Are you familiar with the work of Brian Doyle?  Although I've been aware of Doyle for some time, I had not read much of his writing.  Earlier this summer, however, I did.  I read his novel Plover.  It's a odd but insightful tale, a story of humor, intrigue, suspense, and irony played out on the vast stretches of the southern Pacific Ocean.  Without saying much about the plot, I mention Plover for the way in which it celebrates the cacophonic nature of the world.  Its crew consists of a dad and his mute child; a native of Oceania; an albatross; a sea gull; and a warbler who lives off raisins the crew leaves near the water tank.  Granted, to an extent, this scenario is fantastical, but as the months pass, things happen.  The mute child begins to speak, the Oceanian cares for a renegade pirate who has been burned badly in an attempt to take over the Plover, and the captain, a man who swore he would never live on land, meets what seems to be his true and forever love.  It's life in all of its tangled and unfathomable glory.
     And yet, I could not help but think as I read, it is a glory which I could not possibly attach to life were life the only thing that existed.  How would I know?  I'd be comparing chocolate with chocolate.
     As Aslan the lion said to Lucy in C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe upon overturning the evil witch's magic that had killed him and returning to life, "There is a deeper magic still."