Jon comes home tonight. I haven't really missed him so much as just had the odd feeling that something wasn't right. It's been just me and the cat (who plows into me ceaselessly because the other human isn't there to notice him), and some books. Really rather nice, in an uneventful way.
And appropriate enough, because I was reading "The Narnian" a book about the imaginative life of C.S. Lewis. Lewis says "I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books." -C.S. Lewis (this is how it's been for the past week).
Another interesting (and highly amusing) thing from the book: the author reminds us that one of Lewis's favorite things to do (or have happen to him?) was to fall mildly ill and gorge himself on fantasy and fairy stories. This is exactly the thing I enjoyed when I was growing up. Mom would always tell my brother and I, "If you don't go to school because you're sick, then you can't do anything else and must stay at home." Think that bothered me any?
Wooly Friends
7 years ago
2 comments:
You really have a love affair with Lewis, don't you? Is that a product of your childhood or of AC? I did at one time, but then I discovered Tollers and began to feel the spirit of rivalry that they developed. I wouldn't mind revisiting Lewis, but I'm fairly certain that it wouldn't hold the magic he once did.
I hate that my life has become so focused on survival and so full of little disturbances that take away from the grander joys. I would love to have the time to spend curled up in a chair reading, but I constantly remember something "more important." Simplicity left my life when I left AC. I want it back, but I'm sure not going to "go back to the beginning" (Princess Bride on the mind).
Actually, I decided to revisit Lewis after reading his amazing book "Till We Have Faces" (not only do I love retellings of myths, but the idea of finding your true face, what you're meant to be, was quite unsentimentalized and thought-provoking). His writing, especially the Narnian books, isn't on par with Tolkien, but both share the idea of a Higher Good, Lewis more explicitly than Tolkien, but both nonetheless. Even though they are Christians, they understand that God can be found even in myth, even in the gods of old, and the best way to point the way is through story, not preaching.
I mean, not only do they attest to the qualities of good beer and food after a hard days' work (for one, coming back from space, for the other, after a huge battle--Lewis after all said:"God likes food. He created it.") but the pictures of loyalty, friendship, courage, etc. etc. they present never fail to impress in this apathetic age.
I think what especially strikes me about both their writings is the love they exhibit for the present world, for the life here and now, for the simple pleasures of food and drink, friends and walking, reading and gardening, even as they look to the Beyond. (kind of like the reverend in Marilynne Robinson's book Gilead).
Do you blame AC for everything? :) Sometimes I think of it as a necessary evil, but then realize that, as an entity--a community--it has its flaws as well as its virtues.
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