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Sunday, June 01, 2014

Connexion

 Running Through The Parliament of Front Doors



JRR Tolkien in a letter to Arthur Greaves from 1930:
“ ... in the days when a family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations ...  that perhaps was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the wood – they were not mistaken for there was in a sense real (not metaphorical) connections between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air and later corn, and later still bread, really was in them. We of course who live on a standardized international diet…are artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours.”
 quoted in Rod Dreher, The American Conservative

Over Memorial Day weekend, my nephew's fiancee and I had spoke briefly about running outdoors, and how over time there is established some sympathetic connection ("connexion" to Tolkien) of which we are very aware, but cannot be encapsulated into words and descriptions.
It must be lived.

We spoke briefly for that very reason that there is little to be said. We only recognize it and wonder how others feel about things, such as gardeners who spend their entire days in the open nurturing growth in the spring and summer and making preparations in the fall for the dead of winter.

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