Come back to me! Come back to me! and say my land is best!

Last year -- nearly a year ago -- while I was rereading The Lord of the Rings, I posted the song about the Entwives, because I liked it and was relieved to find that not all of the songs were a chore to wade through. I had the special edition DVD of The Two Towers playing in the background while I was working on my painting, and I heard Treebeard's breathy exhalations and inhalations of those words, and I liked it. Especially the flat way he says "best."

I wanted to stick that lyric into my writing today, but I knew that I had already included it somewhere, so I went back through my previous entries to see what I had said. I really hadn't said much about it. Just that it was romantic and that I liked it.

I also wrote this nearly a year ago:

I spent some time looking for lost things today. No luck. How is it that what is most precious to you ends up among the bits and pieces scattered to the winds whose trace -- once faint -- is now absent even from memory. I almost wish I could forget the things altogether. Forgetting where they are is one thing. But remembering THAT they are only leads to the despair of longing and an endless dance of turning up everything else I never meant to find.

And what's unusual is that I sort of remember writing it, but when I reread it, it was new. And I could appreciate the lyric for the lyric's sake. What I mean is, I could hear a melody in the words. The rhythm of them. And I thought, That's nice. If I correctly remember what I was so frantically looking for, I think I can also triumphantly announce that I eventually found it. Only it was many months later and long after I'd given up caring whether it still existed or not. I suppose that is always the way of things.

Groundhog Day was on the t.v. today. I love and hate that movie. I think it's great, and I adore Bill Murray, but it is also so effective in commuting his despair to me that I am prone to want to drop a toaster in my own bath before I make it to the happy end. It's such a simple story. But it has so many metaphoric truths in it, you have to ask yourself whether it is lifted from the pages of mythology or ancient literature. But I don't know why you have to ask yourself that. That's like saying that no one still living is capable of writing something with meaning. Just because things are old does not make them better. Even wine turns to vinegar if you leave it for long enough.

As I was trying to complete THIS post, I started looking at other journal entries of the past, and I guess I shouldn't have done that today. Not today. When I am vulnerable and soft. When I can catch my reflection and see that a smile would not be possible. Not today. All that I get from doing that today is a reminder that today is the fruition of all the many yesterdays, during which I made so many of the wrong choices and took so many of the wrong turns. Today is where you get when you did everything just like me. And that means it's all my fault. And that makes me angry but with no one to shake my fist at. Which reminds me a of a cute tee shirt I saw yesterday at Happy Six. It read: "all stressed out and no one to choke." I almost bought it. Anyway, I suppose that's what looking at the past gets you.