Like the other Great Rings of Power, [the One Ring] would extend the lifespan of its
owner indefinitely, but that person...would not grow
or obtain more life, but would merely continue, until every minute was
an unbearable weariness.
The more I read about Tolkien's mythology, the more I find it such a remarkable way of looking at things. Although we are not Valar nor Maiar, I find the idea that we have within us a native strength (or power) which can be spent to our fortune or peril an interesting one.
The great evil ones, Melkor and Sauron, spent their spirits in envy and hate in their respective attempts to dominate the very matter of Earth and its inhabitants, growing weaker over time. Once mighty and seemingly invincible, they would, over time, lose their ability to shapeshift, no longer be able to create new things to use against the existing order (instead being able to only make parodies and corruptions of works already made), and take on wounds which would no longer heal.
The great maia, Sauron, would impart much of his remaining native strength into the One Ring so that it would be able to dominate the other nineteen rings of power. When he wore it, the One Ring made him even stronger than before but should the ring be destroyed, it would take with it that native strength Sauron had poured into it so there was a risk involved for any spirit who wished to go against the natural order of things.
It makes me think of how we live our lives and the values and desires we place in things and in people. I feel like I have invested much of my native strength in the wrong girls and it has left me considerably weaker for my troubles. The last time I felt my native strength increasing was when I was in college back in late 1998/early 1999...but mostly in 1998.
I had met many new friends (even girls who found me desirable) and for perhaps the only time in my life, had a near-daily exposure to love and acceptance. I felt a part of something bigger than me for the only time in my life. If I were somehow able to quantify my native strength and add up the percentages of it placed into other people and things and that which is still left in me, the number would be greater than 100% mostly for that time but also for times in my past like it (such as when I started getting to know my Best Friend and other friends both remaining and lost in my life).
My last happy New Year was the changeover from 1999 to 2000. So far, the 21st century has held little to no happiness for me and as I now find myself well into it. I am also less than ten years away from the pivot point whereby I become a 21st century man (that is, soon I will have existed longer in the 21st century than I did in the 20th...another of my weird thoughts/realizations).
But I know I squandered a large part of myself in the First One. It felt only natural and I did so out of ignorance. While foolish in retrospect, how was I to know at the time she wasn't "the one"? First love is foolish love much as is all young love. Still...I miss her and the nervous energy she imparted on me that I was then able to transform into creative and artistic pursuits like drawing, poetry, and most proudly, a constructed language.
The First One would come to be known to me as a personification of idealization. She is what attraction means to me and what it means to be in love. All those who have followed (and even those who preceded) are compared to her, being either greater or lesser. In a mythological sense, she would be the physical manifestation of a god, specifically of Aphrodite. In a different and more modern sense I would describe her as a "genetic attraction", which was most definitely eugenic in nature as I recall myself, even as a young teenager, wanting to merge my DNA with her own as if our respective DNAs would result in a more superior human than she already was. That's a strange thought I admit and to this day, while I would most certainly prefer to do so the, uh..."natural" or "fun" way, I would be happy to have her accept my DNA via artificial insemination just to bring about that genetic fulfillment.
Smaller parts of me would be invested in nearly a dozen other girls and more still in lost friends, but the next great investment was in Digby, the source of many downer posts in this blog. I saw in her a salvation of sorts. She appeared to me as the actual "one" I had been spending my life looking for (and this time a human right from the start rather than the fleshy goddess that was the First One) as I now had many more years of experience and working knowledge of who I am and what I had wanted. I felt able to see our compatibility but ultimately, I had deceived myself...
Don't get me wrong. I still believe with all my heart that Digby is right for me. It's just...what I never considered and what would thus be my downfall, was that it never occurred to me just how cruel nature is when it comes to love. I made the mistake of believing, because I had never properly had it contradicted prior, that compatibility is more of a scalar than what it truly is, a vector.
You see, compatibility has a direction to it: it's not a universal number or quality. Digby is good enough (maybe even ideally so)...but only for me. But I am not perfect for her. It seems an impossible thought but it's sadly so very true.
For the longest time I went through life believing that if you found a person you were compatible with that it was only natural that they too would be compatible with you. It might take some convincing, but I truly believed compatibility was like an equation. In this case, different sets of numbers that added up to the same result (a simplified example being 4+5 = 108÷12 ...seemingly different in all ways but nevertheless, their underlying nature, that they are both manifestations of 9, is the same). But no, compatibility is not a simple equation...it is a vector. The direction compatibility moves in matters (like how whether a targeted item in a supermarket will appear on the left side or right side of an aisle depends on the direction you enter said aisle) and resultant vectors cannot be found simply by adding two (or more) vectors together.
The maddening result of all this grief is the knowledge that you can be great for someone but that you, in turn, are not necessarily great for them. It is a seeming defiance of logic but it is most assuredly true and a depressing truth at that. Perhaps if I had learned that lesson at an earlier age...
Digby would become the personification of desire in many, if not all, of its manifestations and especially representative of my desire to do right by and for a woman; to be her one and only; to be the father, and properly so, to her children; to give of myself that she and my progeny might experience a life most fitting for them. Digby was truly a dream given form...
Now if only I might find that (as of yet unknown) Third One who is this time as compatible with me as I am with her.
However, to get back to my opening statements, I feel I have been living a life without purpose and I have been living this way largely for the last three to seven years depending on your reckoning and arguably I have been this way since finding the First One back in 1992 as fulfillment is not something that would ever be known to me.
Much of my native strength has been spent. It has left me feeling weak and my spirit fragile. It takes so much time now to find even the smallest amount of will to make a move and such strength is all too easily spent resulting in months of recovery from even the slightest of setbacks...time I really don't have anymore as my youth has been gone for some time now.
For the time being, I find myself bound spiritually to my Best Friend but she is not enough. She is like family and family does not represent the future nor does family represent change, whether the family we're born into or the family we choose. Love must ultimately manifest either literally in the form of children or spiritually in the form of a legacy which will outlive our physical forms. Our genes demand from us immortality. For me personally, that satisfaction requires a yin for my yang to be the means, undeniably female, for manifesting that immortality. But I have been denied such satisfaction...
And I feel that's what living with purposelessness is: it is merely survival, not life. The food I eat, the water I drink, and the air I breathe extend my life but mere acts of survival do not grow or obtain for me more life. They permit me only to continue and every day the burden of continuing makes me feel heavier and that heaviness is most certainly wearisome. It is not yet unbearable and while I have no intention of "doing" anything about it, it does leave me wondering just how much more my body can handle before it decides it has had enough or will I find my continuance, my merely surviving, to be corrupting like that of Sméagol as he became Gollum under the One Ring's influence and living on only as a shadow of my former, once hopeful, self,
...a living mockery of a man...
No comments:
Post a Comment