Thank you for your kindness and understanding about my fanfic.  For those who want a "copy", it cannot be sold, being set in another writer's legendarium (Tolkien's, in my case.)  No money must ever exchange hands in fanfic--that would violate the original author's rights.  You can, however, read it at dreamdeer.grailmedia.com/tolkien/index.h..., though I warn you it is both long and at times disturbing.

Fanfic is not really a legitimate literary form.  So I feel like I've been raising this illegitimate child, half in secret, in my home and in my life, who started out so innocent, but just kept growing bigger and bigger, and more and more of a rogue, yet charming withall, and mine.  I loved this big, rude teenager, though he broke my heart again and again.  Now he has finished growing up, and has moved out of my life, and I am so proud of him, and so lonely without him, and there's this enormous empty space in my life where he used to entertain and worry and frustrate and reward me.

And I cannot help but wonder where he came from.  Who is the father of this child, really?  Everything that Tolkien ever wrote about "discovering" Middle-Earth, "receiving" it, trying to capture by pen something pre-existent, trying to find out what happens next, not feeling like one made it up at all, applies to me as well.  Rewrites weren't so much a matter of trying to alter an invention as trying to more accurately capture a clouded glimpse of something true.

I am ashamed to say that this story has some really dark corners, passages that shocked me.  How could that possibly fit with Tolkien's world, where nothing "base" ever enters in?  Ah, but it is a 4th age piece, a post-ring piece, set in the time of Men, after the wise had left and the elves begun to fade (and it deals, among other things, with elves coping--or in some cases not coping--with the fading--that is, the letting go of the connection with mankind, as human beings go on their increasingly separate path.)  When Tolkien tried to write something of this later generation, he concluded, "I am not the man to write it."  A curious choice of words, implying that someone else might be.

More than a few times I became so distraught at what I had written that I didn't want to write any more!  But each time some reader would step forth, more often than not a total stranger to me, to insist that not only did he or she want to read more, but the very passage that most distressed me fit that person's life and needs in some powerful way.  It went out of my hands.  I couldn't stop.

Well, it is done now.  I can step back from it, and breathe, and go back to wholly original fiction.  Legitimate fiction.

And yet doesn't fanfic actually have honorable antecedents?  Isn't it in fact the most ancient form of all?  Before we had a concept of authorship, before we had money to exchange for books, before we even had a way to write tales down, people fit their stories into a larger legendarium, old myths and legends with roots going back so far that nobody knew where they started.  Indeed, they might have always been there.  New ideas burst into the minds of storytellers, not as inventions but as inspirations.  People didn't imagine characters, they acquired a new slant or insight into archetypes.

Something gripped me when I wrote these stories, and I cannot help but wonder if the same muse gripped Tolkien.  I don't profess to be his match--oh no, the talents that expressed our separate works are entirely our own, and mine are definitely inferior.  It is as though all who write fanfic, plus the original author, are like an art professor and art students in a studio, all painting the same model from different positions around the room, varying greatly in skill yet trying to capture the same beauty.  And of course the professor is the greatest artist of the lot--that's what puts him at the head of the class, leading the rest of us.  Yet there is something so much more there, a living, breathing model, that we each struggle to flatten down to the limitations of paint, even as we stand in awe of the unmatchable creation before us, whose Creator we cannot hope to emulate.  Not even our professor.

It has been a privilege to try, all the same.

I'm sorry that I've taken so long to post!  I've sometimes had health barriers, but often I was okay, just deeply engaged in obligations elsewhere, and sometimes, I confess, simply engaged in Tolkien fandom.

The most consuming distraction was finally completing my absurdly long fanfic epic, "The Adventures of Frodo Gardner"--eight volumes in eight years.  I never expected it to take over like that!  I began it as something frivolous, a vacation from serious writing, yet it became some of the most serious writing I've ever done.  I got a huge amount out of the experience, and some have written to say they got something important out of it, too.

Another thing is that I have begun work on a fairy house of my own, training to make fairy houses for others.  Maybe when I'm less tired I'll tell you more about these things that I've been doing.  I just had to post anything to break the shame of showing up after being absent for so long.

From Christmas Eve on through January I lost four loved ones to death; two kinswomen and two friends.  I have also lately found myself often consoling still other friends with losses of their own.  And one online friend told me that not only has she lost several loved ones, herself, but lately her town's obituary page has overflowed its allotted space.

What could cause this plethora of death?  The stressful economic times, perhaps?  Hunger has indeed impacted many in the community, yet those who died that I have known or heard of did not go hungry.  Not so much hardship, then, as the fear of hardship might trigger the harm.  The flood of adrenaline, cortisol, and other stress chemicals seems to overwhelm those with already fragile medical conditions, pushing them over the brink.  Fear can kill.

In the face of this peril, fantasy can actually save lives.  First, it gives us, most obviously, a vacation from stress.  Escapism, some might sneer, yet as JRR Tolkien pointed out, prisoners have a right to escape.  And unlike other forms of escape, such as alcohol, drugs, or compulsive behaviors like shopaholism or excess gambling, which only add to the problems that one has already, fantasy makes one stronger, more able to cope when one returns to face reality head-on.

Because fantasy also exercises the mind, the heart, and the soul.  In fantasy, we don't actually hide from our problems, but rather we cloak them in symbolic forms that we can handle psychologically.  Then we mentally practice how to conquer them.  We slay our dragons over and over, until we build up the courage to tackle our real life perils and vicissitudes.  We set up imaginary heroes--and then we emulate them.  We become what we imagine.

And fantasy upholds ideals.  The more we indulge in fantasy, the more we identify with those ideals, the more we cannot resist upholding them in our daily lives as well.  So the fantasist not only betters her own situation, but becomes the sort of person who betters the lives of others all around her.  And with the betterment of the general good comes a functional reduction of stress all around.  So that makes three ways, now, that fantasy relieves our stress.

My Grandmother is in the hospital again.  In about a month she will be 94 years old.  Once again, she continues to surprise everyone by how fast she heals, and how spunkily she takes on life.  We expect that in a few weeks' time she will emerge from the convalescent hospital once more fully equipped to take on the independent lifestyle that she prefers.  She is an avid practitioner of fantasy, and taught the same to me.  She must be doing something right.

I have not been able to post as often as I had hoped to, here.  Something changes.  I feel shut down for repairs.  Revisions of my understanding that have taken decades to creep slowly towards any kind of progress at all have suddenly taken off at a parabolic rate.  It takes up a lot of energy.  I feel frightened, thrilled, impatient, overwhelmed, and yet still, very still.  I only know that it will all work out to what it's supposed to be in the end.

I have just enjoyed a wonderful, four-day visit from my old friend Khia--an incarnate elemental if ever there was one!  I remember the first time a certain elderly lady dear to my heart laid eyes on her, and then pulled me aside and whispered, "She's not quite human, is she?"  Picture a warm, hobbity face, rippling and shimmery golden-brown hair that reaches to her legs, zaftig build, ethereal elvish ways of moving, and incredible sunshininess even in the face of disaster.  Not a "conventional beauty" by any means, yet curiously attractive and instantly heartwarming to be around.

Things tend to happen around Khia, like suddenly finding your path strewn with rosepetals, or turning around a corner by chance and running into a mural that exactly illustrates what you've been talking about, or sitting on a rock by the beach, wishing you didn't have so much sand on your feet to deal with, when suddenly a freak wave reaches all the way to where you're sitting, just long enough to wash your feet and recede again.

On this visit we took a stroll in the desert and received a sunset that wrapped clear around the horizon in coral, turquoise, violet and gold, and at one point completely domed us in color and vividness.  On another day we went to a pastorela at my church.  Being a Yaqui event, the flag-girls and matachini dancers blessed the church first, in a long ceremony during which I fell asleep sitting up.  I had been in horrible pain, but suddenly a rush of warmth passed through me and I woke up with my pain halved!  I can, of course, attribute it to the blessing, but I can't help but feel that Khia was sort of a catalyst, leaving things a little more open in the everyday world for things of an altogether different nature to come through.

On a slightly different, yet closely related note, today starts the Solstice week: the three days before, during, and three days after solstice.  Ever since an elf in a dream invited me to his summer solstice party, the week of every solstice and equinox have brought me a marvelous seven-day series of dreams, of fairy contact, celebration, and transformation.

I had forgotten to prepare for it, and so forgot most of last night's dream.  Yet I remember that it involved praying the rosary, persistently while doing other things, preparing the way.  And it had snow.  I shall be interested to see what the rosary prepared the way for.