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Nar · 09-30-2002, 08:48 AM

I'll be very interested to hear Child clarify this idea here or in a new topic, LMP, but meanwhile I'll share my own thoughts. I don't really know what you mean by 'Saxon', separate from 'Anglo' --I'd be interested to hear the sources from which you draw that idea. 'Uprooted from Germany and planted here' --interesting idea.

I tend to see something else in the idea of 'Englishness' --and I really don't know how much I'm projecting as a foreigner to such things! Probably a great deal! The model I would cite is the relations of the various conquerors of China, like the Mongols and so forth, to the Chinese-- wave of conquerors imposes new set of bosses, exhalts new tribe of people, but the culture and spirit and soul of the original residents seeps up around each new set of invaders, permeating the invaders and changing them in a way that is impossible to detect or separate out because it is seamlessly and smoothly spread throughout the newcomers. They have drunk it in and it is in them now. All we know of English history back to the dimmest of dim times is successive conquering tribes, including Normans, Danes, Angles and Saxons, Celts, so forth. Looking to any one tribe because they're very early and we know very little feels dangerous to me.

Of course, everything about this excercise is dangerous and highly subjective. Anyone engaging the question can't help but fall into projection-- there's so little to go on, it's not unlike using a spark of light in a crystal or prayer beads or breathing as a focus for contemplation-- whatever we do, we're in the end going to find out most about our innmost hopes, fears and intuitions about the world.

That said, my own take is that the rising, seeping quality of the land and living spirit that Tolkien was addressing or tapping into with Bombadil and Goldberry is not tribal in any way we could detect, is not based in any culture of conquest or sacrifice to something-or-other, is based on quite another way of forming an identity. If you name a people/tribe/ancestry, you've lost the sense I'm getting at, and are talking about a different thing. If the relation to nature is one of exhortation through ritual, again, this is a different thing. I'm speaking purely though a personal intuition that is vibrated by reading the Tom Bombadil and Goldberry sections, and also by certain places in the woods behind my house, and by certain aspects of people I've met. I'm not talking about superstition, but about funtioning systems on the nature-human cusp. This is why I used the word hedgerow-- but what do I know about that? Borderlands might be a better word.

Letting go of a sentimental idea of Englishness all too easy for an American like me to fall into, I could discuss the borders I maintain between the clearing around my house and the buses, heaped logs, compost and critters beyond, or the sense of awe I feel deeper into the forest, when I sense a pattern of activity in a clearing or across of brook without being able to articulate to myself what it is.

I can feel the dangerousness in some places, and part of that comes from seeing the fox scat with fur in it and knowing this is a good site for a den and there's probably one near, but part of it is distributed through half-guessed ideas about the lay of the land and the pattern of growth --whether a living thing here in this clearing could see something coming or would that something be hidden --wild brambles growing tight over a clear-cutting scar --what the sheared stumps mean --how those trees fell and what that suggests --it all adds up to more than the sum of its parts. When my thoughts as someone walking in the woods drift over into possibilities: chipmunk? fox that might stalk her? surveyor that passed through and left those oh so dangerous plastic ties on the treetrunks? developer? the trees that fell, and the bushes that grow so tightly and eagerly over them? the trees that stand? the sound of water nearby? the curve of the hill settling downward? I reach the point where it seems as if it's not entirely me thinking anymore, and that's the best way I can explain it.

09-30-2002, 08:48 AM	#24
Nar Wight Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 228	I'll be very interested to hear Child clarify this idea here or in a new topic, LMP, but meanwhile I'll share my own thoughts. I don't really know what you mean by 'Saxon', separate from 'Anglo' --I'd be interested to hear the sources from which you draw that idea. 'Uprooted from Germany and planted here' --interesting idea. I tend to see something else in the idea of 'Englishness' --and I really don't know how much I'm projecting as a foreigner to such things! Probably a great deal! The model I would cite is the relations of the various conquerors of China, like the Mongols and so forth, to the Chinese-- wave of conquerors imposes new set of bosses, exhalts new tribe of people, but the culture and spirit and soul of the original residents seeps up around each new set of invaders, permeating the invaders and changing them in a way that is impossible to detect or separate out because it is seamlessly and smoothly spread throughout the newcomers. They have drunk it in and it is in them now. All we know of English history back to the dimmest of dim times is successive conquering tribes, including Normans, Danes, Angles and Saxons, Celts, so forth. Looking to any one tribe because they're very early and we know very little feels dangerous to me. Of course, everything about this excercise is dangerous and highly subjective. Anyone engaging the question can't help but fall into projection-- there's so little to go on, it's not unlike using a spark of light in a crystal or prayer beads or breathing as a focus for contemplation-- whatever we do, we're in the end going to find out most about our innmost hopes, fears and intuitions about the world. That said, my own take is that the rising, seeping quality of the land and living spirit that Tolkien was addressing or tapping into with Bombadil and Goldberry is not tribal in any way we could detect, is not based in any culture of conquest or sacrifice to something-or-other, is based on quite another way of forming an identity. If you name a people/tribe/ancestry, you've lost the sense I'm getting at, and are talking about a different thing. If the relation to nature is one of exhortation through ritual, again, this is a different thing. I'm speaking purely though a personal intuition that is vibrated by reading the Tom Bombadil and Goldberry sections, and also by certain places in the woods behind my house, and by certain aspects of people I've met. I'm not talking about superstition, but about funtioning systems on the nature-human cusp. This is why I used the word hedgerow-- but what do I know about that? Borderlands might be a better word. Letting go of a sentimental idea of Englishness all too easy for an American like me to fall into, I could discuss the borders I maintain between the clearing around my house and the buses, heaped logs, compost and critters beyond, or the sense of awe I feel deeper into the forest, when I sense a pattern of activity in a clearing or across of brook without being able to articulate to myself what it is. I can feel the dangerousness in some places, and part of that comes from seeing the fox scat with fur in it and knowing this is a good site for a den and there's probably one near, but part of it is distributed through half-guessed ideas about the lay of the land and the pattern of growth --whether a living thing here in this clearing could see something coming or would that something be hidden --wild brambles growing tight over a clear-cutting scar --what the sheared stumps mean --how those trees fell and what that suggests --it all adds up to more than the sum of its parts. When my thoughts as someone walking in the woods drift over into possibilities: chipmunk? fox that might stalk her? surveyor that passed through and left those oh so dangerous plastic ties on the treetrunks? developer? the trees that fell, and the bushes that grow so tightly and eagerly over them? the trees that stand? the sound of water nearby? the curve of the hill settling downward? I reach the point where it seems as if it's not entirely me thinking anymore, and that's the best way I can explain it.