“While he was writing The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis encountered patches of writer’s block. To give his mind and body “solace and jolt,” Lewis would pull his wardrobe away from the wall in his study (not a small feat for one man), lay it flat on the floor, and mount it, imagining that the wardrobe was an automobile.
Assuming a cross-legged (Indian style) seated position atop the wardrobe/automobile, Lewis would fill and light his tobacco pipe. While smoking, Lewis would frequently shift the pipe inside his mouth to one of six fixed positions, imagining the pipe as “the gear-lever of the speeds of thought.”
On most of his “drives,” which could last up to three hours, Lewis would keep his pipe/gearshift in the third, fourth, or fifth position — between the incisors and cuspids. On exceptional days, Lewis would work himself into great excitement, keeping the pipe in the fifth or sixth position — clenched between the right molars or wisdom teeth — for long stretches.
At least three times, Lewis shifted the pipe to a seventh position — behind his right wisdom teeth. The effect was a combined sensation of highly charged thought and acute dental discomfort.”
-written by b. mcmullen
Ah yes, as one Christian von Bunsen said about his wife, “…in thy face have I seen the eternal.” How true.