Love in the undying lands

Long ago it was that I learned the story of Beren and Lúthien Tinúviel, in a book I've read many times since, The Fellowship of the Ring.

In the tale, the mortal man Beren comes upon the elf-maiden Lúthien dancing in the forest, and is struck by enchantment:

The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tinúviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glimmering.

So powerful to Tolkien was this image that he wrote many versions of the tale, all of them inspired by his own Lúthien—Edith, his beloved, who once entranced him as she danced for him among the hemlocks.

I first read The Song of Wandering Aengus in my twenties, and its sorrowful beauty struck my heart like an elf bolt that quivers there still:

But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

But I was led to the poem, hearing it sung as the lyric of the most beautiful song I know, another tale of enchantment about a pursuit of love that inspires many years of wandering "through hollow lands and hilly lands":






Out of all the beginnings of our lives, one beginning is that thunderbolt of enchantment; the moment when we see deeply the beauty of another.

And entwined with that, we see the beauty of ourselves reflected back to us, through the language of our deepest needs, dreams and longings.

In that still moment, when you catch sight of your beloved, it feels like someone is calling you by your true name. At last you are recognized for who you are—as both human and an aspect of the divine.

You have entered into the great sea of myth, on a journey into the unknown, a long journey of beauty and grief.

Maybe for love to last, that image stamped on our hearts must be as powerful as a dream; powerful enough to live on over many years, as you wander together the hollow lands and hilly lands.

We hold that image so close to our hearts our whole lives through, as our most precious treasure, our deepest truth.

Outwardly we change but in the heart of the beloved, our essential selves still dance in that woodland among the wildflowers...there we dwell until time and times are done, like the sacred apple ever blossoming.

Under Sun and under Moon. By leaf, water and stone. Under the auspices of this song did we speak our vows on the greengrass all those years ago, within reach of the singing river, and I have not forgotten, nor will I forget ever.

Stories for strugglesome times

Sleet falls from a quiet silver sky, frosting the edges of bare branches with a sifting of tiny crystalline stars.

Now the air numbs the skin like the slash of an ice knife, in that frozen moment between the slicing and the bleeding. 

Later I will go outside for a quick chilling of the bones. I have spent many days inside and cabin fever is setting in, which is what I like least about winter.

I wish I could say I was spending this inside time journaling, dreaming and creating; but it's useless as I am distracted by all the ways my house needs to be set in order. Plus, it's not really mine until I clean it. There is a lot to clean, and I'm not a fast cleaner, I'm the inefficient, meticulous sort. It takes a long time.

I'm slow at almost everything...cleaning, cooking, baking, grocery shopping, writing, processing things, getting ready for work in the morning, making decisions...I could go on. Hurrying goes against my nature, my preference for order and exactness.

I'm particularly slow at doing things involving lots of details, which trigger my compulsive tendencies.

Like cleaning a house full of paint-spattered woodwork and radiators with frustratingly unreachable dust crevices.

Sometimes I ask myself, does this behavior serve me...or do I instead serve it? Am I actually being unkind to myself? It's a fine line, and sometimes I observe myself crossing into warning territory.

That's when I need to make myself stop. Go outside. Break the pattern of whatever spell I'm binding about myself, which somehow transforms in the midst of its working from a beneficial magic to a malignant one. This much is good...that much is not.

On winter's bare white stage, one's dramas and dysfunctions play out starkly, in high relief. Maybe that's why we need good stories to escape into more than ever in wintertime. We can't always be brave, strong, and stoic—humans seek comfort in strugglesome times. Stories help get us through.

Do you have particular stories you read during difficult times? We have been rewatching the Harry Potter movies—but I suspect rereading the books would be more magical and more powerful. It's not as if they tell particularly comforting stories (in fact they're rather discomforting and discomfitting), it's more that they encourage us to believe that each of us is stronger than we realize, and that we can make a difference in the lives of others, and that we have a choice as to how to live so let's choose to be courageous and loyal and adventurous. Those ideas comfort and encourage me.

Dark tales, bright fires

I suspect that some of you brilliant people could write a scholarly essay on murder ballads and how they fit into the folk music tradition.

All I know is that this is an art form that's been around a long, long time. And still today murder ballads are being written and performed.

I love them for the stories they tell, their drama and intensity, and how exquisite music, voice and lyrics combine to heighten the tale-telling, make it breathe.

I love the art form's lack of irony, ennui or elliptical meanings—it's life and death in these songs. They feel like core stories about the good and ill in humans; stories that folk have been telling for millennia. Cautionary tales about the most powerful and destabilizing of emotions: jealousy, fear, love, passion, rage and grief. Inspiring stories of struggle and courage.

I love them thrice because they emanate a sense of timelessness and the mythic...these stories, and these characters, have taken many shapes and iterations. You can glimpse in them fairy tales, legends, folklore, myths, stories from the Bible, maybe even the cave paintings of Lascaux.

As we listen to the tales unfold, it's as if we sit around the village fire, together fearing for the characters in danger, uplifted by flashes of heroism. We empathize with their hardship, their life and death struggle.

They are like people we've known. They are like us.

It is winter here in the northern hemisphere, the long dark; it is time for tales by the fire. Listen....

Folk tale for a cold night

On a dark and blustery day--when the turning leaves have frozen on the vine and passersby hunch their shoulders against the wind as they scurry to warmth and home fires--it is time to sit down with a strange tale of enchantment and wonder....

I have just the tale; one that captures the mystery of the forest and the power of old crones. A twisty story set in a land that echoes medieval Russia...a place where the snow is deep and the fearsome figure of Baba Yaga and her chicken-legged house may still roam.

The tale is called The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale, by Leigh Bardugo, and it begins this way:

"There was a time when the woods near Duva ate girls.

It’s been many years since any child was taken. But still, on nights like these, when the wind comes cold from Tsibeya, mothers hold their daughters tight and warn them not to stray too far from home.

“Be back before dark,” they whisper. “The trees are hungry tonight.”

Grab a steaming cup of cocoa, wrap up in a cozy blanket and enjoy the full tale here.

Through old glass

The view through rippled glass from Burgh House, Hampstead Village

I mentioned that I've been going on a lot of guided walks. If this sounds dull to you, think of it this way: it is really like going to listen to a storyteller, who skillfully links what you see now with that-which-was-before. Combined with walking through one of the world's great cities.

A good guide makes connections and creates a narrative that places in context the churches, inns, pubs, alleys, lanes, place names, geography, and historical figures who walked these pavements, enabling you to see past the surfaces. She or he reveals the secrets of a place...those oddities, nuances, idiosyncrasies and stranger-than-fiction truths known by those who care about the events that help define a place, its culture and its peoples.

That is the main thing that strikes me—how much these guides and ambassadors love their Place. Some may be doing what David Abram calls "the practice of spinning stories that have the rhythm and lilt of the local soundscape, tales for the tongue, tales that want to be told, again and again."

Like all storytelling, it is interactive. Together, you conjure up the ghosts, imagine what was, and see how it connects with what visibly remains. While it is impossible to encapsulate THE story of such a place, or any place, it is A story, one of millions of stories.

Sometimes, you'll turn a corner and walk down a narrow but beckoning lane, and whoosh! The relentless noise of construction and traffic is gone. You're in a peaceful Georgian courtyard with flowering trees.

Apothecaries' Guild or Livery (mortar and pestle on wall

Or you've happened upon a church built by the Knights Templar in 1185, and the sound of cellos and violins floats from the windows.

London Walks guide Hilary

And occasionally, you'll hear a vendor singsonging on a corner about why you should buy what he is selling, or hear the clip-clop of horses' hooves on the cobbles (Mounted Patrol), and just for a moment, you'll be transported to Victorian or Edwardian London. As if the Past just swept up these old streets and tapped you on the shoulder, whispered in your ear.

How living amid this must shape your view of the world. London endures. From waves of invaders, plagues that wiped out half the population, the great fire of 1666, civil war, and the Blitz to terrorist attacks, London endures.