Fëanor
Hey!
Here's a different one for you.
Most of what I share on this website is -- well, polished gems.
I mean, you may not like them -- I like some strange stones, strange shapes, and we might argue about their value, -- but they do represent the application of effort to embody a vision, and the fulfillment of that effort.
Finished products, one might call them, if one wants to track the stain of the marketplace onto the floor of the temple.
I think of Fëanor from Tolkien's Silmarillion -- man, where's the book when you need it? Didn't bring that one with me in the move.
His name meant spirit of fire. He was the greatest genius, and the greatest craftsman, of his age, if prideful -- a figure of tragedy, font of future woes for many generations of his people, if also the subject of many songs.
Anyway, grab my ankle before I float off in a prosodic rhapsody -- I liked Tolkien a lot, for a long time.
Fëanor made the silmarils, three jewels of peerless craftsmanship, which housed in them eternally the mingled light of the trees of the sun and the moon, you might call them, before ever there was a Sun and Moon as we know them, and before the stain of sin had entered paradise.
I'm not saying this writing is like that.
What I'm saying is, Fëanor's fiery nature was such that he was restlessly creative, making one thing after another; in his treasury or workshop would be many half-finished works -- begun, then set aside for another (or greater) work.
That's what these are -- just a couple nice little ideas I tripped over and started carving and polishing before moving on.
They're from when I was writing essays for the Spring Forest Qigong newsletter. I was trying to come up with an introduction for an essay.
07 April 2022
There’s a saying – north, south, east, west, the sea always tastes of salt.
Have you heard of a wine-tasting before? Well, this is a salt-tasting.
So pull up a chair, take out your spoon, and don’t listen to those stories you’ve heard – none of this sea-water is bad for you, though it might make your head spin.
What does that mean?
Don’t worry about it.
In the Wild West, in Tombstone, you had to give up your gun when you rode into town – it was the law.
If you want to sit at this table, you have to check your logic at the door – where we’re going, that’s the law. We’re going to make some associative leaps that logic has no legs for.
