There and Back Again

Disposition: So-so
Listening: Michael Buble
Reading: The Last Days
Watching: American Idol
Obsessing: Karl Urban and Sean Bean
Pondering: Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen. (Samuel Johnson)

I spent the entire afternoon of Thursday reading the final chapters of Lord of the Rings (by JRR Tolkien). I also spent part of the afternoon sniffing and sobbing every so often. Two years after reading the book for the first time, I still cry over it. I haven’t had a good cry in a long while and this was just right. It felt good to cry over something as trivial as a good book.

I took Thursday off to take my dad to his eye surgery. I dropped him and mom off at the doctor’s office around 12:15 p.m. and I headed back home. I don’t like waiting in clinics so we all agreed they would just call me when it’s time to pick them up. When I got home, I didn’t really know what to do. I had the whole house to myself for about 2 hours or so. The reclining chairs that I bought for my parents as Christmas presents last year, with chenille throws lazily drawn over them, were beckoning me to sit down, stretch and cozy up. But I didn’t want to sleep cause I might miss mom’s call and I didn’t want to surf the net either, lest I would end up working and cheat myself off a vacation that I claimed in my timecard. So I grabbed my paperback copy of the third chapter, Return of the King and tackled the 8 or so remaining chapters of Book Six starting with Sam, Frodo and the Land of Shadows. In between chapters and bouts of tears, I went to pick up my mom and dad. And without missing a beat, I went right back into reading once I got them settled in. When finally, Gandalf says goodbye to the hobbits, Frodo sails away to the Grey Havens and Sam sits down to dinner with his wife and kids, it was 7 PM and I was done crying and I once again found myself pondering the meaning of Tolkien’s book.

Reading Lord of the Rings is such an experience. Every character is special, every chapter memorable. Every description of every time and place is so vivid as if I too, was walking in Middle Earth. Very few books touch and move me the way this one does and I’m glad for having discovered it, thanks to Peter Jackson and his movies. I will pick it up again and start the journey in December. Like Christopher Lee, I might just try and read this book every year. Kind of like an annual pilgrimage to Middle Earth to visit with old friends.

SIDE NOTES: Thank you, thank you to Foggy Days for the new layout. I had fun doing it… The Laci Peterson case is literally in my backyard! The trial started today and the whole city of Redwood is filled with cameras, reporters, photographers. Worst of all, it’s raining bad so the crew’s loitering in our office lobby…CHECK OUT the new Recruiter’s Lair. New entries in the next few days…