Concerning Others, Selves and Stories

I recently had cause, although certainly not for the first time, to wonder again about the role of the familiar in the Perilous Realm. Granted, what constitutes the 'familiar' is different to every individual, and in a postmodern world, the 'familiar' is also fraught with ambiguities and politics when it comes to those still forced to negotiate the post-colonial identity. Such as us, or to use Queen Lestat's terms, Blaaaahnians. We, it seems, are in a continual state of conflict with our 'Selves', our projected selves, our given selves, our spontaneous selves. And in that, when it comes to fantasy, there is curiously something both soothing and defeating in the pages of the classics, to cite a notable example, The Lord of the Rings.

Of course we may argue, we know that the values embodied by the narrative are not alien to us, not alien to the values which we grew up with, in the stories we were told by our teachers or our parents or our books. Even if they might have come to contraries when it comes to the actual practice of some of our illustrious elders. For the themes are the same, war against tyranny, the unexpected heroics of the meek, the lights of faith and kindness in the darkest of hours. The ringing of elvish laughter, which is to say laughter which was sad and thus most true in its joy, wise laughter, silver with moonlit nights of yearning for a better world. But then I have to remind myself that the very act of arguing brings into conflict those stories, whether they in nature, are in fact the same. Why do we need to argue, I need ask, why is the familiar always strange, always in conflict with the beautiful?

Perhaps we lack the metaphors which would have brought our own beauty to the familiar, to the strange. Perhaps we lost the sense of the beautiful in our Selves, oh, far too long ago now for the reaches of the memory or the heart.