Kim: Merchant of Marvels on the Ship of Dreams

Kim and I loved to pretend we were sailing on a magical ship through warm starry skies, and even now, I think of her as Captain of her own ship with a rainbow sail.

We used to drive down the freeway in LA at night in my convertible VW bug with the top down, and she’d sit high in the passenger seat holding my rainbow silk veil up like a sail, and we’d play ethereal music and pretend we were sailing through the sky.

I bought two books for Kim that really resonated with her: Ship of Dreams by Dean Morrissey and The Merchant of Marvels by Frederic Clements. She loved the illustrations, and especially the ship with its beautiful colors and patchwork sail. She decided to design her bedroom around Ship of Dreams and had our circus friend, Gary Morgan, come over with his saw and together they made her a loft bed with wavy sides so she could climb a ladder every night and pretend she was climbing into her own Ship of Dreams. She had crimson and purple velvet and satin bedding, and I had a velvet bag made for her in the same colors with patchwork stars on it. She filled it with glitter and magical things that she could give away.

Let me tell you a few of our favorite images from Merchant of Marvels because they really seem like Kim’s soul: (These are excerpts from the book but there are so many more you really should buy it immediately!)

Will you, can you be tempted?

Firstly allow me to show you two precious thimbles.

In the first thimble I store summer dresses: a red robe, crumpled like a young poppy, a pleated robe, coated in chocolate a robe spun from shooting stars with a Milky Way veil…

A tiny dress of nothing at all, tailored, I am sure, from a sheet of rain.

(I can imagine Kim right now wearing a pleated red robe spun from shooting stars with a Milky Way veil, can’t you???? Or a dress tailored from a sheet of rain??)

And then, folded away in the second thimble is a ravishing winter dress which turns, turns, turns like a merry-go-round, and when you turn, turn, turn the handle on the left hand side, just next to your heart, IT SNOWS on the waltzing wooden horses.

(Of course! My goodness what a gorgeous image!! And now that she’s gone, if you turn the handle near my heart, it definitely snows, and while it’s very cold, it is still so beautiful. I mean, snow… can you believe something so gorgeous just falls out of the sky?)

I just happen to have a freckled frog’s tiny thighbone from the wicked fairy Carabossa and some fragments of her magic wand. The red-haired woman in Casablanca from whom I acquired them, assured me that one single fragment of Fairy Carabossa’s magic wand finely ground with the freckled frog’s tiny thighbone was enough to reduce and elephant to the size of a speck of sand… And funnily enough, Amazingly enough, I also have a troop of elephants all as small as specks of sand who come trumpeting from time to time into my teacup.

(We loved wicked fairy Carabossa and if something bad happened, we would say the wicked fairy Carabossa did it. We also really loved the idea of tiny elephants in our teacups… don’t you? )

Thumbelina’s cradle: A nutshell with rose petal sheets, and mattress of violets, still warm from her slumber.

(To this day, I always make Thumbelina’s cradle with my preschool children with rose petal sheets.)

A ticket for a thousand and one flights on a thousand and one nights aboard a flying carpet, a velvet carpet, piloted, if you will, by Captain Nemo himself!

(I also love taking the children I work with on magic carpet rides. We visit exotic faraway lands.)

A lock of hair from a mermaid, Queen of the seas, long and red…

(Did you know I am part mermaid? If I don’t take a long hot bath every night to get my tail wet, I get very irritable. Also, when I visit Dr.’s, I love to check the box “OTHER” when they ask for my origin and I write in “mermaid” or “fairy”.)

Some fragile fragments of the palace of the King of Snails, a present from an Indian swami who told me of celebrations, of concerts, and moonlit balls. And the stars of Bengal and the fireworks were so beautiful, so blue, that the River Ganges still bears, still glimmers with their reflections…

(Darlings!! This is SO SO TRUE for me!!! I STILL glimmer with the reflection of our celebrations, our adventures, and our moonlit balls!!! I will forever!)

I need tear liqueur right now, to transform my great sorrow into a great gray cat with velvet eyes.

A salt shaker for hunting wild pianos who live alone on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. Every good piano hunter knows that the best time to catch a young piano is at dawn. When the piano, still sluggish with sleep, laps up with delight the sugared dewdrops a the foot of the baobabs… you sprinkle the salt on the piano. Once tamed, he will permit you to tinkle out tunes for hours and hours…

(Don’t you love this image of a wild piano drinking nectar and running around the wilds?)

A red, round, and rare egg which was given to me by the great-great-great granddaughter of the Pampaelune hatter, a tamer of flighty hats for his majesty, the King of Navarre. I must tell you, my dear friend, that in those days, the flighty hats flew freely as air from ocean to ocean… And, my dear, at that time, in the courting season, the flighty hats rested and nested on the highest hairstyles of the Pampelune maidens. Imagine the beautiful ladies of Pampelune, who danced every night by the light of the moon in the center of the great town square. They had coiled and crimped and curled their hair. Eyes to the sky, they watched and they waited, hearts beating hard, hoping that a hat would land and lay on top of their hair, its exquisite egg, red, round, and rare.

(Kim loved the color red, which is why she called herself Vermilion when we danced together.)

The priceless giraffe flowers, on the last stormy evening in the rainy season giraffes display themselves, giraffes unfurl their long necks towards the few remaining clouds and nibble at them like cotton candy. It is precisely at this moment in the twinkling of an eye that a giraffe BLOSSOMS.

(We spent hours imagining giraffes blooming into pink blossoms after eating cotton candy, and when I went to Africa, I kept hoping that might actually happen.)

In a cardboard case I have seven peals of Cinderella’s laughter, stored with six fine shards of her splendid glass slipper…

(Peals of laughter from a magical chimney sweep? Yes! Glass slipper shards? Yes!)

A key to the open fields bordered by a little blue boating lake and some red dancing poppies,

the key to a sandcastle,

the rusty red key to Bluebeard’s Black Box,

the key to a lighthouse as large as the North Star,

the key to a yellow submarine,

the key to the secret love pavilion of the Marquise of Pompadour,

and then the key to a very deep well, and at the bottom of this deep deep well: lies a key I obtained from a magic monkey, a dealer in dreams on Paradise Street in Paris. Go there my dearest, tell him I sent you, and he will give you the key, the magic key, the little golden key which opens up the secret world of all dreams, the world of dreams where eyes open wide mouths open wide ears open wide and especially

MY ARMS OPEN WIDE

WIDE

WIDE OPEN FOR YOU

MY DEAREST FRIEND

MY LOVE

MY MARVELOUS MERCHANT OF MARVELS.

We used to lay on our stomachs on my big pink bed and read the book to each other, marveling at every description, screaming with delight at all the incredible imagery.

Kim really loved keys, and for our housewarming party when we moved into the Royal Palace, she handmade glitter keys and sent them out attached to the invitation for our guests to present for entrance to the party.

She also loved monkeys that deal in dreams.

When I went to London to travel and see friends, the young man at customs asked me what I was doing in London. I didn’t feel it was any of his business so I vaguely said I was visiting friends. After a great deal of hoopla, my luggage was searched and they found my acting resumes and belly dance costumes and accused me of trying to work in London. I was detained for hours, practicing my headstands and cartwheels while they filled out forms and examined my belly dancing costumes. In the end, they let me go, and I told Kim all about the buttoned-up nightmare Customs officer, who also happened to be cute if you’re into cute buttoned-up Englishmen (which I certainly am).

Kim was outraged that they would detain me, and she said, “When I come through if they ask me what I’m doing I’m going to say, “I’m here on business. And when they ask me what business, I’m going to say MONKEY BUSINESS!!!”

We laughed and laughed about this. A few weeks later, Kim traveled to join me and as luck would have it, she got the SAME CUSTOMS GUY!!! He asked her what she was doing and she hemmed and hawed and finally said, “Visiting a friend.” He said, “You aren’t visiting Marci Johnson, are you?” HA!!!! She was caught!! She admitted she was visiting her wayward friend, and he let her through with no trouble at all, even though she was definitely on official Money Business.

Even all these years later, on my 50th birthday this year, I passed the Merchant of Marvels around the dinner table and had each person read a page, and I felt like she was right next to me, holding my hand, gleeful and giggly.

I called Kim the Merchant of Marvels on the Ship of Dreams.

And I still imagine her on that magical Ship of Dreams, with her red velvet sorcerer’s hat and velvet bag with patchwork stars, and the sail is billowing with rainbows and the sky is warm and her velvet bag is full of stars that she can throw out into the sky whenever she wants, and I’ll be looking up, my eyes open wide, my heart open wide, my arms open wide, ready to catch them.