Learning Lorien

Fiction (but not really) - Morocco 6/25/23

“What’s under the trap door?” asks the little boy sitting on top of a rock. His name is Alvien, and he’s speaking to a willow tree with quite a delicious smile. The tree leans over Alvien’s head, and says in the language of the wind that beneath the trap door is everything that Alvien has ever searched for, and all he must do is find a way to open it. And so Alvien does. Thus begins the quest of Alvien; Alvien’s quest.

It begins as all quests do, at the end of sorts... An end which is also a beginning, as all endings are. In fact, endings are happening all around us, in every moment, and so are beginnings. So perhaps Alvien’s story does not begin at the beginning or the end, but rather, simply... Is... as are all our stories. 

The morning of his seventh birthday, Alvien decides to sing a song, and so he picks up his note pad and runs to his favorite spot in the grass beneath the weeping willow tree by the lake, on the corner of heaven and his home. He sits beneath the tree and scribbles down mostly all the words he knows: “Magic, love, wildness, wisdom, nature, neat, notice, sing, tree, oceans, life.” He notes all the words that he’s put down and begins to sing a lilting sound, with the joy and sereneness that only children seem to be able to surrender to.

As he sings, his eyes close, and the wildness within him seems to calm, to give way to something more peaceful and spacious. The trees and the wind around him begin to calm, too, almost as if life itself is watching Alvien give himself over to the song. This is how his song goes.

Under the branches far and wide
I sing without losing pride
For all the way down to my core
I am a boy who knows the score
There is no path to take me home
When home is all I am alone
And on this journey through the grass
I pick and prowl and prune and pass
Through wild winds and wild worlds
Beneath the willow and the word
So here I sing and here I stand
Amidst the nature and the land
The magic of the sky above
The singing of the rhyming love
The language of the earth and stone
The nature who is all I know
I sing I sing I sing of you
The one who laughs with joy so true
There amongst the stars so clear
I find a way to be right here
A way a way a way I go
Away I go to Loriennnnn.

And as he sings, he begins to remember his name, the name of his true heart, his true soul. 

The man named Lorien who was lost in the winnowing lands, who wandered into the desert sands and mistook himself for the tides of dunes and the rising and falling of the moon. Lorien hath returned unto himself, and given back the little he felt when the magic and the mystery were turned into dusty serendipity. Lorien, the man so true, hath left behind his heart so blue, and turns again to stride astray from all that laid in wait. He walks the path between the trees where all the leaves give way to breeze. He feels a part of the land, and knows he’s there to grow and land. Flightless one, named Lorien who strove to hold the love, the sun, the stars, the brilliant land, his magic now is in his hands. Forsaken from the dreary day, he is allowed to stay and play. Lorien, or Lorien, be here with all the flowers.

Alvien sings and sings, and his heart grows, and his body grows, and before long, he is Alvien no more, a boy no more, but a man named Lorien who was lost, and now is found. Lorien smiles up at the willow true, who knew his name before he. He laughs with a joy he finds no longer buried in his mind. Lying back in the field of free, Lorien alights with all his dreams. He sits amongst the flowers, and sips with delight, the sweet flowers of life. “There is naught more but this,” he says, and remembers all his love.

Laid to wait, and laid with love, Lorien allows himself to settle for a while. And after the time has passed without time’s existence, a call comes to return. A call to stand and once more look beneath the trapped door. ‘What is there?’ he wonders. If only he knew. And so he rises and begins again his quest, again a boy named Alvien.

---

The difference between boy and man is that there is no longer wondering, but wonder. There is no more searching, only that which has been sought. The quest ends not with the finding, but with the being. He who has run from, has also run to, and there is the deepening of the root.