Salon has an article today, Tolkien's cosmological vision, that captures a lot of what I felt in my recent reading of The Silmarilion. And now I've just finished the last appendix of The Return of the King... okay, okay I admit that I just skimmed the penultimate appendix that went into detail about runes and Elven pronunciations. That's way too linguist-geek even for my blood.
Unsurprisingly, I find myself feeling as bereft as I did after seeing the movie on opening night a little over a year ago. These stories evoke such a deep longing in me for... what? A time and place where people saw the value of self-sacrifice for the greater good, where leaders actually LED their people into battle rather than counting their money while others died for their "ideals", where love and friendship were highly valued, where the clothes and jewelry were bitchin', where life was tied to the natural world rather than to little computer screens? All of those, yeah. Nevermind whether such a time and place ever existed - I want to be there.
Especially this month. I've overcommitted myself in a big way and I'm running running running. No time to just sit and think, hardly any time (maybe you've noticed) to blog. It occurred to me yesterday that I'm a hoarder... I get my hands on something, and I'm unwilling to let it go, even if I should. Always adding, never subtracting. This is why I have more books than some of the smaller branches of the Seattle Public Library, why I feel compelled at odd times to try to contact old friends who I haven't heard from in years, and why I have one full-time job and three part-time ones.
And why I'm so very much in need of a vacation.
A friend recently told me that her husband has decided he wants to sell everything and live on a boat for a couple of years. My reaction was an internal shaking of my head, a slight tut-tutting over the abdication of responsibility to "real" life that would entail. This morning however, walking to the bus stop as the sun was coming up, I looked over at the mountains and found myself wondering how long it would take to reach them if I gathered up a little Fellowship, packed some supplies and lembas bread, and started walking.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
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