On Dragonflies and Angels

“Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.” This was the Golux speaking. (James Thurber, "The 13 Clocks")

My tenth grade English teacher read this book to the class. She had the most wonderful voice, and when she read the words, “The Princess Saralinda,” I, who had never thought I wanted children, decided immediately that I wanted a daughter and that I would name her Saralinda. “Saralinda,” I thought, is the most beautiful name I have ever heard. And, indeed my older daughter is named Saralinda.

What is this book, "The 13 Clocks?" I found the following description here:

http://book.consumerhelpweb.com/authors/thurber/0440405823.htm

“Well, it's sort of a children's book. And sort of not.
“The back of the book has the publishers equally flummoxed. They write:
‘It isn't a parable, a fairy story, or a poem, but rather a mixture of all three. It is beautiful and it is comic. It is philosophical and it is cheery. What we are trying fumblingly to say is, in a word, it is Thurber.’
“How can I do better than that? I would tell you it has 124 pages of beautifully illustrated text, but that would barely scratch the surface. It is a poem in prose form. It is a tale fantastical and lyrical. It is a tale of impossibility”. B Redman

It is a story of good versus evil, with the moral (or one of the morals) being, “If you’re on the side of Good, you don’t have to be perfect to win. But you have to be consistent and tenacious, and much more, and always remember which side you’re on…but you don’t have to be perfect.”

Other people know this book well, and have even memorized passages, or perhaps the whole book. My daughter Saralinda told me the following true story:

She was in a small shop in Canada, found something she wanted to purchase, and handed it, along with her credit card, to the gentleman by the cash register, the owner of the shop.
He looked at her name on the card, and said, with no hesitation whatsoever, “She moved across the room like wind in violets…”

How could one forget a book with prose like this?

On Walks Around the Block

My ex husband, Kevin, was a liar...or an accomplished storyteller, or both. He'd read about things in newspapers and magazines and say they happened to him. He was very convincing; most people believed his stories. I did, at first, and so did my family; also his second wife and her family. A close friend of mine, Bill, who had served as a first mate in the merchant marine for many years, once said to me, referring to my ex husband, "I could travel around the world four times and he'd have more stories to tell about how he went around the block four times." Well, yes, but here is the ironic thing...interesting things did happen to Kevin when he walked around the block. Once he took our dog, Charlie, for a walk after dark. Charlie soon came running back to the house, tail between his legs, and smelling like a fish. He ran and hid under one of the beds and wouldn't come out. About fifteen or twenty minutes later Kevin appeared and told me how the house on the corner had exploded just when he and Charlie walked by. The next day there was an article in the newspaper complete with a quote from Kevin, "I heard a crash; it sounded like a tractor trailer had gone through the house," he had told the first police officer on the scene. The occupants had moved out of the house the day before, so luckily, no casualities.

Bill told me how he had, on one occasion, successfully found a dentist at 4AM in Vladisvostok,
to pull a tooth which had been causing unbearable agony.

I liked the Vladivostok story more; it seemed quite a feat. But now I wonder: did this really happen, or did Bill make it up to have something to compete with Kevin's stories about walking around the block?