes, —

The Dong with a luminous Nose!

And all who watch at the midnight hour,

From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,

Cry, as they trace the Meteor bright,

Moving along through the dreary night, —

"This is the hour when forth he goes,

"The Dong with a luminous Nose!

"Yonder — over the plain he goes;

"He goes!

"He goes;

"The Dong with a luminous Nose!"