A message from Tolkien

Everyone who knows me, knows how much I love Tolkien. I read him as more than just a wonderful vision of a lost world (lost, not invented). Sometimes, I read him as metaphor. I'm surprised I didn't think of putting this passage up before; now that I think of it, it's a perfect 'snapshot' as it were, of a sort of universal pattern-that-connects. An experience we've all had, at least once, that drives us forward. Who doesn't gain some sense of peace and strength from the experience of sudden, ravishing beauty? I don't know a single person who is immune to that. If there is something that we all have in common, surely this is one such thing?

Here's just one of the ways Tolkien described the experience.


"Sam struggled with this own weariness, and he tool Frodo's hand; and there he sat silent until deep night fell. Then at last, to keep himself awake, he crawled from the hiding-place and looked out. The land seemed full of creaking and cracking and sly noises, but there was no sound of voice or of foot. Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wreck above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been a defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master's, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo's side, and putting away all fear cast himself into a deep and untroubled sleep."

I am not for a moment suggesting that the sight of a star can solve all our problems - either those of the soul or those of the world-at-large. What I am pointing to is simply this: sometimes we don't need to find the ultimate solution. We just need some peace until the time is right for the solution to arrive, on it's own.

And who here doesn't just want a little peace.

A Letter to Myself

With a post-cigarette-inward eye, drenched in sunshine and complete solitude, I began, on impulse, writing a letter to myself. (no, am not advocating smoking as a path to introspection, really, am not.)

Why am I putting it up here, where it could so easily be torn to shreds by doubt, disbelief, cynicism or patronizing nods? (Patronizing nods. God. Those would probably be deadliest of all to the tiny little wings I am trying to explain here.) (Note to you, reader: If you nod, make sure you mean it, otherwise - well - don't.) The only reason I can think of is this: The thing won't tear, because it's stronger than doubt and disbelief. And why is that? Well - that's simple. It's all true.

Without further ado, then.

Dear Zareen;
You spoke about butterfly effects, and about how tiny things can lead to big things, how big things are actually sometimes just tiny nudges into new directions. You used to speak about how everything is connected and how distance and time mean nothing at all. Once, you believed in what you wrote and now, it lies in a purple-silk-bound notebook somewhere underneath your bed somewhere across the world.
Do you believe it still?

(I don't know, I whisper back, reading my own letter even as I write it. I don't know, but somewhere I feel it still.)

Do you need to be reminded that in the chaos of everyday there is still a pattern that connects?
Zareen: Open your eyes and look around your day. Not yesterday, not the day before, not tomorrow: Look around THIS day. And tell me where you see the tiny seams and the careful stiches that are holding things strong.

(I don't want to have to look, I whisper back, I'm tired. The sun is too bright to open my eyes, I have work to do, I cannot be reading this letter, I cannot be typing this letter, I cannot be looking. I have work to do.)

Just LOOK for a MOMENT, Zareen. Come on. Where are the little things that are telling you that there is more to this little picture than you can at first see?

Reluctantly, I open my eyes. The letter I wrote to myself falls onto the grass, and this is what I see:

I see that two days ago, a tiny butterfly, an orange little streak of flame, sat on my fingertip. A tiny thing, awake way past its bedtime to talk to me, in the middle of a deserted path near a railway crossing. I listened to what it said, and I didn't forget. Today, when I spoke
to my mother, she told me that two days ago, somewhere halfway across the world from me, she saw a tiny little butterfly printed bag, orange, thought of me, and bought it. It's flying across the world to me - or will be, soon.

I told her there are moths in my room - the vestiges of summer, perhaps, coming in to find the last traces of warmth before autumn. Except, the windows are closed most of the time and when they arrive, they sit on my thumb sometimes, so that when I type itlookslikethis, or on the edges of my dinner plate. My mother says she has been dreaming of my grandmother. Who loved and delighted, beyond anything else, in watching butterflies, reading about butterflies, planting garden palaces and hosting what she told me were "butterfly parties".

Gosh maybe there's too much coffee inside me, and maybe I am just so tired that I want something magical.
But maybe, just maybe, there is something else.

Could it possibly be, Zareen, (I picked up the letter again, looking for an explanation), that your mother and you are somehow - someway, - part of something together?
What is the colour of that stitch? It is the colour of butterfly wings, and delicate as the flight of moths. It is an intricate little design, finely wrought and as evanescent as breeze. You could so easily have missed it, had you not decided to write this letter, and had I not obliged you.
You are still not seeing the whole thing, Zareen, but keep looking. Somewhere behind your mother's dreams, beyond her sighting of a tiny little bag underneath a whole pile of discounted silk and below the wings of those creatures suddenly haunting you, there is a steel-strong, silver-and-star cable that is holding you close to something other than what you can see.

Have a nice rest of the day. And oh - try and keep the windows open, they'll find it easier to fly in that way.
Over and out,
Zareen.

What's this all about?

What's this all about then?

This is about trying to find some way to find a spark somewhere. To find the place where truth and beauty and freedom begin drift up out of the core of everything and into the orbit of everything. Where they leak into the air and animate existence. No, no matter what you say, I know they are there - and I know they run the show. Inside the senselessness there is surely butterfly light. Inside the violence there is surely a heart somewhere, smooth. Inside the darkness that is fast descending, there is surely one white star, shining.

Everyday I look for it: The emergent beauty, the deeper meaning.

And every time I find it, up here it will go.

(Best of luck, I hear you say, and I almost see your cynical smile - almost, but not quite; because even there I hear the faintest back-note of that universal tune. Smile away, shake your head. Out of darkness, light. Out of chaos, meaning. Out of light, back again into darkness, and in the darkness, star-rise.)
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