And who is not injured? Who hasn’t lost their legs, metaphorically speaking? Who hasn’t been thrown from the tower of their own safety? Who hasn’t been ripped from family and friend and lovers? Who hasn’t had to go beyond the 7 kingdoms, under or over the wall, to strange and terrifying primordial landscape, where the common rules and laws don’t apply? Who hasn’t needed to rely on strangers, at least once, who hasn’t been taken thought a harrowing journey, been utterly dependent on a small band of friend and co-conspirators, without who one wouldn’t survive an instant? Who isn’t the legless cripple Brandon Stark, on some journey to a home that has no semblance of anything imagined, that is inconceivable—wherein the tree god lives.

We have lost our legs in several senses. We no longer walk long distances, but gaze though train windows at the passing landscape. We are dependent on cars, train, buses, airplanes; we are suspended in transit. We no longer consciously live that primeval world, with all its ecstasies and terrors and dream signs; but verily that world, the world of being, the true world—still animates us. For now we dwell in the in-between, between life and death—not really alive, but not dead either; we have an intuition of a deeper life, we hear voices calling from the trees.

There is an injury, a wound. At the same time strange abilities of clairvoyance are developing in us. We have learned to hear voices from far away places. We have only learned the beginning of flying, the mechanical part—we haven’t truly learned to travel vast distances. We can dream, yet we don’t understanding what our dreams are telling us. We have liberated sexuality, yet our intimacies are deranged. We know not the secrets of nature, but only its mechanics. The average human being is not conscious of himself. He is connected to all kinds of things he doesn’t understand. All kinds of subtleties he overlooks in efficacy, business like transactions, management and results. The space is inhuman, he knows, but he doesn’t know the way out, he cannot find the door.

If we are fortunate we will be like Brandon Stark, driven through that snow, that fury, past the northern wall, out of all our kingdoms, our self definitions, where there are forgotten beings in the trees. These beings call for us, the have been watching us for centuries, waiting for us to wake from our somnumbulance. They know we have lost our legs, that we may have lost the world. And yet they wait, for the re-generation. We cannot go backwards ever, to that primeaval garden—it is gone. We will not be young again for along time. The darkness covers us like sting, terrifying beings of ice and fire are at our heels. The dragon children we have nursed, are growing to powerful. The wall of religion and culture that has protected us has been broached. New cyclones are born like titans and leave their trail of destructions of on our plains…

The injured ones do not find their victory in the world. And yet some cross over the wall, endure the ice and snow, fight off terrifying deathly ice zombies, and meet the tree god. The tree god does not restore one to former glory, instead he gives us powers to shapeshift, to fly, to decipher the world of dreams and to talk to animals. By losing what is most precious to us, we find a world beyond our imagination, vastly larger, vastly deeper, vastly more true than our wish or our projection.

The king sits on his chamber pot oblivious. The queen whore is trying to strangle the dwarf. The incestious family plots abound. Soon he will be killed by dwarf. The macheivellian hound has been bled on the rock. The little girl with the blade has been set free…

Jon Snow, will you make a deal with the giants? Will the red queen put a spell on you as he did with the bewitched King of the North. Will you drink her blood? For everyone drinks blood here. Everyone loses his legs. Everyone will have to fly. Everyone meets the Tree God eventually… But the journey must be made consciously, the inspiration must be from beyond. Forward and onward, though the winds and snows and whatever comes our way…

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