January 1, 2025, began with Hagalaz. It’s a rune that indicates hail, or “disruptive natural forces.” As a way to cope with the anxiety this induced, I got the idea to log the disruptions I witnessed over the 52 weeks of this past year.
What I wound up with is a rabble close to 2,600 words, too long to post here, as well as too encoded in my personal lingua to offer up untranslated.
Instead, herewith a few disruptions / observations grouped around writing, reading, and my life in general.
Got re-engaged with a dusty manuscript. It’s not so dusty anymore.
Participated in my first NYC Midnight writing challenge. A scary story in 400 words or less.
Made a great connection through A Writing Room, and also attended some of their really good workshops.
Found out I’m a Class Member of the lawsuit against Anthropic, claiming they infringed protected copyrights. Via my first novel, The Incident Under the Overpass.
Reading:
Read Brave New World for the first time. Trying not to regret that I didn’t read it earlier in my life, instead I’m just grateful that I have this reference for the rest of my life. (I posted on Substack about it).
LOVED Amalie Howard’s Taming of the Dukesseries. Devoured these and loved every regency-saucy bit. Ending the year and starting the new one with her earlier work, The Beast of Beswick.
Rounding out my favorite reads of the year: Orbital (Samantha Harvey), Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (highly recommend the audiobook with its 166-person cast!), and The Day of the Jackal (Frederick Forsyth)
Other notables: Aflame (Pico Iyer), The Beauty in Breaking (Michele Harper), All the Colors of the Dark (Chris Whitaker), The Perishing (Natasha Deón), Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller), Plum Island (Nelson DeMille), India Holton’s “Love’s Academic” series, The Hunt for Red October (Tom Clancy), Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
And last but not least, titles in the public domain: Shakespeare’s King Lear and As You Like It, Home to Harlem by Claude McKay, St. Francis of Assisi (G.K. Chesterton), Bartleby, the Scrivener (Herman Melville), Mansfield Park (Jane Austen)
Life in General
Witnessed a once-in-a-century snowstorm in New Orleans at the start of the year.
Made remarkable trips to Paris, Chicago, Bermuda, New Mexico, and Amsterdam.
Ran my first races outside the U.S.: the Paris marathon in April and the Damloop by Night in Zaandam, Netherlands.
So, turns out this post is heavily weighted toward my past year’s reading list. There were certainly other disruptions, but the ones shared here feel theme-appropriate for this space. And opening your mind to the power of a good book is one of the best kind of disruptions I can think of.
Happy New Year!
Snow in City Park, January 2025Arc de Triomphe, April 2025
Today marks another new moon, meaning it’s been one month since I traveled to see the eclipse. It was a fun and memorable trip to Dallas, but the memory of the eclipse itself is indelible. Maybe the biggest thing that sticks with me is the twilight.
The twilight of a total solar eclipse is utterly singular. Singular in that it only lasts for minutes at most, singular in the quality and shape of the light, singular in rarity of the occurrence. So is it irony (or is it just me trying to establish a hook) that the origin of the word twilight ties to the concept of double, not single? The word is from late Middle English, and the “twi” means two, as in twice. (The Latin word for twilight is “crepusculum,” the origin for crepuscular, a fabulous ten-dollar word. Sounds like a good hook for some other post.)
2 of 2 total solar eclipses that I’ve witnessed. Dallas, TX, April 8, 2024
But I’m going to stick with the “twi/two” theme. According to vocabulary.com, “the prefix twi- might be a clue that twilight happens twice a day, or it could mean “half,” as in the half-light of this time.” I’ve never read Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, so I don’t know if she spends any part of the story pondering the origin of the word. Pity, if not. I’ve found a good deal to ponder.
There’s two for place and time: the two eclipses that have graced North America, in 2017, and then again in 2024. For astronomy, there’s two heavenly bodies that make eclipses on Earth possible: the moon and the sun. Personally, I’ve traveled two times, and taken time off from work, to witness these events.
And then, here’s where I really got caught up in all this twice-thinking — You Only Live Twice. The song, the score, the movie. I could go off on a million tangents, about both the score and the movie (about elements of each that are just brilliant, offset by elements that have aged very poorly; about Robbie Williams’s “Millennium;” about the fake lake; about James Bond and the spy genre). But I won’t. I’ve been chewing on those tangents for the past month, they are what’s kept me from finishing this post.
So, I’ll conclude with the song. The link below is the version that I’m guessing was the one that got played on the radio. I think it’s aged exceedingly well. Nancy Sinatra’s vocals, the lyrics, are worth a listen if you’re not familiar.
Any tangent evoked by this song tends to lead me to beautiful places. I hope it’s the same for you.
Continuing my Eclipse Series, here’s a post I published in anticipation of the last eclipse, in 2017. Under the title “Total Eclipse of the ’80s.” Thought the stuff about saving the April 8, 2024 date was kinda funny (or prescient). And realizing I have to add “New Moon on Monday” to my eclipse playlist on Spotify. Side note: my ear worm for this 2024 eclipse has been “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon.
In less than a week, I’ll be in Nashville to witness the total eclipse. Yes, I am that into the idea that I actually took the day off from work, purchased a plane ticket, and booked a hotel. (It’s been impossible to reserve a rental car, so I’m hoping the cab/ride share options in Nashville are plentiful). I even managed to coerce my friend Beth into the whole scheme. (Husband Tim opted out of this run. But I’ve already asked him to “save the date” of April 8, 2024 – that’s when the next eclipse will be visible from the U.S. Watch out for us in seven years, Dallas.)
And I’ve been living with total eclipse brain. The lyrics to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” have been going through my head non-stop. (Once upon a time there was light in my life / But now there’s only love in the dark). And this eclipse falls on a Monday, during a new moon. So, there’s Duran Duran’s “New Moon on Monday” (I light my torch and wave it for the / New moon on Monday). Also Pink Floyd’s “Eclipse,” the last song on TheDark Side of the Moon.* Problem with that one, though, is that it always intermingles in my head with “Brain Damage,” the song right before it.
So there’s Roger Waters’ voice knocking around my noggin, singing “The lunatic is in my head / The lunatic is in my head / You raise the blade, you make the change / You rearrange me ‘til I’m sane.” Thanks for that, Roger. Didn’t need you to help me feel loonier than I already do.
I could spend some time on the relation of the moon to lunacy, how the Latin word for moon (Luna), led to the word for moon-struck (lunaticus). But I won’t.
Instead, I’ll focus on my most memorable eclipse from a movie. And that would be Ladyhawke.
For those of you who have been paying attention, this movie has come up before in this space. In a post about Lent, and in another one about my family. Because, truth is, I love Ladyhawke. Sure, one could argue that the Alan Parsons Project soundtrack dates the movie; but I would argue right back that it cements it into a certain Zeitgeist, the heady days of the mid 1980s. When movies could still be unapologetic about their cornball aspects.
In Ladyhawke, Navarre (Rutger Hauer) is this kind of masterless Samurai (but it’s set in medieval France, so he’s not really a Samurai), and Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer) is his star-crossed love. They’ve been cursed by an evil Catholic bishop (John Wood) to live half-lives as animals. Isabeau spends her days as a hawk, and Navarre spends his nights as a wolf. So they never get to see each other.
But that’s where the eclipse comes in! The drunk monk Imperius (Leo McKern) foresees the coming eclipse, and, with the help of Philipe Gaston (Matthew Broderick) convinces Navarre and Isabeau to confront the evil bishop as humans, together, during a total eclipse.
It’s really a grossly underrated movie, in my opinion. Richard Donner directed it, it’s got this lights-out cast, and the setting is to die for.
And to conclude, if looked at a certain way, who is the real hero in Ladyhawke? The eclipse!
*Yes, I realize Dark Side of the Moon pre-dates the ’80s. But I first listened to it in the ’80s, so it gets lumped in there.
1:28 pm versus 1:29 pm. That’s Venus on the upper right.
Hello! Thought I would reach out ahead of next week’s total solar eclipse. I published this post in 2017, under the title “The Great American Eclipse: One Minute in Murfreesboro.” Next week in Dallas, I think totality will last more than two minutes. Looking forward to comparing the experiences.
So, I had the rare opportunity to witness Monday’s total solar eclipse. I traveled with a friend more than 500 miles northeast of our homes in New Orleans to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, just south of Nashville.
I had noticed early on in my research that The Volunteer State was referring to this celestial event as “The Great Tennessee Eclipse.” I’m not sure how the other states hosting the total eclipse felt about this appropriation. But for my part, I thought Tennessee put on a pretty good show.
We found ourselves in Murfreesboro because it was the only place in the greater Nashville area that had a hotel room at a non-extortionary rate. In digging around the Internet, I discovered that Murfreesboro not only houses the affordable and clean Candlewood Suites, it is also home to Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). I thought a University might be a good place to catch an eclipse.
Turns out, NASA must have thought so, too, because MTSU was “an official NASA viewing site for the greater Nashville area.” Their eclipse event was held on a big lawn on the campus, ringed by a new science building, older science buildings, and the library. They had set up a stage, with musical acts from a student-run record label (Nashville is Music City, after all). The buildings were open to the public, in case the viewers might want to escape the pre-eclipse heat. They had telescopes set up around the lawn, and big screens showing the eclipse in real time.
And about an hour before total eclipse time, faculty from the Physics and Astronomy department took over the stage and talked about the science of eclipses, and invisible parts of the sun’s atmosphere that become visible, and lots of other cool stuff. I liked that there were professionals, who knew what they were talking about, commentating to the crowd.
When the light started to dim, they pointed out that Venus had become visible in the Southern sky. When totality finally arrived, they instructed when it was okay to remove the special solar eyewear, and look directly at the sun. And when that minute had passed, when we needed to put our special eyeglasses back on.
But here’s the thing about that minute, that minute of eclipse totality. (Totality was longer in other places, but a minute is what we got in Murfreesboro. I’ll take it.) I can honestly state that I’ve seen nothing else in nature to compare it to.
While corresponding with Husband Tim around the time of the eclipse, I wrote: “Can’t describe it.” To which he responded: “You’re a writer.”
Touché. My response back? “Can’t describe it YET.”
Herewith my attempt: there are the pictures at the top of this post, showing the difference in the light. And there are words: incredible, awesome, amazing – all overused, and thus, lacking in true descriptive power. Awe-inspiring and phenomenal do a slightly better job. But still not adequate.
The word that most closely describes the experience for me? It’s gestalt. The German word, which I’ve always taken to mean things coming together to become something greater, greater than just the sum of their parts.
The extreme rarity of the event, the appearance of the night sky at 1:30 in the afternoon, the drop in temperature, and just looking up and seeing a black hole where the sun should be – these all came together to create a very intimate and transcendent moment. Imbued with personal meaning beyond all the mechanics at play.
During totality, and for a few moments after, fireflies lit up around the base of the tree where we stood. I remember seeing fireflies at my father’s camp in the woods when I was very young. Back during a time when I was much closer to magic, and fantasy, and the surreal.
Before Monday, I couldn’t have told you the last time I saw fireflies. All of this gives me the feeling that maybe magic, and fantasy, and the surreal were never really that far away after all. It’s making the time to look for them that remains a top challenge.
It’s been awhile since I’ve written here. Not since I’ve been here. I visit my WordPress dashboard nearly every day. With five years’ worth of weekly posts, there’s some content that folks seem to find their way to. It’s kinda interesting. A post from 2018, Annie…Are You Okay? seems to get a lot of hits. Haven’t really figured out why.
There were some good things to write about in 2022, but I just couldn’t get myself to write them. I started a post about the James Webb Space Telescope in March 2022, but never finished it. For the first quarter of last year, I anxiously followed its journey, first settling in a million miles away from earth, then unfolding all its delicate instruments. That’s another websiteI visit almost daily, awestruck at the images and observations from the farthest reaches of our universe.
And I read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five last year. Also awestruck at that. Loved it. Goes up as one of my favorite books of all time. But still not enough to dislodge the massive case of writer’s block I’ve been struggling with the past few years.
But then, this post is not about my writer’s block, or about all the great things I should have written about. It’s about the great experience I had running the TCS New York City Marathon in November 2022.
To set the stage: this was not my first marathon. I ran Los Angeles in 2000, New Orleans in 2005, and Houston in 2010. The highlights of Houston: it was my PR, I ran it in 4:29:29. And I saw former president George H.W. Bush in a secluded location somewhere around mile 18. He was by himself, sorta, (I’m positive Secret Service folks were close behind him) cheering on the runners. Wearing a long black coat, fitting for a former head of the CIA, he was not more than ten feet away. I think I shouted something lame like “Thank you, Mr. President!” Interesting, because his was the first presidential election I voted in. I didn’t vote for him, but I had always liked him.
So, anyway, having run a few marathons before, New York had been on my bucket list for a while. The prospect of running through all five boroughs was just something that sounded so enticing. I guess that sounds kind of wacky, but I think it’s a kind of marathon logic. When you’ve covered 26.2 miles on foot a few times, you see a lot of different parts of a city, and they’re not all memorable. Not every part of NYC was memorable, either, but one of the things that made this race so special to me is that I can make that memorable claim, specific to the city. “I’ve run through all five boroughs of New York City.” More than three months later, it still thrills me to say this. I hope it always will.
There were a lot of things that made this race special, and such an awesome experience. Since my first presidential election was 1988, you can figure I’m no spring chicken anymore. I went into training for this race not knowing how my limbs and ligaments would handle all the miles. I told myself it would be my last marathon, creaky knees and tight hips just needed to get me to the finish line so many miles away just one last time.
However, a funny thing happened. I listened to the advice of physical therapists, and consistently did the exercises they gave me. I did the strength training exercises, targeted for runners, provided by the NY Road Runners Team for Kids. Team for Kids is another big reason this was such a phenomenal experience, but more on them in a bit. The funny thing? I finished the race, in pretty good shape. I wasn’t hobbled at the end, nothing gave out on me.
The actual experience of race day was spectacular, too. The day was unseasonably warm for New York in November, and my wave started at 10:55 am. The temperature was no big deal for me—having trained in all the heat and humidity of a New Orleans summer, I was pretty well conditioned for it. The time of day was likely my biggest obstacle. Because having trained in all the heat and humidity of a New Orleans summer, I was conditioned as an early morning runner. Even on my longest training runs, I was finished before 11:00 am.
I finished the race roughly 20 minutes slower than I was hoping for. (I was hoping to finish in under five and a half hours.) But I have absolutely no regrets about that! While I blame the time of day (and a bit of the heat) for making me slower, I think the timing might have been key to what ultimately made the race my best marathon experience: the crowds. The people who filled the streets of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan were phenomenal. (The only crowds in Staten Island were the other runners at the start of the race, but they were pretty great, too.) I just don’t think the spectators would have been as enthusiastic, or numerous, if I had encountered them at 7:00 am. 🙂
And Team for Kids. I could not have had this experience without them, literally. I raised over $3,000 for Team for Kids and got to run the marathon. This was my first time raising that amount of money for an organization, and I don’t think I could have picked a better one.For the last 20 years, they’ve offered free health and fitness programs to children in schools across the country. By teaching goal-setting, perseverance, determination, and teamwork, these youth running programs get kids on track toward a healthy and successful life. I’ve been the beneficiary of all the fringe benefits of running (mental, emotional, physical) for a long time now. I was very happy to be part of an effort to open the door to those benefits for anyone who’s willing to try it out.
So, finally. Maybe the best part of this whole experience is that I want to do another marathon now. While my knees are still creaky and my hips are still tight, that finisher feeling is just too appealing. Lookout, Paris.
Sunrise on the day of the race. Waiting for the ferry to the start line.One of the thousands of thumbs-up I received as I ran the race.
I live my life a quarter mile at a time. — Dom Toretto
This is not the first time I’ve referenced this favorite quote in this space. Vin Diesel’s line is a running theme throughout the Fast & Furious franchise, and, to me, is a tremendously apt way to describe living in the moment.
My specific reference is not miles, but years. Having cut my teeth in the business world in the discipline of accounting, I’m prone to think of years in quarters. And as I find myself at the end of Q1 2021, it felt like a good time to post a quarter report. So here, in no particular order, are some particulars:
While I have not been idle, I have still not prepared the manuscript of my 3rd novel for public consumption. But I have set a fast (and furious) goal of having it prepared by end of Q2. Q2 2021, just to be clear.
I completed a “game-ified” course in the Python programming language through an app called Mimo. That’s all I have to say about that.
I discovered the writer Jess Lourey. I have not read her — I watched a webinar on editing she offered through Sisters in Crime, and was thoroughly impressed. I plan to take more of her online courses, after I finish my editing work (see bullet point #1).
I finished Don Quixote. I found myself thinking of the musical theme to Monty Python and the Holy Grail through most of it. And realized how much Terry Gilliam must have been influenced by Don Quixote. In fact, I discovered there’s a 2018 film, written and directed by Terry Gilliam, called The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. With Jonathan Pryce as Don Quixote, and one of my favorites, Stellan Skarsgard, as a character called “The Boss.” And Adam Driver as Toby, and my guess from his billing is that he is the eponymous “man who killed Don Quixote.”
Anyway, to wrap this up: I’ve added The Man Who Killed Don Quixote to my ever growing “to be watched” list. But, I close the book on Don Quixote thinking how little, and how much, has changed for writers in the past 400 years. And I believe it’s a net positive for writers in the current era.
How little has changed: there’s a scene near the end, in Chapter 62, where Don Quixote enters a book printer’s shop in Barcelona. Don Quixote asks an author he encounters whether he is printing at his own risk, or if he’s sold the copyright to a bookseller. The author answers that he would not give up his copyright so readily, and that he is printing at his own risk: “I do not print my books to win fame in the world, for I am known in it already by my works; I want to make money, without which reputation is not worth a rap.”
How much has changed: to me, the risk an author hazards in the digital era is significantly less than 400 years ago, or even 25 years ago. With an exponentially increased potential readership over 400 years ago, and a reduced out-of-pocket cost compared to 25 years ago, it seems to me that a writer has very little to lose by putting her works out there.
Sunrise over the Sculpture Garden on January 7, 2021
Winter is not my favorite season. Snow is rare in New Orleans, and winters here tend to be dank and gray. Cold, too, just not consistently cold. The later sunrises don’t suit my preferred morning routine, either.
If you’re picturing me as a curmudgeonly Bernie Sanders meme right now, fair enough.
I guess it’s just my way of setting up that I’m pretty excited about the approach of spring. And it seems there are more reasons than the return of bluer skies and greener land to be hopeful this year. Yes, the earth is still in the mighty throes of a pandemic, but pandemics don’t last forever, and we might finally be able to say we are in the waning days (months).
Some interesting bird sightings recently also have me thinking of spring. Appropriately: robins, robins, everywhere. But also a particular pelican and singular swan. The pelican, pictured below, was airing out its wings on a bridge in City Park’s sculpture garden. (Actually, the sculpture garden belonging to the New Orleans Museum of Art, which is located in City Park.) Not so unusual, except that it was stationary so long it seemed almost like a fixture.
Saturday, January 23, 2021
The swan requires a bit more explanation. There is a mirrored maze in the sculpture garden, that was designed to be walked through. The interior of the maze has been closed due to the pandemic, but you can still walk around it.
The same Saturday I saw the pelican, I spotted a large, white mass at the center of the maze. Because of the way the mirrors are positioned, it’s impossible to get a clear line of sight. But I could clearly make out white feathers, and what appeared to be a neck tucked into a wing, like it was sleeping. A couple of days later, I passed the mirror maze again to look for my fowl friend. Sure enough, there was a swan there, no longer nested at the center, but looking like it was ready to emerge from the labyrinth.
Taken from the exterior of the sculpture garden, January 25, 2021. Look just past the “Interior Closed” sign.A closer view.
I can only speak for myself, but something about emerging from the maze feels terribly symbolic. 🙂
Fear not! This post is not as dire as the title might have you believe. In truth, it’s the name of the song I listened to the most in 2020, if I am to believe Spotify. It’s an instrumental piece, full of drama and portent, by Hans Zimmer. Many memorable action sequences from the movie Inception are set to this piece of music.
And to prove that I was not all about ominous, reality-busting mythos this past year, my second-most-listened-to song of 2020 was “Wishing Well” by Terence Trent D’Arby.
But I have to admit, if I was to create a piece of fiction based on this past year, I’d be afraid to reference “Dream is Collapsing,” because it’s just a little too perfect.
When I think of my own particular ambitions for this past year, pre-pandemic, I can’t really say they collapsed — it’s more like they deflated. And I’m mindful of how fortunate I am in that scenario, so what follows aren’t complaints, just examples. Specifically about writing and running, two solitary activities that, in theory, could still go on with little interruption in our current environment.
Regarding writing, the best excuse I can give is that a combination of uncertainty, anxiety, and doubt kept me from settling into the necessary re-writes on my third novel. We’re talking another level of procrastination. And regarding running, I didn’t run the New York Marathon in November, because there wasn’t one to run.
I see a bright side to this deflation, though. I feel like I can see a little more clearly without all the puffiness of my aspirations getting in the way. No, I didn’t write as much as I “should” have, but I did read a bunch. Most notably: for sheer volume, War and Peace and David Copperfield; and, for giving me stuff to think about, Bhagavad Gita and Frederick Douglass’s Why is the Negro Lynched?
Running-wise, if I had run the marathon, I most likely would not have run the Trail-Zilla half-marathon trail run with nieces Nicole and Cece a few weeks ago. And I would have missed out on a really challenging, but fun, shared experience.
So I don’t regret my flat tires. Just hoping to get enough air in them to get me back out on the road before too long.
The sun sets behind the New Orleans Museum of Art, September 3, 2020.
So, this is my last regularly-scheduled post. For those who have been paying attention, I’ve written and posted something in this space every Wednesday for the past 5 years. There have only been a handful of weeks that I’ve missed — I didn’t keep count, but I’m fairly certain the missed posts only amount to a true handful, five or less.
This decision to go on hiatus was not caused by our pandemic, or any other big world considerations. Nor did it come about abruptly: it was always part of the plan. After I published my first post on August 19, 2015 (here’s a link to that post), I had a nebulous idea that I’d give blogging a shot for about 5 years. The timing remained hazy until my 134th post. Then, it became crystal clear to me that I had reached the halfway point. From there, it was simply a matter of math.
And the math added up to today.
A lot has happened in 5 years (another MASSIVE understatement from me). But bringing that statement inward, to reflect on my growth as a writer, a lot has happened, too. I’m much more confident when I now state, “I’m a writer.” When I first began this journey, I was hesitant, phrasing the statement more as a question. With all these contingent questions: will readers think I’m a good writer? How will I find stuff to write about for the next 5 years? Will my family question why I’m doing this?
The short answer to all those questions is: it didn’t really matter. Over the course of these 5 years, I’ve become a better writer — or, at least, a more confident one. Somehow, I came up with something to write about, 267 times. And, regarding the “why” question, the only answer that mattered was my own. The lessons I learned regarding establishing a writing discipline, the importance of intent, how the right words can enhance your intended message, and the wrong words detract. . .these are probably the biggest benefits I’ve gained from this effort.
Here are some fun facts from this blog’s history:
I’ve published over 149,000 words here. That’s nearly the combined length of my published novels.
It’s had over 18,000 views, and over 11,000 visitors.
The only time I ever topped 100 views in a single day was with my 2nd post, way back on August 26, 2015. (here’s a link to that post)
My most-used tags: writing, #amwriting, New Orleans, and New Orleans City Park.
But just to be clear — the only thing that’s changing is the frequency. This website and blog will still be here, and I will still post to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. I’ll also post here, but the frequency will probably come closer to monthly, rather than weekly. I still have plenty of books to read, and seasons in City Park to capture, and novels to finish, and I will return here to provide updates on all those efforts.
Just not every Wednesday.
It’s only slightly bittersweet, and mostly exciting, to close out this blogging chapter and start a new one. Finally, I want to express a huge THANK YOU to all 11,000+ of you who have visited over the years. I hope you’ve found at least a little entertainment, or lightness, (or light entertainment) as you’ve stopped in. I look forward to hosting you again in the new phase.
When I flipped the page on my calendar yesterday, I was greeted by this very hopeful quote:
“There are far better things ahead than the things we leave behind.” — C. S. Lewis
Given that we’ve already gone through eight months of a very challenging year (“challenging” feels like a MASSIVE understatement), this is a nice bit of light shining down on me from the left side of my work station.
And it’s got me thinking about C. S. Lewis, one of the first writers I ever read — I read The Chronicles of Narnia as soon as I could read stories of any length. My admiration of him as a writer has remained pretty constant. Here are a few of my random thoughts about C. S. Lewis:
According to Wikipedia, C. S. Lewis favored the writings of Scottish author George MacDonald. I am also partial to George MacDonald. While most of my reading of C. S. Lewis occurred in my childhood, I got on a George MacDonald kick sometime in my mid-twenties. I was an adult when I read The Princess and Curdie, and am still struck by some of the ideas and themes posited in that story.
Tim and I saw a staged version of The Screwtape Letters several years ago. To this day, Tim will still randomly call out “Toadpipe!” around the house.
I’ve only seen Shadowlands, the movie with Anthony Hopkins as C. S. “Jack” Lewis, once. I’m afraid to watch it again because the movie reduced me to a gloppy puddle of tears.
I’ll conclude with a little background information on that quote. I didn’t dig too deeply to verify this, but it feels credible. Apparently, it’s from The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 3. He wrote a letter to someone named Mary Willis Shelburne, who was in the hospital at the time. I think he was urging her, in his way, to not fear death.
C. S. Lewis died just a few months after he wrote those words to her. I suspect the intended solace was as much for his peace of mind as hers. As for me, I’m satisfied to take that hopeful message to mean there’s a light at the end of the 2020 tunnel (that’s not an oncoming train). 🙂
Anne McClane 