I've had kind of a version of writer's block when it comes to AW recently. I come and check threads and such, but haven't had anything to say. Imagine that: a New Yorker at a loss for words! Part of it's been that I haven't felt confident committing to getting into something b/c the future's been a tad uncertain with this whole changing jobs thing that I'm *still* not finished with. I haven't been sure what my schedule will be like. Except that I do know my trip to Iceland fell through. :-( Maybe someday.

Anyway, I have been actively posting to my blog, so you'd think I'd just double post stuff there and here, since it directly shares the topics of all three AW groups I am a member (or higher) of. I still want to do more in Valinor and Angelcynn, I still want to do a lot more with Kunjarazdôz, and eventually, if I have time, I would love to work on building up the Wessex district of the Anglo-Saxon England 'hood. I've gradually been collecting pictures, links, and some historical info to enhance the place. I mean, my other web handle is King Alfred, after all: if I hope to move my AW persona into Winchester one day, I'd like to fill it out a bit.

Anyway, I'll probably try to post snippets of stuff I've been blogging about in my groups, though of course the Triduum and Easter need to be celebrated, too.

More later. Perhaps. For now, read my blog: http://bitterscroll.blogspot.com

This said by Sam after returning to his regular life after his trip to the Grey Havens in the West to watch his dear friend Frodo depart. By contrast, my trip was to the East, and I didn't not lose any friends. By comparison, though, I am now returning to my all-too-regular life, hoping that it will be a little less regular from now on, thanks to the effects of my pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Also similar is the fact that I did have the opportunity to glimpse the Far Blessed West there in the Middle East, and now my challenge, as Sam's, is to remember the uncommon significance of our seemingly common lives.

Ok, so here I go. I’ve even changed the background color in Word so I have something a little more interesting and less inpiration-stifling to work with as I start writing again. It rather looks like a parchment, which fits right in with where my mind likes to go.

One of the challenges I’m finding with writing is that I feel it really has to be worthwhile for me to spend time writing something. Tolkien, for example, had the very high-minded notion of providing his nation, England, with a mythological milieu that they had been lacking since the Normans invaded in 1066. Tom Shippey mentioned that Tolkien saw the advent of the Normans as a literary disaster. Other people I know are trying to do something similar for their own people. (I mean about creating a mythology for their nation, not about causing a literary disaster!) Very cool. Well, but what do I do? To be honest, my own nation really does not have a textual or folkloric framework that is old enough or interesting enough for me to want to frame stories out of. So I go back to my linguistic (English) and ancestral (German, Irish, Estonian) roots, and find Tolkien already there. Obviously I’d write in English; I’m not good enough at any of my other languages to compose in (though I’ve toyed with making poetry in OE). And all three of my ancestral peoples (Germanic, Celtic, and Finno-Ugric) find an expression in Tolkien’s work. Granted that my academic career will most likely continue along the path of ancient semitic languages (and I’m interested in exploring what it would entail to take Tolkien’s approach to philology and bring that to Semitic studies); but my hobby, my immediate interest, and my most likely avenue for getting out what’s inside me, are all vaguely Tolkien-related and Germanic. So I found an interesting line in Tom Shippey’s book The Road to Middle Earth:

As is well known, Tolkien’s grand design, or grand desire, was to give back to his own country the legends that had been taken from it in the Dark Ages after the Conquest, when elves and woodwoses and sigelhearwan too had all been forced into oblivion. For that to be possible, the Silmarils and their chain of stories would have to be multi-faceted indeed, leaving scope for ‘other minds and hands’ to add their own significances [emphasis mine].

What would those other minds and hands be like? What would they be about? What other significances might they add, and in what new directions would their explorations prove the most fruitful? One thing is for sure: as much as I share Professor Tolkien’s love of philology (is that phrase redundant, linguistically? Love of love of language??), I also share something else. Jacob Grimm in the Deutsches Wörterbuch said, “You can divide all philologists into these groups: those who study words only for the sake of things, or those who study things only for the sake of words.” Shippey again: “Grimm had no doubt that the former class was superior, the latter falling away into pedantry and dictionaries. Of that former class Tolkien was the pre-eminent example.” What I love so much about words is precisely that: that you can learn so much about things, and people, and human nature, and non-human nature, through how man through history has used words.

That said then, the question above should probably be reformulated thus: What aspect of reality (of people, nature, history, etc.), that has at least a kernel of treatment in Tolkien’s mythopoesis, would I want to explore further? To brainstorm simply on things that I like about it all: I love the Rohirrim and their roots in actual Old English culture; Tolkien’s ideas on the different types of heroism is interesting; as is people’s differing ways of handling evil in themselves; also, the idea of fighting evil by not choosing it, even when one’s very will is the battleground. This relates to my thoughts on Grendel’s mere, below. In fact, though I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, I clearly was partially influenced by the effects of the Withywindle on the Hobbits in the Old Forest. Excluding its relation (both geographically and story-wise) to Tom Bombadil, whom I’m not terribly interested in at the moment (he just seems too inaccessible and unlike anything in actual experience), I’d love for Tolkien to have explored the Old Forest more. Since I don’t tend to experience Tom Bombadils every day, what is left to save me from the Withywindles that I do experience? Aside from his very deus-ex-machina help, the only recourse the hobbits have (and have historically had) is simply to avoid it at all costs. What do you do once you’ve begun to be taken by its spell? I’m thinking, among other things, of the rp story line in Germania that explored (before I got here…darn!!) the psychological effects Grendel had on Hroþgar’s people, and how it turned people against each other. Is simply being aware of its evil enough to fight it off? When your will is what’s under attack, can one say that simple willpower is enough to fight it? It’s like those diseases whose very nature is to attack the immune system. How horrid.

Some will say that the answer truly is, even (or especially) in RL, deus ex machina, or rather without the machina, simply Deus. So did God then give us no natural resources to fight off something that happens to our psyches on a natural level? I’m not talking about demonic possession here: the intellect and will are natural powers of man, so there must be natural solutions to natural problems, right? I suppose man’s increasing knowledge of psychology comes in here; and I’m particularly fascinated by those people (and there are a few) who are actual experts in both spirituality and psychology. Knowing how those two fields interact, relate, and yet are distinguished from each other, must be quite something. Combined with the experience that comes from age, that would really result in some serious Wisdom. Anyway, this all goes back to my earlier musings on the frustrations of knowing the answers are out there, but not having access to them. For that matter, Tolkien wondered about that too, now that I think about it. He believed in Catholicism, and therefore in the necessity of Christ coming to redeem humanity, but he also felt it rather “unfair” to suggest that people who hadn’t gotten a chance to hear the “good news” were just screwed. After all, it was God who chose them to be born before he sent his Son, so what was God’s plan for those people anyway? Did he give them even more natural helps (like the truly heroic levels of courage that Tolkien recognized in the pre-Christian Germanics) to make up for what they lacked (again, not their fault) in the supernatural realm? If so, perhaps it’s no wonder that Pelagius came from the British Isles: The idea that we can succeed by ourselves without any real help from God must have been a normal conclusion from their experiences. The new definition of success as getting to heaven was the clincher, and one that Pelagius must not have thought affected the “how” at all. Problem was, the Church said that precisely because this new goal was so lofty, we need help getting there, and all God wants of us is to realize that we need him and ask for his help. I wonder if anyone today, Christian, post-Christian, or non-Christian who knows something of Christianity, can really grasp what it must have been like to hear all this proposed for the first time.

Signs You're from New York

1. You say "the city" and expect everyone to know that this means Manhattan.

2. You secretly envy cabbies for their driving skill.

3. You have never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building.

4. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park at 3:30 on the Friday before a long weekend, but can't find Wisconsin on a map.

5. The homeless are invisible.

6. The subway makes sense.

7. The subway should never be called anything prissy, like the Metro.

8. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multilingual.

9. You think $7.00 to cross a bridge is a fair price.

10. You've considered stabbing someone just for saying "The Big Apple".

11. Your door has more than three locks.

12. You go to a hockey game for the fighting. In the stands. To participate.

13. Your favorite movie has DeNiro in it.

14. The most frequently used part of your car is the horn.

15. You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.

16. You call an 8' x 10' plot of patchy grass a yard.

17. You complain about having to mow it.

18. You are a skee-ball juggernaut.

19. You consider Westchester "Upstate".

20. You cried the day Ed Koch took over for Judge Wapner.

So I keep having this feeling like I want to write something, but I never do. It's like I'm inspired to write by something I see, but then when I open up notepad or whatever, the big white emptiness completely stops all inspiration. Well, I'm going to try writing anyway. Please don't draw the logical conclusion that since I'm posting this, it's meant for everyone's entertainment. Actually, I really don't know where this is going. Don't worry though, I don't mind you reading this; just be aware that this is going to be about *me*. I think. I just need to get some thoughts out, so I can see what they are. Anyway, I do know that I have never been inspired to write before finding Ancient Worlds.

Boy, what a great escape. And I think I mean that completely in Tolkien's sense from "On Faery Stories." In other words, escape doesn't just mean denying RL. It's more like going on a retreat. Working things out away from the distractions of RL can be helpful in actually working with RL, when you go back to it. This is true not just spiritually but psychologically, intellectually, even creatively. And if you've never been on a retreat, I seriously recommend you find yourself a nice quiet monastery or convent somewhere and just get away for a few days--even a weekend. Nature sometimes works too, but often the order in one's vision requires a place where nature (both physical and human) has been ordered, not simply left as in the wild. It's been recommended to me to make a retreat at least once a year. Hah! Like I've kept to that. I can count on one hand the retreats I've been on. A maimed hand, in fact. One missing two or three fingers. But I do know that I miss that chance to re-think through my vision on life and what I'm supposed to be doing.

So, Eirikr, now that you're starting your third paragraph, mightn't it be a good idea to get to some *content*??? Right, well, that's just it. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. That is, I've come to the conclusion recently that I may actually be more creative than I thought I was. Then again, I don't really want to fool myself either. I'd hate to be one of those people blissfully ignorant of their own ignorance and lack of talent. I want to *know* that I'm not talented.

I don't believe that ignorance is bliss. No, ignorance is something less than bliss. It's more like an uneasy peace in the Holy Land: the fact that no one's telling me I've done something wrong or stupid now is no guarantee that things won't change by Second Breakfast (to mix a few metaphors).

I apologize if my writing seems overly psychological or dark to anyone reading. Don't despair: no matter how dark things get, I believe there is always a solution to things. The problem is that I'm not guaranteed to find it. Sigh. Ever play one of those games where the very rules of the game are what it's the goal of the game to find out? I've never played Myst, but I hear it's like that. Well, I have a feeling I'd like that game, but I don't like it when life is like that. For example, I'm not the most subtle or observant of men. I know I let people down. I also know that I don't know what people want or feel unless they say so. That unspoken communication stuff--I may be more sensitive to its existence than many of my buddies, but I'm no more able to speak that language than the next guy. So, especially around certain friends and relatives (mostly women, I'll admit), I feel like I'm always misunderstanding them and hurting them. I don't like it, but I'm always waiting for the next thing to apologize for. It's frustrating when looking out for something does nothing to help you avoid being blindsided by it. That's what I mean by playing a game I don't know the rules to. The problem is, the rules I never was really taught are basic life skills, like communication and asking for help before I'm way in over my head, that others seem to take for granted and can't imagine why someone would struggle with them.

By the way, if you ever need to ask me for help, just ask. Not only am I much better at helping other with their problems than with my own, I also know that it is better to ask than not to. I don't practice it, but I do know it. If I can't help the way I'd like to, I'll be honest and say so; we're both rational human beings. But it's up to me to say yes or no. Don't decide for me and assume I'll say no. (Boy, I wish I could practice this.)

OK. So. On to something I really want to talk about....

Hmm. I wrote the last sentence, then scanned various AW pages, other web pages, looked around the room, and my own brain, trying to figure out what I want to talk about. Let's start with this; I really think future posts here, if there are any, will be more interesting:

I love the image from Beowulf of Grendel's mere. A beautifully melancholic image of a dark body of water, seething with evil creatures. I imagine a twilight time when the marshy air is foggy and almost brown with mist and vapor. Or maybe it's late afternoon, but it might as well be twilight with how little light is getting through from the fuzzy yellow ball your mind tells you is the sun. I then modify the image. Exit the creatures in the water. The pool is silent. Heavy. You drop a pebble in the water and the eddies die almost too quickly, unnatural for normal water. The spell of the water begins to take hold of you. You know what you must do, but you can't do it. It is like you are the water, becoming more sluggish than is natural. Your limbs, your very will, are like molasses, reluctant, getting heavier. You can only stare at the water, watching the eddies die and the light fade.

At this point, I find myself thinking of an aspect of Faramir's dream from Lord of the Rings, which in the movie was given to Eowyn. (Miranda Otto did a magical job with an awesome character, btw!) As you stare at the dark pool, perhaps you become aware, somehow, of something behind you. Not a figure, a creature; more like an event or landscape. A great wave, perhaps, or a great light. But the light shines past you to the sides of the mere (did I mention there were dark droopy trees taking black nourishment from its shores?), and that light which you don't look at, almost seems to make the mere you are looking at all the darker. You're almost scared of the light, knowing it's good, but scared of the process of coming out of the trance, even though it'll be less than an instant.

I don't know what happens next. Do you just snap out of it? Does the spell of the mere, like dragon's breath or the Black Breath of a Nazgul, stay with you? You're good at helping people, but not yourself; is the world saved for others but ruined for you? Frodo--Tolkien--didn't really answer the question. Or maybe I haven't found his answer. Or both.

That's it for tonight. Time to get back to unpacking. Sigh.