Through the Wardrobe

Last week, a good friend and I decided to watch a movie, and we chose The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

I forgot how much I absolutely love that movie, and that story in general. So, in the past week, I've reread a wonderful biography I have on C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, as well as watched the movie adaptation of the latter (for the first time...and then twice more. Yes, I watched the same movie three times in a week. It was really good).

Narnia is a classic story, and it deserves to be right where it is with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings as the heralds of the epic fantasy series genre. I love Lewis' style. It paints such a beautiful world so simply, through children's eyes, and yet, it becomes so much more reading it from an adult perspective. As a kid, you skip over lines like "I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been - if you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you - you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness." (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe page 158). As an adult, you find a sort of a twinge of longing and pain in them.

Lewis' life was full of pain and that kind of longing, a sensation he called simply "Joy", the feeling of desire for something just out of reach mixed with a deep kind of happiness. I think it's a beautiful concept, and one I definitely relate to. It's almost painfully beautiful, that feeling of looking forward to a place that is better, somewhere and something beautiful.

Another reason I can't wait to go to London (92 days left!): Lewis loved to take long walks in the countryside, and that is what he based some of his beautiful scenic descriptions on. I can't wait to walk in such a wonderful place, right when everything is blossoming for the spring!