29/12/2002 - 4:39 p.m.

The tale.

A boy was walking down the road when he came upon a box. It was a small wooden box with a lidded top. He tried to lift the lid, but the box was locked. The boy pocketed the box and continued walking. He had only gone a few steps when he saw a golden key glittering in the road. The boy picked up the key and fitted it in the lock. Against all odds it turned, and the box sprang open. Looking inside the box, the boy found a crimson ribbon and began pulling it out. He pulled and pulled and pulled at the ribbon, and the ribbon continued to stream out of the box. At last, the boy pulled all of the ribbon all the way out of the box to the very tail end. Had that tail end been more interesting, this tale end would have been too.

That was written yesterday night at midnight. I thought it very clever then, and still do, so you may all keep your opinions to yourselves.

My brother was cleaning his room and discovered his copies of the Chronicles of Narnia. Having been years since I'd read them, I borrowed (stole) them and read them over again. However, my brother has a different set from the ones I checked out from the library- his are a Scholastic invention and the cretins have reordered C.S. Lewis's books. Along with some other slight problems of order, they have put The Magician's Nephew first, and completely ruined the entire series for future generations. The wonder of the books was that you didn't know who this old Professor Kirke was, and you didn't understand everything. As soon as Digory and Polly come first, everything is spoiled.

This is the reason that the publisher of a book is so very important. Back in fifth grade, everyone gave a "book talk", a book report done wtihout notes and complete with a "visual aid". These talks were followed by a question and answer period. Sir (yes, he was actually named Sir) would always ask who the publisher was, until Mrs. Winslow made him cut it out- she felt it an unnecessary question that he asked only to be difficult. Sir was quite right to ask who published the books. I found on many occasions that the book my classmate had read, and the book I had read were vastly different, such as with a version of Little Women in which Beth did not die, or a version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that not only edited language, but cut out anything relating to Huck's moral dilemma, the only reason the book was written. It often happens that many classic books (especially Twain, Dickens and Louisa May Alcott) are taken and dumbed down to the fifth grade reading level. These books are generally stripped of any redeeming literary qualities, such as I have spoken of before now in regards to Beatrix Potter. Buy them at your peril.

But back to C.S. Lewis, I was struck at how entirely different his world was from the way I had seen it as a child. By the time I was in second grade, I had read all of both the Chronicles and the Trilogy (my second grade teacher was an avid fantasty reader and, having seen me with The Hobbit, supplied me with her very own copies of the Chronicles and The Phantom Tollbooth) and at that time preferred Lewis's world.

However, reading it again, Narnia seems rather smaller then I remember it, as though you could travel the whole of it in a day and be aquainted with everyone and everything. Caspian's voyage to the world's end seems nothing to me now. I am still in love with Narnia, the talking beasts, and the idea of Aslan, and the entire story of The Last Battle, but it seems as small as Hobbiton in comparison with Tolkien's work. How wonderful and peculiar that those two should have been friends.

I was thinking not mentioning it, but I think I will anyway. Last night, I began writing a sort of an epic poem, it's called The Lay of Prince Ereth until I work out just what sort of a poem it is, because I don't think it really is a lay. I'm not particuarly good remembering what Apostrophes and Edicts and Odes and Lays and all are in poetic terms, only that they sound nice and I think Lay sounds fitting, at the moment. It's probably not going to get much further than the four stanzas I have written now, but when I finish it (or at least give up on it) I'll put it up here.

My script idea is developing in my head, but I'm not yet willing to put it to paper. I need to get back to writing on the computer, but even that is beginning to seem too permenant sometimes.