Kate Saunders Britton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bonny_kate) wrote2009-02-25 05:31 pm
bonny_kate) wrote2009-02-25 05:31 pm
Entry tags:
musings
I wandered into Fairy sometime in the middle of December. Somewhere between step and step I found myself there, where everything is different and yet nothing is different. My world was turned upside down and shaken, to have the bits come softly floating down and change the landscape so that something I have seen every day is suddenly different, and yet is as it ever was. I am perpetually slightly off balance in Fairy, because while I have longed for it, I find it unsettling. It is not a comfortable place to be. And yet, I would not go back, even if I could. The shadows are darker, true, but the light is more beautiful, and the mountains move my soul. These cannot be the same mountains that I have looked at and longed for most of my life. These mountains are more blue, and more clear, and further away and higher than before. They awake in me a longing, not for the mountains, but for that which the mountains are but a shadow. These are not the mountains of a mortal world, but of the Fairy of Phantastes. They are so beautiful that it aches, but the ache is itself a pleasure. It is what Lewis has called joy.
I see strange things in puddles, in the broken bits of mirror that lie as shards on the ground, reflecting the sky. But the sky that I see within the reflection is not the same sky I see when I look up. It is more lovely, and dangerous, these glimpses I see, because it is the sky of Fairy. There is something indescribably compelling in these upside down glimpses of Fairy.
The almond orchards surely are not mortal almond orchards. They are in full bloom, some pale pink with reddish trunks, some dusty white, exultant against the clean grey clouds and misty blue mountains. The rows are carpeted with soft white petals. The beauty of the orchards is something like a wood, with all those trees slowly living and growing, and something like a garden with their neat rows. They are very awake. I think that if I wandered among them I might lose myself. The almond orchards have always bloomed, but they have never been this beautiful before.
And yet, with this beauty, I find that I am a little scared, because there is no going back to the mortal world, even if I desired it. I long, sometimes, for the comfortable world when mountains and almond trees did not awake in me such a strong and irresistible desire. I miss the safety of a predictable world. Yet I know that there is no going back. Once you have stepped into Fairy you can never truly go back, because Fairy must of its nature change you. I know that the only way to go back is through Fairy. And if the shadows are darker, then the light is brighter, beyond imagining, and is the light that I have longed for.
I see strange things in puddles, in the broken bits of mirror that lie as shards on the ground, reflecting the sky. But the sky that I see within the reflection is not the same sky I see when I look up. It is more lovely, and dangerous, these glimpses I see, because it is the sky of Fairy. There is something indescribably compelling in these upside down glimpses of Fairy.
The almond orchards surely are not mortal almond orchards. They are in full bloom, some pale pink with reddish trunks, some dusty white, exultant against the clean grey clouds and misty blue mountains. The rows are carpeted with soft white petals. The beauty of the orchards is something like a wood, with all those trees slowly living and growing, and something like a garden with their neat rows. They are very awake. I think that if I wandered among them I might lose myself. The almond orchards have always bloomed, but they have never been this beautiful before.
And yet, with this beauty, I find that I am a little scared, because there is no going back to the mortal world, even if I desired it. I long, sometimes, for the comfortable world when mountains and almond trees did not awake in me such a strong and irresistible desire. I miss the safety of a predictable world. Yet I know that there is no going back. Once you have stepped into Fairy you can never truly go back, because Fairy must of its nature change you. I know that the only way to go back is through Fairy. And if the shadows are darker, then the light is brighter, beyond imagining, and is the light that I have longed for.