yeah

[thehefner]

I came out of the midnight showing of NARNIA to see the snow coming down in full force. Utterly perfect, I thought, so mystified that I almost didn't consider the drive back. Driving back home proved to be a nerve-wracking affair, but I managed to make it all right, the snow still as constant and strong at home as it was at the theater. I was thinking about running on LJ and ranting about the movie, but once I arrived home and watched the snow coming down all around, I decided to do something else.

I pulled up one of the tall wicker Indonesian chairs from from the porch to the front of the steps, facing the corner of my street where the streetlight stood. I went upstairs and grabbed my clay pipe and the tabacco I bought but never thought I'd ever actually use. Then I sat out on the porch and to the chair. And I spent the next hour doing nothing. Not worrying about anything. Not rambling away about geek matters. Not even thinking. For the first time since I can ever remember, there was not a single thought buzzing away in my head.

As if an omen, or maybe just another funny coincidence, a fox slinked out of the neighbor's yard and ran up the length of 81st Street. It paid me no mind and continued along its way, seemingly unconcerned about the snow or the cold. I didn't mind either. The cold was not unbearable. The cold was dry and lovely and comforting and I would not have had it any other way. For once in my life, perhaps for the first time in my life, I didn't desire anything other than what I had. I just spent the hour in my solitude, smoking my pipe and watching the snow in the streetlight.

I do not know how often such moments come to a person, but this is one I shall carry with me for the rest of my life.

Comments

[gore-whore-5.livejournal.com]

That's fantastic. I wish I could have moments like that. The fox was really freakin cool. I love foxes.

[chickenhat.livejournal.com]

yep.
:-)

[fiveseconddelay.livejournal.com]

congratulations

[spacechild.livejournal.com]

thats wonderful.

:)

[jcsbimp.livejournal.com]

Oh, man... that's gotta be UBERcool (to trivialize it terribly)... to come out of seeing that story into a world that is Winter, but not yet Christmas.

Did you figure out the part of the story that C. S. Lewis told his readers was very bad and he frankly hated to put them through? (I still think that's a wonderful storytelling device, and I may not be remembering it exactly right, but it was very effective for me; I'll admit, I was already 21 when I read it for the first time, and thus didn't have a child's mindset, but still, whoa.)

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Was it the one where Edmund sold them all out for Turkish Delight?

You reminded me, Stephen King wrote in the last fifteen pages of BLACK HOUSE, "This is The End if you want it to be. I won't begrudge you if you'd prefer to stop here. Because what's going to happen next will upset you, there's nothing we can do about that. All we can do is tell you." Something like that.

[gnort.livejournal.com]

King does the same thing at the end of The Dark Tower

[jcsbimp.livejournal.com]

Okay... the specific moment he hated to tell (or at least narrated that he hated to do so) was when Lucy comes back from Narnia with Edmund, all happy and enthusiastic that now they'll believe her, now Edmund will back her up... and Edmund lies and tells them it was a game that he and Lucy had made up, and Lucy runs from the room, crying. I don't know if they kept that in the film, but it was an important moment, it showed the White Witch's early influence on Edmund.

And yes, what Stephen King did was very similar to Lewis's style in narration, except that he didn't say stop reading now if you want to. Lemony Snicket has kind of taken that budding idea to its full flower... whether more effective due to his deliberate excess, or less, who can say? (I can. Less.)

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that scene was in the movie. The little shit.