There are themes that repeat in my mind, ideas that I chew on and spit out and then come back to, still curious, still baffled, still unable to solve.

I guess that’s the problem with being super type A/OCD and wanting, almost needing neat and orderly explanations.  My chiropractor has been teaching me the same lesson for years – sometimes there is no cause and no solution.  What is just is.  And I desperately struggle to find peace in that.

For the past … well, many days, we have been falling asleep to Fellowship of the Ring.  It is a movie that John and I both love, but it is also a movie that we came to individually, long before we met each other.  I found it on a snowy afternoon when I was in search of anywhere to be but my new room in my new house in State College.  I went for a walk, bundled from head to toe against the biting cold and wind.  I walked slowly because even then, when I could still feel my legs and my feet, I was cautious and every street downtown was wind blown with snow over a thick sheet of ice.

Back then, there was a movie theatre between College Ave and Beaver Ave and I’d decided that I could spent a few hours warm and alone before returning to a ‘home’ in which I knew no one.  The only movie playing within two hours was LOTR.  For me, it began there.

I’ve been watching it ever since.  And it’s funny and strange to me that this year marks twenty years since that freezing cold day in my life.  When I slunk into a seat near the back of a tiny theatre, resolved to fall asleep for a bit before returning to my new digs but was instead transported to Middle Earth.

Time and truth.  The ideas that I work over and over in my mind and cannot solve.  Time stands still – Bilbo and Gandalf and Frodo and Sam.  Time slides by – Ian Holm and Christopher Lee have died.  The film quality feels fuzzy.  Twenty years.  So much has happened and yet, it always takes me back to that moment, that breath of peace I found upon my return to Penn State after nearly a year away.  After Italy and 9/11.  A lifetime in less than 365 days.

Time is tricky.

Fellowship of the Ring is not.  It is comfort and familiarity. It is soothing in an unsettling time.

Xoxo, g