Friday the 13th: Lewis, Hardy, Wilson

Friday the Thirteenth, it’s been a neti-pot week of napping all day long, missed text messages, being waked up from one sound sleep by the ringing phone and a recorded voice calling about a credit card and saying, “there’s no problem,” click and fling the phone off the porch into the Bay; and idly wondering if George Washington, Ben Franklin and other Constitution signers had in mind that the President would instruct county school districts across the nation regarding use of restrooms. I know, it’s just me. Nevermind.  

One of life’s devastating moments is to come to the end of a beloved and thoroughly enjoyed book and, realizing it is over and done, surfacing back into the reality show of ordinary life. A.N. Wilson’s biography of C.S. Lewis, I’ve stretched out as long as possible, yesterday broke my rule and read two chapters. The next chapter is titled “Further Up and Further In,” a key line from the Narnia books, and I’m afraid it will be the last. The book has stretched me out into stopping and reading various other authors as I came across them, yesterday stopping to read poems of Thomas Hardy, and when I’m finally done with Wilson I may read A Grief Observed again, it’s probably been forty years. 

Thomas Hardy, “By the Earth’s Corpse” in a moment beyond Time, God introspective at not having done all that well by us and somewhat repents having made it all in the first place. And in “God’s Education” the dispassionate One learning from us what had never occurred to. Interesting theodicy to contemplate in both.

DThos+