Good stuff and questionable stuff and symbolism in newspaper comics.

Last night I wound up staying awake until one in the morning reading Frazz. I would say I’m not sure why (isn’t that standard procedure when you do something like stay up until one in the morning), but I love that comic, and the website changed so you can read back indefinitely (for now; I’m not sure exactly how far back it goes, but 2003 seemed like a good start), which was really fun until my back started getting sore. So my next move, at one in the morning, was to grab my sneakers and coat and take a walk, which was also fun, except that it’s way too light in the sky for a good night walk right now. I can’t wait for winter to hit, an things go properly dark. (Ye-ah, archaic grammar. I think.)

Anyway, I didn’t realize until I got home from the walk around three o’clock that Caulfield’s name (or maybe I realized on the way down the driveway and then forgot?) is Holden Caulfield’s last name. Oh my good golly gosh, symbolism? In a newspaper comic? …well, I like it. I liked Holden, I loved Catcher in the Rye, I like the characters of Caulfield and Frazz, and it was totally worth it to stay up for hours reading. Also, Caulfield reminds me of me at that age; I was constantly, constantly, getting in trouble for reading while I should have (I very nearly put those two words in quotes—shows how much I’ve grown up, ne?) been doing other things, most notably math. …Actually, scratch “that age,” I was getting in trouble for that through senior year.

The walk was good, by the way. Good in the sense that I mostly accomplished what I really wanted to; I walked into the woods, all the way down to the pond. I had to stop and gather my courage a few times, as I really do prefer the dark to a foggy twilight (it was also raining a little tiny bit) which confuses the eyes and twists perception. What I accomplished was to stand there, looking at the water running across the path, barely visible in the half-darkness, and assure myself that I was in hands larger than my own, that no harm would come to me save by a plan devised entirely by those hands, and also that if I couldn’t walk straight out of the woods which I know like the back of my hand and have been haunting on and off for five years in the dark, I would never be able to walk straight into the state forest, which I’ve never even seen, looking for… well, anything, really.

(Hey, let’s hear it for the very-nearly-run-on-sentence!)

So I got home around three o’clock, and was comfortably in bed before I realized I hadn’t prayed yet, and I am trying to do better. I think that’s happened to me every single night for the past week. This life is a lot more fun when you realize that God probably has a sense of humor, and most likely wants us to have one too. C. S. Lewis said something profound about being able to laugh at our own expense, especially knowing the one making the joke has nothing but our best interests at heart; I don’t remember it, but you get the point. I hope.

That’s life, leaving out the darker stuff about falling back into insanity again. I taped a poster over the mirror where my reflection usually is from the computer, to stave off the desire to stab myself in the eyeball. So far, it’s working pretty well. Life is not hopeless!