Like most of you, I stumbled into faerie, following some half-heard pipe over a half-seen hill.
Through the wood-shade, across the voices of a stream. Lay back on grass there, with tall blooming lace and the green perfume of a thousand stems. Dangled my fingers in the water there, among the pebbles and the flitting guppies. Made a house for a grasshopper in my hands, felt the scratch of his feet on my palm. Raced through its pasture. Swung from the branches of a tree.
I come back because the world of the city of men is more blurry. It's more blurry here, the beauty harder to find, winking out between eyelashes. And I need the keen edge of faerie to find it. Or the city-world becomes, for me, too dull for words. Too void of sensation, that layer of feeling, like a cocoon of forgetting.
That's why.
Postscript. This in reply to a question by Terri Windling: "What brought us here to the numinous landscape of Faerie, and why do we stay?" See the conversation at Myth & Moor: The Desire for Dragons
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Lovely, John. I think many can relate to this sentiment, nature leading into Faerie and vice versa,fantasy leading us back into nature.
ReplyDeleteThanks very much! Ah yes, nature ...
DeleteJohn, I ADORE this.
ReplyDeleteThis is so rich, so full of wonderful phrases and imagery and meaning, I can't tell you how much I love it - and it perfectly, perfectly expresses my own thoughts and sentiment.
It's beautiful. Thank you so much. A fantastic piece of writing.
Austin, I'm humbled! Thanks. So good to know I struck a chord here.
Delete"Or the city-world becomes, for me, too dull for words. Too void of sensation, that layer of feeling, like a cocoon of forgetting."
ReplyDeleteThis explains perfectly why I felt like I was losing my mind and soul when I lived in the middle of downtown LA for nearly two years. The city-world was dull at first... and then it became something treacherous and severe. Every cell of my body cried out for trees, for green, for that "keen edge". I grew to hate the city, and it wasn't the city's fault-- I'd just been away from my homeland for too long.
Thank you for your "sauce".
I felt the same way in Boston. Lovely town, so much to do ... why am I not happier here? Missed the stars, I guess.
DeleteThanks for sharing that.
Your final sentence: exactly, I think perhaps we have to switch off to a certain extent in an urban environment in order to cope, well I do anyway. You say so much with so few words, thank you!
ReplyDelete"Switching off" is a good way to put that - and a bit sad, even if it is necessary.
DeleteI'm fortunate that I live in an almost rural small town, with hiking and woods only a short distance away.
Thanks for stopping in.
i agree with Austin....absolutely gorgeous imagery, i was instantly transported. i could hear the stream and feel the warm sun on my face...
ReplyDelete*sigh*
yes...the dull outlines of the busy-world are nothing to the high-definition clarity of the wild places....
Very kind of you to say, mel. "high-definition clarity of the wild places ..." Well said!
DeleteFood for the soul, John. Though the wild underlies everything, even the most concreted behemoths of human creation, its voice is harder to hear through the roar. Whereas a the small green life of a grasshopper in your hand zips you there instantaneously!
ReplyDeleteThanks very much, Carmine. I hadn't noticed that side of it - the "small green life" indeed!
DeleteLike faerie, too, I remember I was a little unsure of that green hopper too. Touching the unknown.
Beautiful answer, thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Christie.
DeleteI like how tactile your description is here. I can feel that grasshopper and imagine those guppies darting away. And always it is so important to emphasize the 'half-heard-ness' of that pipe - that summons flitting in and out of audible perception. Odd how just reading about it I can almost hear it again...
ReplyDeleteThank you, Edward! I'm an intensely intuitive person, but nature (thanks to playing outdoors so much as a child) touches me vividly.
DeleteSo nice to know I'm not the only one who's half-heard that pipe.