There and Back Again

Disposition: Sad
Listening: Romance of the Violin (Joshua Bell)
Reading: Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Watching: Ebert and Roeper
Obsessing: Karl Urban
Pondering: Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. (Mark Twain)

I have had many vacations where I don’t want the free days and the fun times to end but I’ve never had difficulty ending the vacation and parting with it than I do now. Usually, I’d have no problems getting back into my daily routine of waking up early, deciding what to wear to work, driving the long Highway 280 drive and dealing with the headache and challenges of work. But this time around it’s different. I think my soul is still in Las Vegas, roaming around the casinos, jamming at Keith Urban’s concert that ended a week ago. Or perhaps it still at the Metreon Theater in San Francisco, waiting for the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King midnight showing that happened a few nights ago, crying and cheering in the dark theater for Frodo and the Fellowship. I long, constantly, to be there again and not back where I am now. For the first time, in a long while, I wish I didn’t have to go to work tomorrow. I wish my vacation didn’t have to end…

And then, I still don’t know how to put in writing my thoughts and feelings on Return of the King. I have seen it twice now and yet I still can’t write something moving to commemorate the experience. There’s too much to gush about, too many memorable scenes to point out. Memorable were Gandalf’s ride through Minas Tirith with Pippin, Eowyn’s battle with the Nazgul, Gollum’s monologue, Frodo and Shelob, Eomer shooting a bulls eye (and all other other Eomer scenes, for that matter), the epic battle at Pelennor Fields, and of course the return to the Shire and the ship to Grey Haven. I was moved to tears at many points in the movie, none more than when brave Samwise Gamgee utters to Frodo, “I can’t carry it (the ring) for you Mr. Frodo, but I can carry you!” Samwise’s loyalty, friendship and courage always moves me to tears. And when Frodo says to Sam, “…you cannot always be 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,” I thought my heart would burst out of my mouth. To hear my favorite line from the book - and all-time favorite quote - come to life in the movie was poignant. It was a fitting end to the movie and to the journey…

The Lord of the Rings trilogy has finally reached its end and tomorrow I go back to my routine life. Perhaps its the combination of these two endings that is making the return to work so miserably difficult that not even Christmas next week can console my weary self.

There and back again. Back to the old life, indeed.