I feel sorta like I've been reborn, and I'm about as hungry. I've been sick since Sunday, you see, and I finally feel fully alive. :) Yesterday I slept until 11am, worked from noon to 5pm or so, slept from 5-9pm, ate some food and had family Bible reading time, and went to sleep again from 11pm until 11am this morning. This means that I slept around 25 out of the last 48 hours. Finally, a couple hours ago I got really sweaty and shaky, and now I feel much better.

This physical regaining of health is matched by a spiritual and mental. I was reading G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy this afternoon while I was lying in bed. He goes on and on about fairy tales, which he read and loved as a boy. Naturally, this caught my interest, for I, too, weaned myself on fairy tales. I'm writing a book about a faerie now, for Pete's sake!

But as I put my head over the hedge of the elves and began to take notice of the natural world, I observed an extraordinary thing. I observed that learned men in spectacles were talking of the actual things that happened - dawn and death and so on - as if they were rational and inevitable. They talked as if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as necessary as the fact that two and one trees make three. But it is not. There is an enormous difference by the test of fairyland; which is the test of the imagination. You cannot imagine two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail. . . . When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we . . . must answer that it is magic. It is not a "law,m" for we do not understand its general formula. It is not a necessity, for though we can count on it happening practically, we have no right to say that it must always happen. . . . It is the only way I can express in words my clear and definite perception that one thing is quite distinct from another; that there is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs.

I have my wonder back. As a child, I drank up the short science-fiction stories of the 1950s and 1960s. I used to look at everything as I rode along in the car and think, "I could create a science-fiction story out of anything. Absolutely anything." And I could, too. I could turn anything into a plot, simply by asking, "What if...?" With adulthood, however, comes a certain dreadful sanity. Some things are possible; others are not. One falls into the pattern and forgets the wonder of each individual occurrence. One forgets to ask why things are possible and others not. One loses curiosity for the sake daily existence. And what sort of existence is that?

I had plenty of time to think of all these things as I stared out my bedroom window at the street outside and listened to the walls creak in the chilly wind. I used to throw myself passionately into everything, but I have been so tired for so long... And I've been growing up and changing at the same time, without stopping long enough to determine which changes are needed and desirable. Now I feel suddenly awake and strong again. :)  ¶ 4:28 PM