Can't touch this

Abso-fucking-lutely no more reading of anything by anyone and C.S. Lewis has performed the triple hat trick of literature. EVERYONE is offended.

I was a secular child raised by an atheist and a lapsed Methodist of the midwestern variety which means Calvin at the root. Them that gets, gets; them that don't, don't. The word 'God' wasn't controversial in my household because it simply did not come up. Until I was eleven and read a Judy Blume book that has since been censored/banned by everyone. However, I read the book, wondered if I would ever achieve the enlightenment of puberty and started going to church. Lots of churches. I wanted to be looking for God, because Margaret was looking for God, but I didn't know what to look for. Therefore, The Chronicles of Narnia was just a good story. A super good story and I did, and still do, love me some Aslan.

The hypocrisy of the Left is not lost on me. I'm already predisposed to irritation at the Right, but from my perspective both sides are nose to nose in this race and I'm having trouble taking anyone seriously including myself. It gets harder to write every day. 

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I have trouble sleeping. Both types: getting to sleep, and staying that way. My current drug of choice is Audible. I liked The Graveyard Book well enough but Neverwhere was too exciting. I'd drift off and wake up when the timer stopped the story and backed it up to where I'd stopped processing and started over again. I haven't finished the story because it keeps me up all night. I purchased all seven books in the Narnia story, set the timer and settled in. It was OK to miss some of it, after all, I've been through those stories at least ten times since 1975. Maybe more. I did wake up last night and reset A Horse and His Boy because I kept missing a crucial (to me) scene. I dozed and slept and woke most of the night and at 4am I called it day (?) and decided I'd start from the beginning tonight.

I am painfully aware of the inappropriateness of the subject. Rampant racist xenophobia and Paganism at its best. The religious overtones aren't lost on me either. Aslan is a benevolent deity so long as you're mostly well-behaved. He's forgiving though, I'll give him that. The book is horribly classist. Good manners, kindness, and courage are the hallmark of good breeding and no matter how or where you've been raised, those true colors rise right to the top. And people of color? Yikes. A rival god? Tash is a demon, no redemption or forgiveness there. 

The Calormen. It's been suggested that Lewis derived the name from the Latin, calor, meaning heat but I'm not so sure. I read it as 'colormen' until just recently. I'm not even sure Calormen faces are brown but I sure did grow up thinking that. Doesn't matter what Lewis meant; culturally, that's what I took away. People from the (South)east, crazy motherfuckers but some of them can assimilate if they come to Jesus. 

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I don't have a closing argument. I'm just sad. You all will have to extrapolate for yourselves. As appropriate, or otherwise. I'm gonna listen to Huck Finn next. And after that American Dirt, exactly because it's been so thoroughly censored.