For Gruumsh
A fanfictional essay
(Categories: essays, fanfic/D&D, fanfic/Tolkien)
For Gruumsh
I think orcs wrote a lot of philosophy. Lots of lines of Judith Butler, of Michael Ondaatje, seem like their work. And who said — Ondaatje? Gaiman? No — “The only true map of a territory is the territory itself, and such a map would be useless.” An orc said that, an illiterate cartographer, and someone scrawled it in the margins of a map he was drawing. The map reveals time acting on nature (he’s working on an elevation map as he thinks this) and our bodies reveal time acting on flesh. We are maps of our history. (He knows he may live to be 30, he’s old now, he adjusts his pince-nez, while the elves who barely tolerate him for his impeccable work laugh indifferently. They’re immortal.) Beauty, he tells them, quoting again, must be defined as who we are, or the concept itself becomes our enemy. You fear the light and long for it, they tell him. They don’t mind a word battle. Elves love CS Lewis and they’re ready for a joust but our cartographer is too busy dotting out groundwater flow in indigo to notice.
