the shadow of the past

‘I should like to save the Shire, if I could - though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don’t feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.’

- Frodo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring

Leave it to my comfort reading to know exactly how I feel. This, right here, is exactly what home is I think; Frodo’s not being sentimental and soppy but he isn’t being cruel either, it’s just plain and honest and absolutely utterly true.

Every time I come home is like going through an alternate reality time warp, when I’m suddenly four, five years younger and have nothing much more to worry about than getting my work done, eating and sleeping, because my parents are here to run the house, my siblings are here for company, and even though everyone’s older now and they interact with each other differently, I’m picking up where we left off long ago. It’s like nothing ever changes, except that my brother gets taller and my father gets more grey hairs.

Sometimes I want to shake my brother silly, sometimes it bugs me that my sister keeps missing her morning classes, sometimes I wish that my dad would let me drive and that my mom wouldn’t put my laundry in everyone else’s wardrobes. But ultimately, even if I occasionally think an invasion of dragons wouldn’t be unwelcome, they’re still home, and they’re always going to be here, and wherever I go or whatever I do, they aren’t going to care and they won’t stop being my firm foothold. And maybe that’s what home really is.

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hide and seek

“Sometimes,” he sighed, “I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.”

It occurs to me, chillingly, that the older I grow the better I get at goodbyes - not because of any laudatory emotional control I’ve developed, or because I’ve learned that precious skill of letting go gracefully - but because a part of me just doesn’t get as attached anymore. Whether it’s a self-defence mechanism against a long string of farewells or the inevitable conclusion to an over-nostalgic youth, I don’t know. Everyone has graduated, everyone is leaving, tomorrow there’ll be an empty house, and where I would have been a nervous ball of tears a few years ago I find myself now fluctuating wildly between a silent, throbbing sorrow and a firm faith that this isn’t goodbye, just a hiatus till the next time we meet again. It’s really the latter that’s anchoring me right now, but I don’t think I’d have been able to find that anchor back when I first came here.

Daddy told me a few years back that I ought to be happier about moving out and moving on, throwing away the old, leaving the past behind, because it meant that we were on the cusp of a shiny new future. I hope, perhaps unreasonably, that I’ve managed to learn that lesson; but I know somehow inside that this new alacrity with goodbyes isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I almost wish I was a nervous ball of tears, because my emotions felt so much more real then. I wonder where this clinical, rational thinking came from, I wonder if it’s a cold, icy self-preservation to keep the ball-of-tears version of me from wasting away after the millionth farewell, I wonder if I haven’t lost something in gaining the new calm.

It’s strange, isn’t it? I spend almost three years trying to get over goodbyes, to get used to the idea that everything comes to an end, and the day I find I’ve finally done so, I want nothing more than to undo it all and just cry like a child again.

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bang bang

“for it might end, you know,” said Alice to herself, “in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?” And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.

…it’s been a draining, exhausting few days. everything seemed to converge at once, everything, spinning spinning horribly and coming to land on one fatally explosive spot; it’s been mad dashes everywhere, geographically, emotionally, mentally. i feel like i’m in one of those movies where i see the storm coming from a mile away but i’m rooted to the spot and the film is in slow motion - the camera rotates 360 degrees, it keeps coming coming closer, ominously, and still i stand transfixed, my expression unchanging, because i am utterly powerless to do anything about it, and when time goes back to normal the storm will hit me hard and fast. and then everything will blow up.

it isn’t over yet: i’ve two and a half more days before clearing the next big hurdle in dissertating, and a meagre 1/10th through what i’m supposed to hand in. even the weather hasn’t been friendly, shuffling with frustrating rapidity between gorgeously sunny and frigidly cold and wet.

yesterday’s london interview was an unexpected bright spot, but i can’t just stop now, i can’t sit back and rest content - there’s still so much more i can do, so much more i can at least try to do - how can i leave all the other doors closed just because one has opened for me? what if behind the next one is something even better - and i never know, because i’ve been lying back on some flimsy plastic laurels -

at times i’ve felt, as alice did, that i might shrink till i go out poof just like a candle-flame. but there must be a way out of this trough, there must be; there always is.

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dreaming as the summers die

Long had paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die.
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

This is so frighteningly haunting. I don’t really know why, and I can’t put my finger on it; it’s the last stanza especially, something about the word phantomwise, the thought of Alice moving unseen, in his dreams, under skies, lingering at the forefront of Carroll’s mind, haunting haunting him - perhaps it’s the new understanding I’ve acquired of their relationship, the knowledge that they suddenly broke everything off before Wonderland was published and that he hardly saw her after that, that when they did meet, it was cold and distant - it’s tragic, and terrifying, and I haven’t been able to get the last stanza out of my head since I read it again a few days ago. I can’t imagine living with that sort of pain, with a ghostly phantom in your life, a remnant of your past which you know is never, ever going to go away… it just - sends all these chills down my spine.

These books are creepy. Terry Pratchett has said before that he hates them, that they scared him as a child and made him uncomfortable, and the more I work with them the more I understand why…

1 | +1?

sleepwalking on a tightrope

The past week has been: coffee with Jake, coffee with Nicole, plenty of thought-provoking talk about school, post-school, life and living resulting; a frantic romp through Alice and assorted criticism to cull quotations; a slow start on Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony which I have been quite dying to read for a while; the YTR marketing department winning the much-coveted Achievement in Marketing Award at the Theatre Management Association Awards on Thursday, which made me all glowy even though all I do is pop in once a week to do menial odd jobs; Cluedo party at April’s! where I was Miss Scarlet and got to wear a pretty red dress; planning and finally booking a short trip to Spain in June: so looking forward to Alicante, where the hotel has a swimming pool and the beach close by - it doesn’t take a great deal to make my day these days.

So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality - the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds - the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen’s shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd-boy - and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard - while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle’s heavy sobs.

It’s not much longer, now, till all this ends; people keep saying September is so far away, but it scares me how quickly nearly five months of this year have flown by and before we know it it’s going to be June and then half the year, half the year, will have gone - where? I don’t want to waste it, I don’t want to lose it, and be harshly jolted back to reality, like Alice, by someone brushing the falling leaves off my sleeping face - realising after all that Wonderland was a dream - but was it?

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