Where does the time go when it's not around here?

Soo, I have been typecast and I've decided to blame Robby D for it. At this point, Emma probably already knows the story (update--Emma was texted) but I'm going to pretend I have other readers. We have an independent art project that's a series of whatever. I asked Maghini if she had maybe a suggestion of something I could do, and she said, "Well... maybe a comic about Jack Kerouac?" Woahh! Typecast! (Ignore the fact that I was toying with something having to do with Kerouac.) Robby D, you and your turning me into an obvious Kerouac lover! No, kidding, I'm cool with it. I appreciate it!





What did I read? I read CS Lewis's Screwtape Letters. Fun thing I wasn't aware of, CS Lewis's middle name is Staples. Staples. I'll give you a second to soak that awesomeness in.


Awesome matter #2 is this copy I picked up is an edition from 1953. Which means it is a very, very quality book. And, for once, I have a book that's older than 50 years and does reek of mold and possibly smallpox. Actually, I don't think Descent of Man or Hunchback of Notre Dame smell like either of those things, but that's besides the point. Anyway. What I'm getting at is I love it because it's pretty like that. And fun to hold. This is the kind of book I'd love to carry around all day. (Stop looking at me like that.)



The book is a series of letters from Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood. Screwtape is an elder demon, apparently quite successful in turning people from the Enemy (God, duh) and is writing his nephew letters meant to help him turn his first case away from the Enemy. So, like many of his other books, there's quite a strong Christian influence, even though in this book you may not be expecting it. (I expected nothing going into it--I liked the binding on the book and the name. Those things are enough for me.) Also, ironically enough, quite a case for Christianity--or, religion in general. Or, not being a satanist at the very least, if nothing else.



"The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn"--Luther
"The devill... the prowde spirite... cannot endure to be mocked"--Thomas Moore (Both quotes appear before the story's start.) You know, I was thinking about this, and I can't believe how silly that is. I mean, according to many religious texts--yeah, this is the truth. Whether it's the Christian devil, or some other deity of evil, or even just a tricky or playful good guy, they're ultimately powerful. Too strong, too smart, too much having the tendency to devour human souls. But, as soon as someone says something like "Oh, silly god/dess, they are stupid/not as good at weaving as me/couldn't ever fool me", they appear and are all like "Nuh-uh, it's done". They get so MAD. Hubris. It's a bad business.

In the preface, CS Lewis says: "There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them" (9). This is obvious; it hardly needs an explanation. Just thought it was worth mentioning--it can be applied to a great many things, and a great many people aren't aware of the dangers.

"There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth" (10). I just like the phrasing. Heck, there's probably more wishful thinking in hell--I point to Mephostophilis from Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. At one point, he tells Faustus that even while shadowing Faustus on earth is torture--because he can see happy people, with full lives, free of, well, hell. Damnation.

"All mortals turn into the thing they are pretending to be" (54) / "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be"--Kurt Vonnegut Oh, hey, guys.

"No natural phenomenon is really in our favor" (80). So, through Screwtape, CS Lewis is saying that natural phenomena is 'good', right? Because it can't be an advantage to a demon. And in that case, I think CS Lewis just said people are inherently good. Yay! JOHN LOCKE. (Also believed people are inherently good. Because you care so much?)

"His faction has frequently admitted that if ever we came to understand what He means by Love, the war would be over and we should re-enter Heaven. And there lies the great task. We know that He cannot really love; nobody can: it doesn't make sense. If only we could find out what He is really up to!" (98). It would seem that by rebelling, Lucifer would have filled the hearts of his familiars with hate and lies (well, there's a reason why they call him the "father of all lies", I guess) and they've never quite regained it. If you've happened to have read Neil Gaiman's comic book Murder Mysteries, it implies that Lucifer rebelled because he was--well, heartbroken. He was God's number one angel, subservient and completely trusting in Him. However, God's wrath is enacted in front of him and disintegrates a fellow angel into little more than dust. The squares on that page are burned into my mind: crying, Lucifer says, "That wasn't fair. That... That was not just." After that, he leaves, and Raguel's commentary is something like: "X may have been the first to love, but Lucifer was the first to shed tears and I will never forget that." In his head (as I've imagined it) his image of God was ruined forever--he was heartbroken. So, being unable to feel love, and disabling his followers from feeling it makes sense in that line of thought, I guess. (Also, compare this quote to "The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell"--CS Lewis, from The Four Loves.)

Screwtape also claims you can make a person unhappy by screwing up their notion of love--that is, having them read books of the soppy sort, to make them believe love is irresistible and fantastic and descends at first sight. Then, no human love will ever make up to that ideal. Jane Austen: accidentally a satanist? Because Mr Darcy will skew my views of romance forever. This me, DYING ALONE. Don't let Screwtape know.

Screwtape also implied that through demonic doings, fashions go in and out in an effort to make a human more unattractive to another. His case in point is "the beard" (102). I practically died laughing. I mean... it just sounds so silly.

Describing a Christian girl, Screwtape says: "She makes me vomit" (111). There is a huge amount of difference between saying "She makes me want to" and "She makes me". That was really all I'm pointing out. I mean, he probably was for real throwing up. Ick. Oh, but also, the finality and truth of the statement kind of makes me giggle. I mean, you have to admit, it sounds kind of silly.

"Transformation proceeds from within and is a glorious manifestation of that Life Force which Our Father would worship if he worshipped anything but himself" (115). This is quite possibly the biggest warning flag CS Lewis puts up throughout the novel. HUBRIS IS BAD, AND IT IS WHAT SATAN HAS. WOAH RHYMING KIND OF. SWEET.

Screwtape mentions 'contemporary' writers thinking of Jesus in a new light--one of these new ways is in a Marxian light. Oh, Oscar Wilde, you wrote a whole essay on this which I own? And it's called 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism'? Huh.

"We have trained them to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain--not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is" (130). In a book of quotes, this is quoted as being "The future is something which everyone reaches... (etc)" Either way, it's a delicious quote and a reminder I think a lot of people need. The future is all around us, in every single millisecond and puff of air, moving forward slower than one can imagine, but still fast enough to shock. You see?

Ooh, I have to spoil the end. I need to. It's delicious the way the end of Little King's Story is delicious. So, don't read if you don't want it spoiled, yeah? Wormwood fails. Apparently, he writes to his uncle begging for help of some sort--because he 'loves' him. His uncle's response? "Love you? Why, yes. As dainty a morsel as ever I grew fat on" (156). Earlier in the letters, he hints that those who can't feed hell (with souls) will end up on the table themselves. Screwtape ends the final letter with: "Meanwhile, I have you to settle with. Most truly do I sign myself Your increasingly and ravenously affectionate uncle SCREWTAPE" (160).

I'd recommend this book highly. Some people may be put off by the Christian overtones, but it's an interesting book, and to be quite frank, I think very little of people who reject things simply because of their ideologies. I find it quite cowardly--in that, you feel the need to abuse it thoroughly and cannot even approach a symbol of it without a yellow belly. I can't say I agree with everything I read, and I can't say I've never been offended by a book, or movie, or any other form of media that would support any sort of view--but I give it a chance. Woah, sorry to get all preachy. It's just--I deal with a lot of people like this. And I have for a great many years--and the behavior disgusts me. Ehm.



In other news, I drew and inked a 'practice picture' of Kerouac. DO NOT LISTEN TO EMMA IT IS NOT GOOD HE LOOKS LIKE HP LOVECRAFT.

I'd walk through hell for you, let it burn right through my shoes, these soles are useless without you

Hey, look! Here I am, writing. What book did I finish... The Four Loves by CS Lewis! What books am I still reading? (That doesn't sound grammatically correct...) Cosmos by Carl Sagan and 1984 by George Orwell! Guess what I'm putting off! Correct! My application to Fordham! Yeaaaaaaah. Look. This time it's not my fault. My parents are both asleep (yes, at 8:30 p.m.) and I haven't exactly memorized my social security number. So. Come on, mom. But I did finally edit my college essay and do a million pages of homework for Marky Mark because he's obviously trying to kill me slowly.




So, I was going to pretend I remembered things from Language & Composition last year and treat The Four Loves like an EPL assignment because it's a nonfiction essay (cough, book, cough) and actually pick out the different EPL things but I can only remember Ethos and part of Logos and good news, that notebook is lost in the dark recesses of my closet. Under my astronomy binder, actually. But trying to get it would be painful and would most likely make me cry, or something. But! I can do Ethos: Extrinsic: CS Lewis? Are you kidding me? Maybe you've heard of something called.... The Chronicles of Narnia? AKA, amazing children's fantasy book series that wipes the floors with Harry Potter? Don't get me wrong, I like Harry Potter, but really, it's no contest. Oh, and if you've only seen the movie version of The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian you are missing out so incredibly much. (Again, I think I just killed the English language). Seriously. Those books are soooo much better! I love them! Except for A Horse and His Boy. And the end of The Last Battle is a little disheartening, but... Look, that's beside the point. But I love CS Lewis.
Intrinsic: He really wants to share his view on what he believes the four loves are?

So, yeah, that's basically it. Being nonfiction, I don't really feel comfortable saying it was 'good' or not, nonfiction seems to me to be either interesting or not. This was interesting.

"We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. Then they become Gods: then they become demons." This I thought was interesting. CS Lewis's Christianity is pretty well known, especially through the obvious parallels between religion and various bits in The Chronicles of Narnia, cough cough, ASLAN. Other parts too, but if you don't get Aslan is supposed to be Jesus, come on guys. But yeah. It's pretty well-documented. Anyway, he was a born-again (kind of) so I was worried he'd be a little... intense. However, when I saw this I got excited. Very few people are willing, or do realize that God, angels, demons, are all the same thing, really. Actually, I first read the idea in an early chapter of Berserk by Kentaro Miura and it knocked me off my feet. ("'But if you look at it a different way, it might be proof that there's something beyond human understanding in this world. For instance, what're called gods... or something...' 'Don'tcha mean devils?' '...Who knows? Aren't they the same thing?'") Since I've literally seen the idea in only one other place, I was incredibly excited to see this. A bad mark on my part, but I was scared he'd be a crazy zealot. But to see that kind of gives a strange air of... level-headedness? Admitting that nothing perfect? Abraxes, Abraxes. I don't know.

(Leading off of the above quote--) "Then they will destroy us, and also destroy themselves. For natural loves that are allowed to become gods do not remain loves. They are still called so, but can become in fact complicated forms of hatred." I was actually going to talk (again) about how love and hate are basically the same exact things only in different minor classifications, but I'll actually just name-drop Berserk again, how about that? Griffith from the series led a band of mercenaries called the Hawks and besides looking literally of unearthly beauty, especially in the manga. Most of these people he led were really kids--orphans found on the battlefield, children who escaped from slavery and so on. They had no one but him and the worshiped him. He was given that God-love. High of power and by his own ambition, he goes a little bit crazy, sacrifices basically all of his followers and his humanity to literally become a member of the Godhand, a demigod, acting out God's Will. (There's an interesting theory on God, but I won't get into that now...) Sooo. Yeahhh. Shout-outs to Miura...

"The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define." Yeah, I've noticed. We are more likely to make it necessary to call a logical fallacy on ourselves than not. I'm calling logical fallacies, too. With my ninja stars of correct rhetoric.

"There may come an occasion for renouncing this love; pluck out your right eye. But you need to have a right eye first." If you're not familiar with what CS Lewis is referring to: "If thine right eye offends thee, pluck it out." From page who even knows in the Bible. Basically, God I love you so much that if you didn't like my right eye (a metaphor, I'm thinking) I would be totally cool with you just taking that eye right out of my head. That... that's a little intense. But I thought it was interesting because it says... well, I think it's saying... you can reject matronly and natural affections, but there has to have been love there in the first place. I took it to mean love of God (in any form), actually. You can reject this religious being, any religious being, but only if there had been something in the first place. If you've never bothered to understand or take some research in the matter, you can't really say "I reject you", because you don't know exactly what you're rejecting. Does that... does that make sense? Well, if it does, then it applies to other things as well: any idea, really.

"The last thing we would want is to make everything else just like our own home. It would not be home unless it were different." What is it... the saying... "Absence makes the heart grow fonder"? If everything's like home... I'd imagine it would feel fairly oppressive.

OH, and CS Lewis complains about patriotism in a zealous form. Yeah? It's because... IT'S A LOGICAL FALLACY, BABYYYY. 'FLAG-WAVING'.

"Affection has its own criteria. Its objects have to be familiar. We can sometimes point to the very day and hour when we fell in love or began a new friendship, I doubt if we ever catch Affection beginning. To become aware of it is to become aware that it has already been going on for some time." / "Elizabeth's spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted Mr Darcy to account for his ever having fallen in love with her. 'How could you begin?' said she. 'I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when you had made a beginning; but what set you off in the first place?' 'I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.'" (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, of course. )

"We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the rising generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parents." One, oh my God, did he for real just say 'oldster'? Love you! Two, he goes on to say that the way parents more often than not treat their children would be enough to completely sever a relationship with anyone else and it's unfair to assume the younger generation doesn't know anything, because they understand more than the 'oldsters' give them credit for. Then, after all this nastiness and domineering attitudes, adults tend to get agitated at the fact that their children are always out and prefer to be out, especially in other homes. His response to them: "Who does not prefer civility to barbarism?" Being a youngster, I am obviously more inclined to agree with him. It is unfair, and anyone knows their parents can be nasty or whatever. And yeah, at someone else's house, whose parents are going to scream and be nasty to you? Zerooo. So. That's cool. CS Lewis, adopt me? Uh, oh. wait. Damn! (Bring me a gramme!)

"How if the deserter has really entered a new world which the rest of us never suspected? But if so, how unfair! Why us? Why was it never opened to us?" The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Peter and Edmund (Edmond? Can you just be Ed?)? Hm? But the main point he's trying to prove is when people grow up and change we get jealous and reject the new thing, but at the same we sometimes get jealous that they've changed and the change hasn't come into our life.

An interesting bit was when CS Lewis talks about man's need for animals--not only does, say, a dog make you feel like you have family and a loved one, it also gives you a sort of sense of power. This creature is entirely reliant on you because you've babied it. He's not saying beat your animal and starve it, but people make pets (namely dogs) into things unrecognizable from their roots completely. By keeping it from its true potential and 'wild side' (I don't know of a better way to put it) you're kind of "spoiling" its life. I don't know, I just thought it was an interesting albeit unexpected point.

"Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by the fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend." I think this is more of a perfect world deal. It's much more likely jealousy will ensue, and so will the feelings of an unfortunate one quick becoming a third wheel. Very rarely will this situation actually arise and exist for any extended period of time. For example, the only friendship in my own life where three isn't a crowd is probably when I hang out with Robby D JR and Emma. There's equality and I don't feel like the third wheel. In pretty much any friendship situation, no matter how good friends I am with one or both, I'm basically always the odd man out. Then again, CS Lewis says "True friendship is the least jealous of loves." Note the true. Feeling the love, Emma? I think it means jealousy in between, though. Not towards the people themselves, just the attention paid, if that makes sense...

"But if Friendship were used for this purpose we might mistake the symbol for the thing symbolized." There's nothing much to say except I wanted to bring up the fact that, while this isn't a deadly sin, it's a dangerous problem (mixing the symbol and thing symbolized). John Milton makes it quite clear in Paradise Lost that Satan cannot tell the difference and often confuses the two, hence why he starts his 'backward' campaign and hence why, or part of the reason why, he is a pitiable character, at least in that context.

"Love you? I am you"--Charles Williams. I liked that quote. It was in a really weird context, though. He was thinking about what it means when lovers say they... 'eat'... each other... Which was just weird. He meant that the intensity of their feelings completely enveloped each other in a roaring, almost violent way, but still. I was like... CS Lewis... you're making me a little uncomfortable. I know the slang has probably changed a little but yeah, I'm just gonna skip a few paragraphs...

"William Morris wrote a poem called 'Love Is Enough' and someone is said to have reviewed it briefly in the words 'It isn't'."

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to be sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal." And he goes on to say that basically a life denying love completely and wholly (which I believe is completely impossible, even, say, for sociopath) you're basically in hell. Like, you don't automatically get damned (gramme?) but you literally live in hell while alive. You dig? I mean... you're basically isolated of your own decision. Actually, it's kind of funny because of that saying, you know, "hell is other people." Ironic, maybe. Irony!

"Neither of you now plays conkers." What... what the hell is 'conkers'? They most definitely didn't have N64's of Xboxes back then, so there's no way bad fur days could be involved. Anybody... Anybody laughing? Oh okay, cool.

"To know that one is dreaming is to be no longer perfectly asleep." Yeah, but it's nice when your dream is about an English teacher who has trained dinosaurs to kill you for a chance at a million dollars. Yes, it was Big Mikey. What a weird dream. But in all seriousness, yeah, it's true. But when you're having a nightmare--it helps.

In other news, Cronkilicious lost a book of mine and offered to buy me a new copy... I feel really bad... but I can't remember the title, so maybe I don't have to worry. If he buys me a book in return I'm going to feel like a jerk... I AM A TERRIBLE PERSON!

And Robby D finished Survivor... Yeah, he said the near-the-end scene in the porn landfill was a little strange. Totally forgot about that. Completely. Uh... maybe I shouldn't lend you his other books, because it only gets more awkward from here in.

And even though the date is whatever, we dressed up for Halloween... best outfit, aside from the Pacman group and Quailman? Marky Mark was Montressor. (From 'The Cask of Amontillado'.) As in, "For the love of God, Marky Mark!" "Yes, for the love of God!" Remind me not mess with him. Robby D shaved his beard and left the 'stache for Halloween... Oh God, I don't even want to talk about it. You know how I feel about moustaches. UGH. I don't even like thinking about the... HE LOOKED LIKE BURT FREAKING REYNOLDS. GAHHH. Man, you know who has a really gross moustache? Bob Dylan. This isn't the worst, but I'm taking pity on your virgin eyes. I HATE EVEN THINKING ABOUT MOUSTACHES. It just makes me want to wipe my upper lip. JMHFFLTYDSNJRSZJMFH.

Anyways... As for me? Well, I've written a few plays... and a book or two... perhaps you've heard of me... Oscar Wilde.


(And regarding the title... CS Lewis actually mocks that dramatic love... like... of intense self-sacrifice and all that. But it felt appropriate, you know...)