On Chesterton, on Kipling, on Comet and Cupid

 I was glad today to find my keyboard grew a centimeter. Now I can see when I type.

I'm old overnight. But reading this morning, I reminisced that once I was young, empty, full, and cryptic.

My favorite thing about the laptop I use is that it has open tabs of things I continually hold onto. It is like laying out a gown over a chair that you might remember the night of dancing again and again. There are a few tabs open there. One of them is a pea soup recipe.

Another tab is my Chesterton article I already wrote about. It was insightful and reminded me of myself. Only better. So you can imagine my surprise revisitng the Catholic site's articles for more Chesterton and finding him against the great Kipling in the author's musings. 

He held Kipling in the highest esteem, (who wouldn't?) But Chesterton, who he argued was always with question, he had critical thoughts of, and shared them with careful applause.

He said this, and I realized in his doing so that the question Chesterton had posed in that one article of his I'd read, (and it took me this long to realize I could read others) was the very thing that made him and I compatriots and was my favorite thing about him. 

He who asks questions is not always asking questions. Sometimes he is explaining. I love this style of human communication. It reminds me of a kindly grandpa with licorice and a magnifying glass asking the little ones what they see in the newspaper. Smart grandpas don't want little know nothings. They want kids who can think smartly and avoid being taken.

Chesterton was always telling us something, then, by asking us hard questions. I love that. He said, see over there? 

Now to get on topic, Chesterton had a wit that was equal to Kipling's literary prowess. Wit, if all you can do is slap it down like a fine pizza, is delicious and favored to even delicacies. Kiplings masterary (Mary, what the heck?) was so evident that it made writers out of regular men.

(Now the workers are struck for fame, cause Lemons on sale again)

 I like how Wikipedia will give a Philosopher or sometimes a writer (for sure a mathematician) in his little [box of facts] all those who influenced him. It would be cool to do a quick search of those influenced by Kipling. 

I'll go do that right now. Check you, 

~ later hehe

Well what do you know? 

(Article shift)

In my reading this article this morning I was hurt at the style because it reminded me of my early writing, sort of cleverly cryptic. But after deciphering one of the paragraphs, I was happy to know that, perhaps I too was able to write so that only someone with powers of wit could obtain what I was saying, which may have been the point because we live in times close to book burning. 

Someone had asked me the other day how I thought that I could detect in a writing that the author was an atheist. It reminded me, too, of my old writings. Next year it will be 20 years I've been blogging. 

Aside from having collected a lot of fine articles and having written good short stories, poems, and practiced writing sketches, I was completely open about some of my feelings in that old blog. I wrote once about foreign Gods, and it had me sharing the comparative differences, which this morning I could write for several hours about. One that grows a son on his thigh, one who floats belly up wrapped in snakes. 

But alas, we compare not the Gods, but the Godless. And that was where I went at the BRB. To see Fitzgerald, my atheist. Did he want to be Kipling, too? Surprisingly,  there was a Gadsby of Kipling before the Great Fitzgeralds Great Gatsby.

What I said about Fitzgerald I have yet to look at. That his atheism was in his writing. His quality of writing was apparent in his putting out several very good and attractive short stories. I enjoy short stories the most. Although, morbidly, I once compared them to short life. I am glad that I learned to undo superstition, speaking of being wrapped in snakes. Death happens. So does evil.

Not an atheist, I will try to imagine now what makes an atheist writer. Shakespeare, for instance, wasn't an atheist. I often grapple with Shakespeare as the underdog in Voltaires letters on England. He came out on top, but the Frenchman had no great plans for him. 

But in his few better known works, it is obvious which camp he is in, and that makes all the difference. 

An atheist is someone who does not reach beyond the magic veil. 

Last night I was outside looking at stars. There are more here in the country. (Southern speak)

I was awed, as usual, because I have been graced with the Aha! of knowing in a new way, how small and awesome my life is. It falls flat with some people. I would say, "Can you see how awesome the vastness of space is!" And they would blink and gape, "Is she serious?" 

It's like that.

*I looked up gape just now. It means stare in wonder. And what does the wonderer wonder at? Me. My simple-mindedness. My childlike wonder. It turns into something. It blooms.