There and Back Again

This was originally posted on another website I created but never did finish. The original entry date is July 31, 2002. I thought I’d share it here. Spoilers ahead! Read at your own risk.

The countdown clock reveals that I have 5 more days to wait for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring to finally hit DVD Wonderland. I can hardly wait. Last year, when the movie came out I dismissed the movie as another highly commercialized movie attempt that wont translate to anything. Ironically though, I was totally sucked into the Harry Potter mania at that time which you’d all agree, was a bigger commercial magnet than New Line’s December 2001 release. Then I saw Jackson’s film, and saw it again, then again and then again and I fell in love with it. I fell in love with Gandalf and wished I could find a real-life Legolas or that I had someone like Aragorn or friends like the hobbits to carry me through all the challenges I have to face. I was sure it was going to win the biggest Oscar award available and was devastated when it didn’t. We all know it should have been last year’s Best Picture. (Believe it or not, some of us still think A Beautiful Mind was anything but beautiful.)

A few weeks after my third viewing of the film, I picked up the book and started to read. I didn’t stop until I finished it. I can’t believe it took me all this time to learn the existence of such a literature classic. Now let me explain, in the country where I grew up very few, I think, knew the wizard/elf/hobbit-concocting and language-creating genius that is J.R.R. Tolkien. Unlike in some US schools, his great book was never a required read at our universities back home. Hardly an excuse but that’s my excuse. Anyway, the book was just amazing and although the movie was just as marvelous, its should not be a substitute for the text version. Anyone who loved the movie should read the book and you won’t be sorry. (Besides you need something to help curb the curiosity before Two Towers hit the theaters.) Anyone who’s read the book should go see the movie. They’ve changed some things here and there but it’s still true to the book. It wasn’t modified the way John Nash’s life story was altered in A Beautiful Mind.

I read Lord of the Rings in a week and formed a unique attachment to the characters, from Frodo to Treebird. I identified myself with a few of the characters and couldn’t decide who my favorite character was. I love Gandalf because he was brave and wise (and played by the wonderful Sir Ian McKellen) while Boromir symbolized all the human frailties, as I know it. Frailties that I too, suffer from. Frodo was an inspiration because he triumphed over his adversities. And Samwise Gamgee is the best friend everyone wishes for or wishes to be. In the end, he was my most favorite. He was the one who moved me to tears.

I was reading the last few pages of the book on board American Airlines. I was heading home to San Francisco from a lazy vacation in San Diego and throughout my weeklong vacation, I did nothing but relax, swim and read Tolkien. When I got to the part where the remaining fellowship was finally headed home, I was headed home too. As the plane took off, I was reading the part where Frodo and Samwise travel for the last time to see Bilbo. Unbeknownst to Samwise, Frodo has made arrangements to sail away towards the sunset with Gandlalf, Bilbo and company. Although he has a family waiting for him, Samwise begs Frodo to take him along and Frodo tells him, “Do not be sad…You cannot be always torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do.”

If I weren’t in the airplane, I would have bawled like I did just a few weeks ago when I re-read that chapter in the privacy of my room. Very few passages in a book ever move me and this is one of them. It has so moved me I would cry everytime I read it, or even remember it. When I die, I want my family and friends to read this chapter of the book during my funeral. It’s the best way to say goodbye…

‘Til next time.