Snow and hobbits

I'm watching the movie Fellowship of the Ring, first in the Lord of the Rings series.  Watching Shakespearean actors gravely imbue Tolkien-esque lines with nuances of meaning is a pleasure.  I can't get enough of Saruman when he says things like "The dwarves delved too deep," or, quite simply, "Shadow and flame."

While a movie can never compete with a book (your imagination is still the richest bed for enlivening a story), being able to hear a beloved story come to life enriches the experience even more.

Whenever it snows, J. and I recite Sean Bean's (Boromir) heartfelt exclamation: "This will be the death of the hobbits!"

Knowledge and the wild things

I had a very strange dream a couple nights ago. It was amusing, bizarre, and beautiful in the way that only dreams can be. It illustrates how dreams can be the brain's creative way of sorting through all the information we cram into it, consciously or subconsciously.

I dreamt that the wild things were the caretakers of the trees of knowledge. All I remember of the dream is this: I am deep in the bowels of what I initially think is the earth, yet I soon realize that we are in a different place, like the Wood between the Worlds from the Narnia books. We are in a cavernous space, looking up at the giant roots of trees, pushing through the ceiling. They are unbelievably large, like mountains, beyond the scale of comprehension, and I feel impossibly small while looking up at them. This sense of scale does not bother me.

As is the way of dreams, I never see the wild things, though I know they are present. While it’s funny that the creatures from Sendak’s book “Where the Wild Things Are” should show up in my dream, as the caretakers of these ponderous trees, no less!, somehow they added a sense of gravitas to my dream. Their wildness meant they were dangerous, and I should take care in this place where the trees of knowledge reside.

I never find out what the wild things do to trespassers. All I am left with is the image of those giant roots suspended in a vast space, and the profound sense of awe I felt while gazing at those ponderous roots far above me, and a niggling sense of foreboding, an intuition that I should not tarry long in this place, no matter how heartbreakingly beautiful the trees are.

And that was the dream. There's no hidden meaning behind it, no suppressed emotions trying to get out. Just the hint of a story.

I like those kinds of dreams.

Stories that included gathering dandelions for salad and ants for protein

When I was little, I wrote stories. They were usually adventure stories, long and drawn out accounts of kids trapped in the wilderness, usually being pursued by criminals or madmen. Not surprisingly, the main protagonists looked and acted a lot like me and my two best friends (also my cousins). We (oops, I meant they) were resourceful and brave in the face of danger, clear-headed and cool when it was time to make life-or-death decisions. Of course, the stories weren't complete without a cute boy or two.

The usual backdrop for these stories was the death of the parents of one of the protagonists (me), which meant she had to go live with her two cousins (my cousins), and thus the adventures could begin.

My mother would always ask me, half-jokingly, why her parents had to die. I didn't have an answer at the time, except to roll my eyes and retort, "It's just make-believe, Mom!"

Here's an article from the Guardian: "Ryan Gibley on the importance of taking kids to scary movies," which says "while children require the stability of a caring parental environment, they need also to fantasise about losing or destroying it." Experiencing the fear of such an event actually occurring is essential to their emotional development.

So there you go, Mom. I was maturing my emotions while writing those silly stories.