Buffalo Meat

Fa-So-La-La

One of the loveliest ways to spend an afternoon is in a tree reading C. S. Lewis or something, I think. Today it was C. S. Lewis's essay on The Lord of the Rings. There was one comment that was so brilliant that I couldn't not share it. This is exactly the right way to think about fantasy--

"The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by 'the veil of familiarity'. The child enjoys his cold meat (otherwise dull to him) by pretending it is a buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him the more savoury for having been dipped in a story; you might say that only then is it the real meat. If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold horse, apple or the very roads into a myth we do not retreat from reality: we discover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves........By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly."

This is so true. It also happens to be a very good summary of the message of Finding Neverland. Anyway, it reminds me of the other day when we took two of Spuddy Buddy's and the Shieldmaiden's friends to a town about two hours away. On the way there the boys were pretending that the passing cars were evil warriors, and they fought them Incredibles-style with their superpowers. Because they had absorbed these fantasies, the road and the cars and travelling itself were restored to the magic that they were supposed to have.