Dreaming of the Home Where I’ve Never Lived…
So I’ve just finished reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. And, despite the (unpromising) first three hundred (!) pages, I ended by really liking it a lot. Why? Because of how it shows the physical world hanging like a curtain in front of the spiritual or “magical” world, and versa vice. Because of how it shows the language in nature– in rocks and trees and skies and water– and how man spends so much of his life ignoring it.
There’s something in it that appeals. And it’s not just the idea of magic. I know I’ve said this before, but I believe that the reason stories like JS&MN, with their emphasis on the connection between humans and nature, appeal to many of us so much is that they vaguely resemble what the natural order of things was meant to be, and what things once looked like.
Well, there’s this longing inside of me. (No, that’s not new by any stretch, but me writing about it is at least a little bit new. Fresher at any rate than the man-and-nature-are-one-and-all-things-are-connected spiel. My fascination with connectedness is well documented on this Vox.) It’s taken on new urgency now, though; an urgency that I haven’t felt since college choked it down deep inside. An urgency I haven’t felt since high school, when I just felt that the ordinary world around me was the most boring thing I’d ever come across and that I didn’t belong in it and never would. I’m beginning to feel that way again.
Well, maybe to say that the urgency wasn’t there in college isn’t entirely accurate. It was there, as in me trying to escape things; but I just wanted to work in the inner city or become a missionary. I had forgotten. I had forgotten that there is beauty elsewhere than just in our ability to heal and love. The dreamer had forgotten to sleep.
Lately, the dreamer has returned to me. The visionary, who sees things where nobody else sees them. The listener, who hears things where no one else hears them.
So here’s to falling back asleep.
Dream on…
November 14th, 2006 at 10:34 am
Good to hear, Mel. Make sure you keep sharing what you see or looking for new ways to do that. You’ve had some very worthwhile stuff here in that past months or however long we’ve all been hanging around here.
November 15th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
i gave up the book after the first 200something pages. you sparked an interest in picking it back up.. thx!