Of Cabbages and Kings – A Meditation on The Walrus and The Carpenter

I’ve done a little meditation in my time and even taken a class or two in it. I’m not as diligent about practising it as I am about doing yoga most every day and going for walks at least three times a week. But I do recognize the usefulness of being able to put certain thoughts out of your head, especially when they’re negative and keep going round and round like a needle stuck on a vinyl record.

I’ve always loved learning to recite poetry ever since we had to do it in school around grades five and six. Do they still make kids do that? I’m not in favour of rote learning, more the experiential kind of learner and I like speculation and creative thinking, but I do think there is a use for learning to recite poetry. Simply, it trains memory, and it can be fun. It can also be a kind of meditative practice.

Recently I decided to learn “The Walrus and the Carpenter” by Lewis Carroll. It’s in Through the Looking Glass (And What Alice Found There). I wanted something to distract me when those less than useful negative thoughts intrude, and when annoying people are nattering on. So I learned a few verses a day and can more or less recite the whole thing now.

Then I began to think, besides being a silly, just for fun poem, perhaps it’s telling us something deeper. First of all the sun is shining in the night which made the moon sulky – the sun “Had got no business to be there After the day was done –“ There are often people who will spoil your fun, but who’s to say things have to be done the way they always have been done? Why not make room for change and innovation. And perhaps the sun is trying to shine a light on something dark that should be illuminated.

The Walrus and the Carpenter (lovely illustrations by John Tenniel in my copy) are rather narrow minded. They don’t much seem to enjoy the sand on the beach. “If this were only cleared away, They said, “it would be grand!” Never mind the usefulness of the sand. Does this sound familiar? Do you know politicians who act like this?

The Walrus calls on oysters to come and walk with them. The eldest Oyster is much too wise to be taken in, but some of the younger ones are up for the adventure, and to their cost they follow. Hmm, voters who keep voting for politicians who don’t have their best interests at heart? Lots of lovely nonsense. The oysters get all dolled up for the adventure including shoes that are “clean and neat –“ even though, “They hadn’t any feet.”

The Walrus makes a fancy sounding speech, “To talk of many things;” but it’s really all nonsense, and perhaps it works to lull the foolish oysters. The latter, though do finally realize what might be about to happen when the Walrus says, “We can begin to feed.” “But not on us!” they protest, in vain as it turns out.

“O Oysters,” said the Carpenter,
                “You’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?”
                But answer came there none –
And this was scarcely odd, because
                They’d eaten every one.