Before this
blog, there was another one at the same address, Epigone’s Eloquence. My first post after the introductory one was
titled Gratitude. Envy was one of my
better-defined character traits already, but I did see how gratitude made
myself and other people (like Chesterton) happier.
Gratitude can
work wonders and this is one of them. Back in the day, I spent much time on the
Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza, a good deal of it in the poetry section.
There was someone there, an old Hobbit of mild temper and tremendous erudition,
who would write constructive comments on my poems. He inspired me to pay more
attention, to hone my writing skills, and to learn as much as I could about
culture. In the Poetic Ponderings
threads, the two of us and a few others discussed excitedly about Eliot,
Marvell, Hopkins, and other bright stars in the firmament of euphony.
When I wrote
my conversion story in my first year of college, I mentioned the old Hobbit as
one who helped show me that ‘everything cohered with everything else: who could
not grasp relations and complement knowledge of one thing with knowledge of
another, lacked full knowledge of that one thing.’ And (what went unsaid) that
it was possible to share that knowledge without scorn or condescension.
By then he had
probably already disappeared, and I could not get in touch with him. I wanted
to let him know that I owed him something, but he had gone missing. When the
Plaza celebrated its tenth anniversary and we were asked to write about our
memories, I reminisced about the old Hobbit who had left us.
More recently,
I posted a poem on the Plaza and received some good comments about it. Speaking
about the poetic form which the reviewer had named, I said that the old Hobbit
had probably introduced me to it. At which, in a beautiful moment of anagnorisis, the unknown reviewer sent
me a message to say that he was the
old Hobbit!
Since then we
have been chatting again and have caught up on each other’s lives. This is what
gratitude and remembrance can do.
What happened
to the old blog, you say? Oh, when I announced its upcoming deletion nine days
in advance, my old ‘Plaza mother’ Teleria sent me a Facebook message to say
that she had won the National Novel Writing Month contest and was allowed to have
one copy of a book printed. As her novel was not finished yet, would I like to
have my blog sent to me in book form?
