"入芝蘭之室久而不聞其香 rù zhī lán zhī shì jiǔ ér bù wén qí xiāng" -- 孔子 Kǒngzǐ (page 39)
"Long in a room with orchids, you no longer notice its sweet scent" -- Confucius
In the Wood Beyond the World grew birches and alders, hazels and hornbeams. It was saplings from this Wood that grew in the enchanted underground world the Twelve Dancing Princesses went to night after night. It was a hazel branch from this Wood that Cinderella planted above her mother’s grave, which granted her wishes. Of course that hazel branch was not free. But Cinderella’s mother paid it, even if it was only her life.
The Brothers Grimm, in their travels through this Wood, wrote down many of its children’s and household tales. Tales of its inhabitants, of dwarfs and king’s sons, of enchanted deer and giants, of tailors and old women, of soldiers and the devil, of poor children and losing a parent, of namely, themselves.
In this Wood now was the Lost Boy Digory Kirke, who had rubbed his hands in the earth, and then had a good cry, and then dried his face with his hands. He’s miserable because he thinks he had made the worst decision of his life, and he could not take it back, because Time only goes one way, even in this world. And no matter how many fanciful worlds he invents, as he will do later, when he grows up and goes up to Oxford, and then becomes a world-famous professor, he always regrets what could have been if he had known then what he will know later, to have chosen differently.
For you see, when he was just a boy, even younger than he is now, when he had been on an awfully big adventure in the world of Narnia, and he had the silver apple of life in his pocket, instead of taking it back to his Mother’s bedside and giving it to her to eat, to see the colour coming back to her face, to hear her tell him the pain is gone and she feels stronger, to watch her fall asleep, without pain, without drugs, and hear everyone say next day how wonderfully she has recovered, instead of all that, he took the silver apple of life to the Lion, on principle.
We do so many things when we were young, on principle. But our principles change as we grow up. And we wonder at it. And we wonder if we could go back, and change what we did. Choose differently next time. To live Time over again. It is why the Cathayans have the concept of reincarnation, a balm for the psyche through a fiction of the soul.
Have you, too, something you would do differently?