the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off

[soso]

Today's Reading

“When the lion said—but I don’t know if it spoke—‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down /on my back /to let him do it.

“[The very first tear () he made ] was so deep that I thought () it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt /worse /than anything () I’ve ever felt. [The only thing //that made me able to bear it] was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you’ve ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is fun to see it coming away.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund.

* billyoh - an unimaginably large amount; "British say `it rained like billyo' where Americans say `it rained like all get out'".

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought () I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt—and there it was, lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been.

And there was I /as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much /for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon /as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. You’d think me simply phony if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know () they’ve no muscle and are pretty mouldy /compared with Caspian’s, but I was so glad to see them.”

* there it is; That is the situation. 상황이 이렇다, 이런 상황이다

I cannot put into words what I mean, but this situation/scene/event/dead body/etc contains all the truth necessary to understand precisely what I mean.

From The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Compiled in A Year with Aslan

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Copyright © 1952 by C. S. Lewis Pte., Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1980 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With Aslan: Daily Reflections from The Chronicles of Narnia. Copyright © 2010 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Extracts taken from The Chronicles of Narnia. Copyright © C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1950-1956. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.