The Silmarillion at the Laundromat

[pegkerr]

Of all the places to read The Silmarillion, perhaps the neighborhood laundromat, where I went to wash the DEET out of our sleeping bags, is the most incongruous. It felt distinctly odd in that setting to be following the doom of Beren and Luthien and the death of Felagund ("I go now to my long rest in the timeless halls beyond the seas and the Mountains of Aman. It will be long ere I am seen among the Noldor again; and it may be that we shall not meet a second time in death or life, for the fates of our kindreds are apart. Farewell!"). The sound of the march of the grim iron-shod Orcs to the battle of Nirnaeth Arnoediad mingled uneasily with the rumble of the dryers. I looked up from my book, blinking in the flickering flourescent light and thought of the terrible oath of the sons of Fëanor, and the light of the Silmaril blazing through Beren's hand. I fed quarters to the dryer and thought of Barahir and Turgon, the fall of the hidden kingdoms, and the grim defiance of Húrin and how Morgoth wrecked his vengeance by making him watch the disastrous fate of his proud son Túrin.

Hispanic women with sloe eyes and black tattoos folded faded clothes and flipped them with practiced ease into the rattling rolling baskets. A drunk circled the machines like a ghost, and then flitted out into the night again, heading for the bar. No grim-eyed elves or fell warriors here, or so it seemed. Really, who knows which of these might be a hero? Can I know, any more than Thingol did when he scornfully dismissed Beren's suit for his daughter's hand?

Comments

[lizardek.livejournal.com]

I love this journal entry. LOVE it.

[semperfiona]

Ditto. This is absolutely beautiful. Haunting.

laundry elves

[talking-sock.livejournal.com]

If you wrote "urban fantasy," you could make a case for all of this in the laundromat. In fact, if you didn't make a case for it, you probably wouldn't be called an urban fantasist. (No, I'm not a fan of it, I'm just saying.)

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

I read Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf at a laundromat in Apple Valley, when I was staying with family (I was between apartments) a number of years ago. Yuppified suburban banality doesn't mesh real well, either, with that sort of literature. I probably should have been reading Gatsby instead; a lot of Daisy and Tom Buchanans out in AV.

Not that heroic literature is really my style, but I wanted to see what all the hoo-hah was about, and I'd read that Beowulf was one of Tolkien's prime influences, so I read it so I could say I had. It was a very readable translation, even if the story was less than interesting to me, but I did come away wishing I'd named my then-rambunctious son Grendel, until I realized that would make me Grendel's mother.