Long Under Tree

[pameladean]

"I feel like Legolas," I said to Eric. We were sitting, mostly obscured by our luggage, on the air train at the San Francisco Airport, travelling from the rental car center to the terminal where I would catch my plane back to Minneapolis. Eric looked receptive but not immediately comprehending. "Remember what Galadriel says to him in Lorien?" I did not perfectly recall it myself at the time and had to paraphrase, but it came back to me on the plane. As a lot of you are itching to tell me, Galadriel does not say this verse to Legolas in Lorien. She sends it by Gandalf after his transformation into Gandalf the White, and he says it to Legolas in Fangorn Forest. I have checked the text to be sure, and also for punctuation. This is what she said, and I am quite sure that a number of you can recite it right along with me:

"Legolas Greenleaf, long under tree
In joy thou hast lived. Beware of the Sea!
If thou hearest the cry of the gulls on the shore
Thy heart will then rest in the forest no more."

Of course, I don't really feel like Legolas. But for that piercing moment, leaving the ocean and going back, far back into the middle of a huge continent, I did feel so. I did not expect to fall in love with California. I expected to love it because Eric loved it, but not on my own account. In September I told him it was too beautiful, it was too much, it was not restful; I provided a poetic rendition of "It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." But I would.

Luckily, I am polyamorous and able to love two places. Minnesota presented a very fretful face to me when I returned, the worst February doldrums. But today I see the huge sky, the lovely light, the hidden life under the cold, waiting for the mad extravagance of spring.

But, alas, nobody is marrying gay couples at City Hall; we are as yet too barbarous for that.

Pamela

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Luckily, I am polyamorous and able to love two places.

*smile*

Would that we all had buckets of money - or teleporters - and could manage to be in all the places that we love, if not at the same time, at least whenever we feel the pull.

Mind you, I think dual homes in Minnesota and California would be a nearly perfect example of "the best of both worlds."

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

After a week and a half spent on the ocean Iliterally on: in a boat) at Christmas, I not only had a hard time leaving it to come back to the desert I live in, I was convinced for a week that I could never live more than a few hours away from it. That's a bit silly, considering I could fly to one coast or another from any part of the US in less than the five hours it takes me to drive there now.

[arkuat]

Well, I still miss the cardinals and the lilacs and the deciduous forests too. I grew up in the Midwest and the Twin Cities and surrounding countryside has certainly become my favorite place in the Midwest.

[pameladean]

That countryside is my first love, too. But just now I am infatuated with California, and I trust that will grow into something deeper. It's been known to happen!

Pamela

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

When we lived there, in the Bay Area, I would make the boys take me to the shore every once in awhile. I would position myself so I couldn't see any of the cliffs or the hills or anything like that, and I would just look and look out at the flats of the sea. It was as close to a prairie as we could get without driving up to Sacramento, and my prairie-girl heart mistrusted the hills. But the ocean was all right. The ocean was safe.

And of course here we live where there are still hills, before it flattens out away from the river. But we're at the top, and I can always see flats from the hills. I can see the skyline not too far from our house. So my heart is...not quiet. I was going to say quiet, but I am internally no older than 12, so it's more of a happy bounce, where I am constantly poking the boys and pointing out, "Look! There's our city!" And my other love, the real prairies with no trees at all and no lakes and shallow, flat rivers: that waits for occasional visits. Patiently, it seems.

[pameladean]

I went to graduate school at SUNY-Binghamton, in upstate New York, and I hated the hills there. The weather sneaked over them at you. They made the sky small. I couldn't stand it. But I didn't feel that way in the Bay Area. (I might in Sacramento; I haven't been there.)

Pamela

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sacramento is the opposite, is what I meant. Sacramento is my archetype of cities that cannot sneak up on you. There it is, coming in from the Bay Area on I-80, clear for miles and miles with just flatness leading up to it. When we first lived in the area, I was doing nuclear physics at UC-Davis, which is right down the road from Sacramento about 10 miles. Prairie was less of a problem for me then than later.

Of course, everything else was more of a problem, so once again, win some, lose some, I guess.

[pameladean]

Ooops, sorry. Coffee failure, I guess.

I don't know why I didn't hate the Bay Area the way I hated upstate New York, but I surely did not. I would, though, as arkuat says, miss things in Minnesota should I leave, not to mention the inconvenient fact that almost all of the people I love are here.

Pamela

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I miss the sea the way I miss people. Worse, actually, because does it call, does it write, does it email?

[pameladean]

Never! Out of sight, out of mind, that's the sea.

Redwoods aren't any better, let me tell you.

Pamela

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

It sends you rain; it's just that you speak different dialects of water.

[lcohen]

this feels so familiar in so many ways. but also, i love reading what you write.