20210820.0430

I sing a song not of a tree
So no tree has grown anew
And I sing not of winds right now
That in the branches blew
Nor do I sing of ships this day
As none will carry me
No ship will ever bear me back across the sprawling sea
But all on land I make my way
To where I'm meant to be
A greener field that now awaits
My working awaits me

20210714.0430

They said to me
Both no and yes
But they had not risen
Beside Cuiviénen, so
After just a bit of prodding
I got a straight answer

20210708.0430

The work goes ever on and on
Though it needs to leave no door to do it
Or I do not
Laboring at home as outside it
And there is no pile of gold
Or shining jewel
A kingdom's ransom
Waiting at the end of it

20210707.0430

The lush carpet that had been spread
Is fading into brown again
As always happens when
Arien drags her boat on by
Drags because
There is usually little water to float it

20210411.0430

Holding Dramborleg in my mouth
Words wounding sometimes
Thudding dully others
And too often the other when I want the one

20210325.0430

Praise them with great praise
Though the Ring they bore is not undone
Its evil yet at work in the world
And no Dark Tower is thrown down
For though they failed
As have we all
Yet they have at least striven bravely
And that is more than many will do!
Praise them with great praise
The many whose works have gone unsung
As they have sought to make a world
That is better to live in than they had seen
Their voices drowned out by
Repeated reports from throats of steel and flame
A chorus that the old foe of the world
Rejoices to hear!
Praise them!

20201008.0430

I feel myself being a Baggins again
Of the kind that came before Bilbo
Sitting in a strange place and sighing
That staying where I am is for the best
Even if habit would have me elsewhere

20200727.0430

All the while I sit and peck away
Crow-like, seeking after corn
Or tasty bloody gobbets before they blacken with rot under Arien's charge
I could be doing other things of greater profit
Meeting more the measure of a man in my part of the world
Where money means so much
But while my head is down
I do not see the opportunity
Cat ready to pounce upon me

20191223.0430

Butter may do badly to be scraped over too much bread
And there is no way to gather it up again
Not without dragging crumbs along
Unless maybe a gentle heat applied for long
But even that will lose some of the spread
Better simply to eat the slice

20190823.0430

The Prince of Fantasists writes into Bilbo's mouth that the hobbit feels "like butter scraped over too much bread." It's a lovely simile, one fit for the food-loving perian and broadly accessible to readers, most of whom will have at least passing familiarity with the noted substances. Like most comparisons, however, the simile has more to unpack in it than comes across on a first reading, owing chiefly to its vehicle of butter.
For if it is the case that Bilbo is like butter--and it might be argued that he is in ways--then it must be wondered what cow yielded the milk from which he was churned and who did the churning. Easy answers within the milieu include Manwë and Ilúvatar, and Gandalf might well be thought to have had a hand in the cultivation, as well. Others include Bilbo's parents, and it may well be noted that the cow grazed upon the grass of the Great Smials, the quality of which comes out in the product of its milk. (The obvious out-of-milieu answer is, of course, Tolkien himself, or Tolkien's narrative persona, at least.)
As to the spreading, there is ultimately one answer: Sauron. It is the Ring that extends Bilbo's life, that lets him endure as long as he has by the time he makes the comment in the quote, and the Ring is an extension of Sauron, per the text. The argument could be made that the action of the simile--spreading too little over too much--is miserliness and parsimony, both of which are generally considered negative, therefore appropriate to attribute to the Dark Lord. So, too, does the image that arises of a knife pushing the butter along the bread; it portends violence, knives being knives, but it also foreshadows the ultimate defeat of Sauron, as the knives used to spread butter are generally dull, rounded, suitable for cutting only the softest of things. They are not of much use as weapons; their proposed violence is muted at best, apt for an evil destined to be beaten.
The simile both reveals some of the character of its speaker and offers a bit of subtle foreshadowing (though not a bit that comes as a surprise, given the expectations of genre in place at the time). Further interrogation might reveal yet more, of course, speaking perhaps to Tolkien's own ideologies or to some other commentary on the greater world. But even a brief look at the phrasing reveals that there is work to be done, reminding readers who are interested in taking that look that there is much to unpack in the simplest of notes and showing that entry into criticism is not so hard a thing as might be imagined.

20190817.0430

My daughter, the inestimable Ms. 8, will start school on Monday, 19 August. Her mother and I attended a meet-the-teacher and Kindergarten orientation to help prepare for it; the session was a good one, and I am pleased that we attended. We learned a lot, and some of it still seems to be processing. In a small way, it reminds me of what it was like to be a student, and I look at Ms. 8 with a bit more...I'm not really sure what...as I consider what she will start to deal with on Monday, what she will be facing for the next dozen years or more.
I've had some occasion to reflect on my school days recently. I have been reminded of how pre-Bilbo Bagginsian I have been for most of my life; I have never really been an exciting person, focused mostly on school and work and coming home between them and after. It has meant I've had little trouble, of course, and I appreciate that; things have been straitened enough without the costs of redressing trouble of one sort or another. But it has also meant there have been things I have missed and cannot reclaim, connections I have not made or have allowed to lapse that I have needed to develop and maintain.
How much of such distance Ms. 8 will have from things, I am not sure. I've noted, I believe, that she does not appear to have many of the same hangups that I did and still too much do. Even at the meet-the-teacher session, when she was clearly overstimulated and began to withdraw into herself, she talked with other children and made efforts to make herself pleasant. It seemed to work, at least to some extent. It would not have done so with me; I have never been able to conceal well what I feel, so that it has been obvious when I've been dissatisfied even when I've tried to demonstrate otherwise.
I look forward to her having an easier time, perhaps not in her coursework, but with her peer group than I did mine. (I did pretty well in class, far less so outside it.) I think she will get the better end of the bargain if she does so. But I will continue to love and support her, in any event. Ms. 8 is my beloved daughter; I cannot do otherwise, nor do I want to.

20190325.0430

Today, of course, marks the anniversary of the destruction of the One Ring and the fall of Sauron. Along with 22 September, it is one of the most important days in Tolkien fandom, being, among others, Tolkien Reading Day. There is part of me that laments not being able to do more to celebrate it than to make this note; I have to work today, and not only at my day job, so I cannot spend the day re-reading the Tolkienian works I have ready to hand, and I do not have the funds available to gather any more such for myself at this point. But there is also part of me that is reasonably at ease with not having to maintain the fervor of my earlier nerdiness anymore. I have done my bit of nerdiness, and I continue to do bits of nerdiness, but I am increasingly a casual fan of things, rather than the more...intensive fan that I have been. The intensity's a lot to maintain, and I do not have it in me to do that much anymore.
I do not think I have lost in the exchange, though. It is the case that I would like to be able still to immerse myself in the voracious consumption of new knowledge--not just about Tolkien, but about the many nerdinesses in which I have indulged and still, if to a lesser extent, indulge. (There remain many, which is probably part of the problem.) But I know that doing so is largely selfish; even if I do as I have done in the past and still do, and I take what I know and work to put what I learn from it out into the world as an article or somesuch thing, so that others might come to know more, I still keep more than I give back. And I take from my family and from other concerns in doing so; reading takes time, and while the reading is a thing I can do with Ms. 8, the writing that would follow is not something that admits of doing well while attending to my child. (The reverse is also true.) I do wake early in the day so that I have some time to do such things during which I know my family does not need me, and I spend that time as well as I can, but there is only so much I can do in so much time. I am not at a place where I can do more of it.
Still, what I get from being a family man more than a nerdy man--or from trying to be, since I may well not be at that point yet--is more than I lose. No, I cannot sit and indulge myself for hours on end. I can, however, indulge others, and, in the case of my daughter, I can watch her grow in no small part because I give her what I give her. And I can still share some of the nerdiness I purchased at no small cost with her. (I am fortunate, too, that her mother indulges my geekitude.) Perhaps she will not be so happy with it as I have been, but perhaps she will find it the source of comfort I did, and, if she does, it will be a way I can be closer to a person whom I love to excess.

20190116.0430

It has occurred to me that I am perhaps overly apt to bring up old pieces of writing I've done in this webspace, with the Skyward Sword piece I reference being perhaps the chief example. While I remain enough of a scholar to feel compelled to cite my sources (when I remember them; I do not write much in the way of formal essays here anymore, and keeping track of sources requires more apparatus than I usually put into play when I am typing into this webspace), I also know that harping on a single subject day after day does not do as much to endear me to readers as I might like to have happen. (You are few, O, readers, but beloved.) So if I keep bringing up old pieces of writing, if I continue to talk about the same topics, I run the risk of generating boredom--or more of such risk than had already been the case, since, as one erstwhile colleague put it, "reading is for suckers," and, as another I've known put it, "reading's for when you're old and wrinkly." And I know my readers are smooth-skinned and young, of course.
If I do tend to repeat myself, and I acknowledge I likely do, then it describes me as having a fairly consistent life. There is not necessarily anything wrong with such a life, to be sure; being able to be reasonably certain what I'll be doing next helps me to be able to do it well. Knowing it's coming, I can do something to prepare, and, being prepared, I can do a better job of things. But, yes, it is a bit of a rut, and I seem to wear it deeper with every pass, until the track that I have cut through the grass has become a ditch, perhaps a ravine or canyon--though that would assume far more power from my feet, and far more passes with them than I can claim to have made. And it is not without reason that I have been, not rebuked, but questioned about my general unwillingness to step outside the track I have worn for myself, the more so since matters are as they are with me. (Which is to say, reasonably good, though they could be better. But that last's true for most everybody.)
I am not complaining. I know better than to do so. But I am acknowledging that there is another area in which I might be said to need improvement. I have mentioned before (here and here, if not elsewhere, too) being like the pre-Bilbo Bagginses, and there are certainly in-milieu populations that would have seen them act otherwise (and did, else it'd be a different story), though there seems to be a broader expectation that they will continue to do as they are known to do. And I wonder if there is such an expectation of me, that I will do as I have done--and if there is, who has it, and am I in a position such that I can afford to disappoint them?

20190102.0430

I have still not decided upon an answer to the question of yesterday, of whether or not I will press ahead in this webspace as I have since 18 October 2017 and make a daily post in it. That I post today does not mean I am certain I will post tomorrow. I am inclined toward it, to be sure, since it is a developed habit at this point, and I am very much a creature of habit. It does not always work to my advantage to be so; I am still pre-Bilbo Bagginsian, and while there are advantages to reliability, to predictability, there are also drawbacks to being so. Some of them have been pointed out to me recently, and rather emphatically, by people for whom I care deeply. I do not know how to avoid the disadvantages while retaining the advantages; I do not know how to reap the benefit without paying the cost. I do not know yet that I can afford to keep paying it, so I do not know that I will maintain the habit of this webspace yet.
There are other habits I'd like to develop, though, or redevelop. I suppose they move in the direction of resolutions, though I announce them later than I ought, and I am not so committed to them as resolutions typically present themselves as demanding. In any event, they include me giving more time to practicing my horn; I have been working to that end recently, and I have been hearing better playing from myself as I have done so. I'll never make a living as a musician, I know, and I'll likely not do much to pull in extra money for my family that way, either, but I do enjoy having the horn in my hand again, and that enjoyment seems to be helping me enjoy other things, to be helping me to be a better person and therefore to be a better husband and father. I think I can continue to give it time and attention.
Another habit I'd like to redevelop is reading. Time was, I was rarely found without a book in hand. Anymore, I read a fair bit online--which is still reading, but in a medium that promotes a different kind of attention than reading from a printed page develops. I have found it harder to keep my attention on a single thing for an extended period, which was not the case for me earlier in my life. I miss being able to focus on things in such ways, and I know that being able to do so was a result of my spending so much time with my nose in a book as I did. Too, Ms. 8 will benefit from having the studious model to follow, and I am certainly interested in offering my daughter good models to follow. Oughtn't I to be? So there's that.
And, as part of offering better models for behavior for my daughter, who still does things she sees her parents do in a loving child's attempt to be like those she esteems, I need to be in the habit of getting out more. Yesterday, for example, my wife, Ms. 8, and I went to one of the local parks, where Ms. 8 got to ride on a bike she got in the past couple of weeks. Ms. 8's parents walked along behind, and while it was a bit chilly, it was also quite nice to do so. I, at least, felt better for the exercise, and I know that my wife valued the time together. Much of my time is spent inside and at a single station, and it tells on me; I think it always has, and I've noted being an indoorsman more than once. I don't think I'll ever be outdoorsy; I think I am too much embedded in things to change in such a way. But I can still make sure I get out and do things regularly with my family, making doing so a habit from which I think they and I will derive some benefit. And that, I definitely think good.

20181127.0430

In conversations with my wife over the long weekend just past, I had occasion to remark about my involvement with various intellectual properties. In my younger years, I spent quite a bit of time, money, and energy consuming such narrative milieus as the Star Trek and Star Wars universes, of Middle-earth, of Asimov's sprawling future history that now looks so quaint even though the clarity of writing remains in force, of Donaldson's chronicles of unbelief and their turgid prose (and I am sure that one shows in what I write more than I might want it to--for several reasons), of Hobb's Elderlings corpus that led to my master's thesis, of Legend of the Five Rings and of roleplaying games more generally. And I am aware that most or all of them have surpassed my ability to access them fully; they are surrounded by critical and fandom apparatuses that exceed me (in most cases; fandom is largely beyond me, though I have a handle on criticism of one of the properties I've listed, at least).
I am not sure how I feel about the matter. I've noted in other places that I'm glad to be free of the dick-wagging that accompanies so much community engagement with the intellectual properties I've engaged with and those similar to them. I've also noted that I miss being able to devote myself to them as I once did--even though I know that engagement is far harder now than when I was young, given the proliferation of nostalgia and the products that cater to it, as well as increased access through various media technologies. There are not enough hours in the day to attend to them all even if that is all that gets attention, and I am not in a position to be able to give myself fully over as I used to be able to do. I cannot afford to be so selfish.
I am also not sure anymore that I want to be. Aside from the simple matter--but important to the kind of little shit that I was and that many people still very much are--of a sex life (which I do not discount), family life is fulfilling in ways that fandom never was for me. To be fair, I've been lucky in my direct experience of fandom; the communities in which I participated were relatively supportive, but part of that support came only because I had a place enforced upon me, and my challenges to it were in the forms accepted by those communities. Those in which I am still engaged are far more casual and more broadly supportive--but, again, I know I am lucky in finding them. Each of us within them has horror stories of others that were...not, and they do not except the "official" fandoms, those associated most closely with or outright endorsed by the owners of the intellectual properties involved.*
My family, though, my wife and daughter, particularly, are far better for me to have than a place among the various fandoms. I am an expatriate of those fandoms no less than of academe, and I return to them as I may, but I do not think I will seek to emigrate from that smaller, greater nation in which I now dwell.

*I am aware, at least peripherally, of the challenges of fan-work and, indeed, of fandom itself, to ownership of intellectual properties in a moral and ethical sense, though not so much in a legal one. The latter seems to be the common understanding, though, and given the general audience I presume to address in this webspace, it is the one with which I am working in this piece.

20181022.0430

Shambling through its dance, the Stupid God laughs,
The braying wheezing along the winds without
Such signs of perfidy as would attract attention.
No curdled milk, nor cast calves, nor withered crops on bough and vine
Announce it. But that it is unmarked makes its evil more
Not less, and that it is unintended--
Because the Stupid God is unable to intend,
Even if its small-handed avatar is
Or the small-minded followers thereof
Who prove the Prince of Fantasists’ words
“To whom only the squalid sounds strong”--
Makes it not less perilous.

20170325.0515

Praise them with great praise whose work ended the days
Of the dark dominion of Sauron's wicked ways,
Gorthaur's cruelty quashed, Annatar's lies rephrased,
And a new age started! Praise them with great praise!

20170208.0519

One vote to rule them all, one vote to find them,
One vote to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
For it is not just a lidless eye that ways to evil sees,
But also white-haired complaisance that evil's ways ease
And pave the way for ignorance to spread across the land
So that more of the people fall into Stupid God's hand.
Who serve the citrus avatar long wrinkled and bitter made
Are getting the promotions for which they have paid,
And nothing seems to stop them, as of us is outlaid,
And no Mount Doom fires can be found. How will they be unmade?

20160805.0646

I brought out an old essay
To my students
And they liked it

They also pointed out
Problems with it
When I asked them
Which is rare

Someday
I may return to essay writing
In this place
But
To borrow from a movie
Since I am a
Man of the West
Today is not that day

I think it obvious

20160530.1111

With apologies to the Prince of Fantasists...

Out of the wind-swept plains to the Hill Country I am come
In this place I will abide, and my heir
Until the ending of the world
Or until I find a job in some other place
Whose worth is such that leaving again
This land where I was raised
Is worth the doing
For the securing of my heirs
The one who is and the others who may come
For so long as is given me to do
But I doubt that it will be sung
As it is to be written in Tengwar