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Saturday, February 2, 2008

humpty dumpty


image credit: elena martyniuk

Through the Looking Glass
Lewis Carroll
Chapter 6 - Humpty Dumpty


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However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more human: when she had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and a nose and mouth; and when she had come close to it, she saw clearly that it was HUMPTY DUMPTY himself. `It can't be anybody else!' she said to herself. `I'm as certain of it, as if his name were written all over his face.'

It might have been written a hundred times, easily, on that enormous face. Humpty Dumpty was sitting with his legs crossed, like a Turk, on the top of a high wall -- such a narrow one that Alice quite wondered how he could keep his balance -- and, as his eyes were steadily fixed in the opposite direction, and he didn't take the least notice of her, she thought he must be a stuffed figure after all.

`And how exactly like an egg he is!' she said aloud, standing with her hands ready to catch him, for she was every moment expecting him to fall.

`It's very provoking,' Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke, `to be called an egg -- very!'

`I said you looked like an egg, Sir,' Alice gently explained. `And some eggs are very pretty, you know, she added, hoping to turn her remark into a sort of a compliment.

`Some people,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking away from her as usual, `have no more sense than a baby!'

Alice didn't know what to say to this: it wasn't at all like conversation, she thought, as he never said anything to her; in fact, his last remark was evidently addressed to a tree -- so she stood and softly repeated to herself: --

`Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.'


`That last line is much too long for the poetry,' she added, almost out loud, forgetting that Humpty Dumpty would hear her.


this humpty dumpty rhyme is one i used to chant over and over to myself during my last legs of tweaking hell. i always added the line " he had do do it his damn self". i now realize that just isn't the case. i had to stop trying to do it myself and admit i had a lack of power to do so. i had to find some help outside myself to get me out of my broken state. today, i am putting myself back together again. except this time it's with outside assistance.


2 comments:

Mark Olmsted said...

Actually, it occurs to me that "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs" is a pretty good model for recovery. We dread the bottom, the cracking that seems like destruction but is really rebirth.
Not to one up your metaphor, but you know me.

Geoff said...

I really like this post. There is great strength in accepting help from others. I'm glad you're on the right track! Again, excellent post.

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