[mark12_30]

When (as a child) I stepped out of the warm dry house, into a compelling spring breeze, onto dewy grass, and fresh air, and had a wild desire rise up inside of me that I could not explain, but was so full of longing I did not know what to do, I wished I knew how to dance... somehow...

in later years, I found things that resonated and I said, "THAT'S IT!" for only a moment. A glimpse. And those things were varied, like The Highland Fling, or a wild reel, or a song from the Highlands, or a far-off glimpse of mountains. A glimpse (from the highway) of a green hill, dotted with Cedar trees, reminded me somehow of the Shire, and caught my breath. There was a wildness in it, an untamed... something, pulling me and compelling me; a hope; a glimpse; a scent of beauty. ...The rising sun in the woods in my own back yard. ...Crocuses in the grass. Hurricane Ridge, Washington State. A moment of three- or four-part harmony.

When I read Tolkien, I found that Frodo lived there. Bilbo walked there. And the golden enchantment flowed, not from them, but from their sudden SEEING of what was already (forever?) there, that they had not seen before. Rivendell enchantments are about Frodo seeing through things and beyond things and into things. Faery doesn't make those things; it just lets you see them.

I think Faery happens when we see the beauties that were there all the time, but we did not see, that God put there for us to find, hoping that in them we would be called to His beauty. It is supernatural, ethereal, and so we explain it in stories, try to replay it somehow, write up the history-- just the facts!-- and then we wonder where the wonder went. Like davem's Aurthur... robbed of his mystery, what's the point?

Death, embalming, fascination with burial, coarse humanity, dry desert, vain imaginations, self-serving aspirations, power trips, and the fantastic quibbling of empowered arrogance has very rarely (perhaps never) escorted me into a profound sense of invisible beauty made visible.

(EDIT: Egypt isn't Faerie for me, any more than Numenor is Faerie. In fact, Tolkien used it as a direct contrast. And I think he was right.)

Go back to Lorien, and slowly reread Cerin Amroth, and touch the trees with Frodo. Then, early when the air is fresh, go take a good look at a tree you see every day. Was the tree somehow changed? Did you see something in it you never quite noticed before?

I agree with lmp. It's different near the Shire.