A few more hours, and it's all over.
All the prognostication, all the theorizing, all the digging for clues, all the wondering, all the essays and poems and spats.
For the last couple of years, we have, if you will pardon the metaphor, seen through a glass darkly. We have some idea of what's coming, certainly. But we don't fully know. This time tomorrow, we will fully know.
It's rare to wait so long for something so small. And simultaneously, so large. I mean, it's just a book, right? And yet a book that has, somehow, meant so very much to so very many of us.
I am the kind of person who tends to live in the future. I plan, I practice conversations in my mind, I think about what things will be like. So it's a bit of a jolt to have today -- the last day of waiting -- actually arrive.
I can't remember waiting so long for something where I sort of knew what it would be like, but not really. Even a child only takes nine months to be born!
I have no doubts whatsoever about the next few days. I am serenely confident that Deathly Hallows will be, as every good ending should be and as so few are, both surprising and satisfying.
But what comes next?
Even before I picked up Sorcerer's Stone for the very first time, I taught a class on storytelling (and I still teach it, all these years later) in which I pointed out that stories help us form community. If we share the same stories, we share the same life.
Never have I seen that so played out as in the community formed by Harry Potter. I once listened to a pastor explain that online relationships are not "real" relationships. I beg to differ. Through the sharing of our mutual love of this story, these characters, this world, I have met wonderful people with whom I have much more in common than, say, my next-door-neighbor. True communities have come to exist, all spiraling around Harry and his world.
But will they last?
Communities don't always last, of course. Many aren't meant to last. The kind of community formed by a group of people putting on a show can be some of the most intense, most heartfelt community there is -- but when the show's over, so is that community.
What happens to all of us now? Do we stay in touch with the people we connected with most? Do we dive into discussion of Deathly Hallows for a few weeks or months, then taper off as we go back to "real life"? Do we become like the Trekkers and the LOTR folks and the Star Wars folks, continuing fandom in a smaller, more intense, more separated-from-the-mainstream way? I don't know. Any and all are possible, I suppose.
But I know the power of the Harry Potter books, the way they touched me so deeply, will remain. And I will always be grateful that I lived at the right time to experience what no one after us will ever experience again -- the chance to dive into the Wizarding World, to be part of Harry's story, without knowing the ending. The anticipation has been truly a wonderful thing, and I am so glad to have been able to enjoy it.
Thank you to all of you whom I have met through this journey filled with wonder, all of you on the same journey at the same time. You have made it much richer for me, and I am grateful.
It has been a wonderful wait. The wait is over. The next few days will be, I am sure, heartbreaking and terrifying and joyful. And I am so glad that there are so many going on the same journey at the same time.
I look forward to the new world that awaits us next week, after it's all over.
I can't wait.
Friday, July 20, 2007
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6 comments:
I agree that it's been amazing that we've had to wait all this time for the ending—it's given everyone so much more time to savour and contemplate the books. It seems sad to think that now any HP fan can just race through all seven books, and never get all that time to reflect and consider the what next.
All the same, it's strange now knowing that whatever Rowlings decides to do about Harry's survival and the depiction of Snape as good or bad will undoubtedly change the way I read the series forever. Part of the fun has always been the guessing—and the hoping for a happy ending.
Jan,
Thank you for those great words and for being so willing to share your prognostications with the rest of us. It has been a great time to know Harry Potter. I look forward to being able to re-read these books in the future and to notice many more things. I, also, look forward to seeing how the last two movies enhance or detract from there book counterparts. At least, we have that to anticipate.
Of course, after Harry, Heroes will return shortly, and that should be another interesting journey.
I await your thoughts on DH.
I told the sitter 'Don't change the channel when the AMC show is taping, a friend of mine is on it and I want to see what she looks like.' What a strange and silly thing it is to have an online community, but you are right, we do have real relationships. You're a friend of several friends of mine so in real life we might have actually met. But now I have a relationship to you through this online 'realness'.
Oh, and you were SOOOOO great on the show! And you looked great. Clare always tells me that you're Hermione so I guess I was expecting bookish. But there was beautiful, blonde glamourous looking you!
Tears are in my eyes at your words as I sit here waiting to go buy my own book in the early hours. What you said is perfect...I will miss the anticipation of the last ten years with "my boy". "Turn around and he's two, turn around and he's four, turn around and he's a young man going out of the door." Well... hopefully he's going out of the door and not permanently through the veil!
One word review: Wow.
Wonderful reflections, and it's so true what you say about the community that has sprung up around Harry. I certainly hope it will endure, at least to some extent. And after all, she's still left us with plenty to discuss... I too am grateful to have been able to experience all the excitement and anticipation as it was happening. Epics like this don't come around too often.
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