Enchantment
I have a favorite dragon
simile (sort of a dragon-in-disguise) from E. R. Eddison’s Worm Oroboros:
"High in the south,
couched above great gray moraines, the Zia glacier, wrinkle-backed like some
dragon survived out of the elder chaos, thrusts his snout into the valley. Here out of his caves
of ice the young river thunders, casting up a spray where rainbows hover in
bright weather. The air blows sharp from the glacier, and alpine flowers and
shrubs feed on the sunlight."
The enchantment of these
words puts us in touch with a world perpendicular to our own. It’s always
there, ‘couched above great gray morains’—yet
only present when we look.
Getting to know dragons,
one begins to learn how to look to see.
And dragons? What can
humans possibly offer them?
Story.
Coming from their own
reality, which is perpendicular to time, dragons find strange and intriguing the
very concept of sequence and consequence.
That’s why throughout
dragon lore, these majestic beings appear as fateful creatures, apparently
lacking free will.
I think of the ancient
mythic hero Cadmus, who introduced the Phoenician alphabet and writing to the
Greeks. Cadmus slew a dragon and thereafter could not avoid a fateful
transformation into a dragon.
And then there’s Beowulf,
who makes a big deal about his fateful compulsion to confront the dragon—and death.
Mush’hushshu, typical of
dragons (who come from a realm without beginning or end), fixated on the idea
of story. He wants to know his story. How does a dragon participate with us in
the beginning, muddle and end (as James Joyce typified our obsession with
storytelling)?
Stories are breathing shadows, where writers and readers
trespass perpendicular time. We
imagine fire-breathing dragons. And dragons imagine us—myth-breathing creatures.
posted by A. A. Attanasio at
11:55 AM
2 Comments:
Obsessed by dragons, I am learning how to speak and see better. (Dragon, from Greek drakon (genitive drakontos) "serpent, giant seafish," apparently from drak-, strong aorist stem of derkesthai "to see clearly," from PIE *derk- "to see.")
In particular, I feel the need to train myself in seeing better perpendicularly from me.
If the beginning and end are connected (as the alpha and omega) might they, combined temporarily (as Siamese twins so to speak) comprise a muddle of an altogether different sort from the muddle we're currently in? My thoughts lean driftwise in this forked electromagnetic direction. In my waking dreamstate I've heard whispers from the eaves and something makes me believe it's Sirrush'hushshu (one of Mush’hushshu's siblings, I think) insinuating in his sussurating voice that yes, from where he sits and breathes, perpendicular to us, things are of a muddle in another sort of puddle, for him and his kindred spirits.
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