How, I don't know, but there is a world that is soon going to end. It has carried me for some time. It brought me out of the world I was having trouble accepting into a world where magic and love and danger and triumph walk with a gigantic gate - blowing away hearts and minds with the wind of their stride. The work grew into me as I grew with it. It's Western Literature at some of its finest. I can feel the characters and settings and conversations, throbbing on my eyes and in my chest like recalling an old memory. It's that vivid; that engrossing. As usual, ironically, I was told over and over to read them, "No." - something about me just doesn't lend myself easily to recommendations - though as I have matured, I find certain people's suggestions taken more comfortably.
As a new semester has me in new and full time classes, I am placed amongst an English class which has been a pretty good time - though I often feel the need for a time turner. The English is academic, but I finally understand wanting to be able to write. Until now this feeling eluded me, I had no idea how one could not write; when the emotions and ideas take hold of me and tear me apart, sometimes in joy, sometimes in agony - ink pours where blood should; and words and paragraphs and stories and allegory and aphorisms and poetry form like puddles of a wasted self, suddenly renewed, suddenly emboldened.
Recognizing the artistry in this lengthy body of work juxtaposed against my own, and with my general place in maturation, I wish to know how to form the ink I spill into art. To not just write because I'm dying or living, or to write as dying and living, but to die and live, and translate the experience so utterly staggeringly. I feel a daunting presence, lost for some time, of deep desire; I feel the will raising it's head, breathing more consciously that it previously has.
Ready to end this long road, knowing I'm coming to a place in the last book where soon I won't be able to stop till the tears have fallen and my spirituality renewed and, and what else I don't know...but I'm nervous - in any event, with this in mind, I find myself reminiscing over my time here, in the world Muggles aren't readily aware of- I think of a range of individuals; in no order they rise like members of an old life - from Professor Sprout to Dean Thomas, to Harry, to Fleur, to Bill, to Ginny when she couldn't speak around Harry, to Sirius, Dobby (sigh), Lupin, Filch, James & Lily, Albus...etc. etc. etc. I see them as a memory, so vivid I can remember their voices and how they grew in height and their hair and the questions I had/have about their personal lives - I can almost smell them walking by, or hear the fire in the Gryffindor common room, hear the crack of disapparition and then understand what follows that crack - the rubber tubing, the suffocation, the release during apparition. I hear parseltongue, I hear the song of the Pheonix beautifying my sadness, the cold wind to Hogsmead, the thick dust in the Shrieking Shack, etc. etc. etc. etc....all good books are like this. Certain memories even ignite the fear I felt at the time - like a literal PTSD.
"The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming."
Year's One through Four are very different than Year's Five through Seven. Year Seven almost stands by itself, else is part of Year Six. The ending of Year Four is when everything switches. Year seven is close to done, tears have been shed and nerves have been rattled. It's not melodramatic, it's good writing. This is the slightest bow to a series that I can't express enough about - beyond the writing - for what it did for me, for the time in my life it was with me; such a time of evolution. But God has a funny way of being a part of our lives, in all things, and giving things to us which He knows suit our tastes - teaching us as we go; like medicine in peanut butter to a dog - but obviously more refined. I really hope people are able to give themselves this gift. To allow themselves to sink into the series and let the world become part of their memory; I am glad I was supported to traverse it (eventually I began chasing it) - I'm glad for it awakens an incredible part of our spirits and so our overall beings - and it's an incredibly important part. It lights a fire I won't tell you about, but it's an ancient magic one can only learn about themselves before giving to others.
Well done! I felt even as I read this I was transcended to a place not of this world, the place of magic you talk about in the text. I am glad I stumbled back to your blog and I look forward to reading more in the future.
ReplyDeleteThanks Caroline! Did you ever read these books? They're good. Replete with Christian allegory - though that is possibly a biased lens I am looking through.
ReplyDeleteand did you catch the message embedded in the paragraphs? No one seems to have seen it!
ReplyDeleteI've never read the Potter books, though I've enjoyed the films and thought they were well-crafted and fertile adventures that made me feel a little like I did the first couple times I read Tom Sawyer and other Mark Twain novels, which is to say, like a child entering a world where almost anything is possible. Your description also reminds me of the way I felt when I watched the Matrix and later the philosophical commentary on the film. A must watch, especially for those who still hold the gift of believing in the spiritual realm. It reminds me of the experience I've had many times of nearing the end of an excellent book that produced something seemingly transcendent in me. A piece of writing so majestic, so wholly, engrossingly beautiful, that it pains you to think about it ending and not being able to go back and ever experience it quite the same way again. As though the words were actually unique lives themselves. As it happens, I am reading such a book now, though it is not a work of fiction.
ReplyDeleteAnd lastly, it makes me long for the more interesting world of the classroom and library, where one was not just encouraged, but required, to interact with ideas and thinkers.