Lem's Pockets

Time evidently is more stretchable when we are young...
(According to Stanisław Lem in Highcastle.)

Polish writer Stanisław Lem is the author of Solaris, Cyberiad, His Master's Voice, and Memoirs Found in a Bathtub among many other works. In his memoir Highcastle, he offers a look at a sometimes less-than-healthy child, with all-too-childlike traits. In the pages of this book, he describes the trying times that a boy's pockets endure, and some of the reasons behind them...

Time evidently is more stretchable when we are young, and with appropriately focused effort it can be expanded to make additional room, like the pockets of my school uniform, in which (in keeping with tradition) I carried more than their prosaic dimensions allowed. Or can it be that space itself favors children? Surely that is impossible, and yet my pockets held rolls of string (for sailor's knots and emergencies), a collection of favorite screws, a penknife, erasers that disappeared (did I eat them?), a small brass chain from a toilet, spools, rubber bands, a protractor, a small compass (not so much for geometrical purposes as to be used against fat Z., who sat in front of me), a vial filled with crushed match leads (a poison, also an explosive), a magnifying glass turned cloudy from scratches, an exhausted wallet, various treasures provided by nature according to the season (acorns, chestnuts), half a yo-yo (useless but somehow valuable), a small puzzle with movable squares, called the Fifteen, another puzzle with three pigs (a game of dexterity, under a round glass), not to mention the entire contents of my desk.

The vastness of Lem's writing is hard to overstate. Highcastle hints at the beginnings of the great author's voice and of his viewpoints on (as some might put it) life, the universe, and everything else...

The book, well worth reading: Highcastle, by Stanislaw Lem. Translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995.
Solaris - oficjalna strona Stanisława Lema. (Solaris - The Official Stanisław Lem Site.)
Mr. Michael D. Sofka's Stanisław Lem page.
Mr. Matt McIrvin's Vitrifax, dedicated to "The Writing of Stanisław Lem".