CHRONICLES OF NARNIA

stemming from a reflection on snow~

rays of hot sun streamed in through the window -
child, laying on the rumpled bedcovers, eagerly devouring her story
of the mighty kingdom of Spare Oom and the great town of War Drobe
imagining that I, too, could escape my reality.
for that it what it is all about, no?
wishing that the common man, woman or child
too could change another's world.

That was in Primary 4 I think. And I remember the books I got from SMI too, with their freshly creased pages and lovingly hot-stamped "From the Library of SMI". How we treasured our books then; they were prizes to be sought on weekends when we had been exceptionally good; valued above television shows and soft toys. For an hour or two, to be lost to reality and immersed in the fantasy that Lucy and Susan and I were really, actually, almost the same - drawing parallels between their world and mine, and hoping that my wardrobe, too, would be a door to another world. Yes, golden-haired Lucy and raven-haired Susan; brave Peter and repentant Edmund (I think), and resplendent Aslan above all. Some say CSL wrote the books as an allegory of Christ; I don't remember, and I wasn't saved then, but it was the simple pleasure of letting my imagination take flight that drew me into my books again and again and again.

In the subsequent years, reading remained a first love, and it still is; one of my favourite ways to unwind on a day off is to curl up on my couch with a book and lose myself in its pages. That's become a rare luxury, though, given the constraints that fill my days. But hey, they say absence makes the heart grow fonder - and so I treasure my books all the more. Like old friends ranged along the corridors of my memory, they wait patiently for our acquaintance to be renewed. Yes, one day; the winter in Narnia IS eternal, after all. =)