MAY 5, 2020 – The most influential book of my life is If I Ran the Circus by Dr. Seuss. This book still fires my imagination as no other . . . literature . . . does.
The story:
A happy-go-lucky kid named Morris McGurk plays by the high, rickety, wooden fence surrounding a vacant lot. Next to an entrance sits a small store owned by a short, sleepy-eyed, (curved) pipe-smoking, mustachioed Mr. Sneelock. The establishment has no business, so ol’ Sneelock leans against the doorway, bends a knee, and smokes his pipe. Morris meanwhile, scales the fence and tests his balance by walking along the top.
He then mentally removes the rubbish, junk cars, and dead trees and imagines a big-top circus filling the wasteland inside the fence. After installing the grandest of tents, Morris “builds” a gigantic lemonade stand at the entrance and puts Sneelock in charge. Morris then fills the tent with a huge crowd and thrills them with all kinds of circus acts by an endless menagerie of Seussian characters.
As a kid myself, I was transported by Morris McGurk’s imagination. Each time my parents, my sister Elsa, and later, I myself, read the book, I added something of my own. I filled in the gaps, made the high-wire acts higher, made the zany creatures zanier. The Cat in the Hat was for my younger sister; Green Eggs and Ham—way too predictable.
At the end of the story, the circus vanishes. Morris McGurk resumes his walk along the fence, while Sneelock props himself back up against the doorway of his lazy store and sends smoke rings into the air.
I never tired of the book, and to this day when I encounter things the way they are, I’m inspired to be that kid who imagined, “If I ran the circus . . .”
So it was yesterday when I tackled the large workbench I’d built 34 years ago and parked in the workspace at the back of our garage. Over the years tools, spare parts, and all brands of junk, not to mention dust, dirt and . . . sheer time . . . were piled high atop and before the workbench; on the large shelf above it, on the shelves under the top—all compressed incrementally by the front bumper of a car being parked far enough inside to allow the door to close. Once the space became junked up, its cause was lost. Junk begets junk, a mess begets a greater mess until the discouraged Gepetto is irretrievably separated from his workbench.
With ample time in these times, I thought of that most influential book of my life. I imagined our garage walls as the high wooden fence. I imagined my long-standing surrender to “the way things are” as a figurative Mr. Sneelock. I then imagined myself as Morris; how with a little imagination I could turn a junk-heap into a veritable circus of whimsical ideas—aesthetically tantalizing and utilitarian.
In this age wherein imagination has been largely outsourced, the happiest place is in the imagination retained and nourished.
Thank you, Dr. Seuss!
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
