Thesis: the reason we joke about what J R R Tolkien’s initials stand for but not C S Lewis’ is because nothing could possibly be funnier than C S Lewis’ actual name.
You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw - but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of - something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it - tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself - you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for”. We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.
hi i’m tolkien here are my ocs. i call them Elves (not elfs!!! if you call them elfs i will block you) they look like humans but they’re tall, live forever, and have pointy ears. that’s it bye
cs lewis: are you alright with constructive criticism? i dont want to sound mean
tolkien: no go ahead i want to hear it
cs lewis: they fucking suck
tolkien: thats not constructive criticism
cs lewis: here’s my OC, it’s jesus but he’s a lion tolkien: Furry cs lewis: blocked
Tolkien: lamp posts don’t exist in fantasy worlds Cs Lewis: ok you know what fuck you
CS Lewis: I could beta for you if you want. help you trim the fat on your stories
Tolkien: what do you mean
CS Lewis: I just. you describe a lot of trees. are trees that important
Tolkien: just you fucking wait. trees are SO important.
I note with grave displeasure that your patient has been drinking Strawberries and Crème Frappuccinos recently. May I suggest offering him some black coffee?
gotta say c.s. lewis had some pretty bomb titles. the voyage of the dawn treader? a grief observed? the abolition of man? out of the silent planet? ‘til we have faces? that hideous strength? all vivid, interesting, and eye-catching. good job, jack - you came up with great titles.
In spite of his publishers fighting him every step of the way, he absolutely did.
Actually, I think girls in middle school and high school should still feel comfortable having fuzzy pillows and lava lamps and glitter pens and sequin tops and a colorful wardrobe and whatever else they think is pretty or cool. Maybe we shouldn’t, like, try to beat the personality and life out of the youngsters, neither should we expect them to act like anything other than their actual age.
People wonder why kids are so obsessed with video games when I see grown adults telling *elementary schoolers* that they’re too old to play with dolls or play food or train sets, or that they’re being “ridiculous” for pretending to be animals or Frozen characters. I’ve met so many kids who are completely ashamed that they want to play with my toys when I offer because it’s for “babies” despite desperately wanting to.
Also as soon as you hit 22 you will be running straight back to the fuzzy pillows, lava lamps and glitter pens there’s just this bizarre spot where you’re a teenager when society says you shouldn’t do those things
Most people my age have at least one stuffed animal in their bed, trust me you don’t actually need to let that shit go
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”
Zoey and Coda are like everyone else in their small town of Gladstone, but that’s about to change — forever.
Zoey has a dream, one that feels far more real than it should. A strange wolf with a beautiful, violet crystal embedded on his forehead visits her. “Please help us,” the wolf implores with sad eyes. “Remember, Zoey, who you truly are.” Zoey wakes up, dismissing it as a silly dream. However, she soon realizes that it was far more real than she could have ever imagined…
Tonight all the hells of young grief have opened up again; the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare reality, the wallowed-in tears. For in grief nothing “stays put.” One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?
