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