Wednesday, Jan. 07, 2004 | 11:20 PM

Warning: slight Return of the King Spoiler Ahead.

I saw LOTR again tonight, and every time I see it I find more in it and love it more. What an achievement. Jesus Christ.

I was thinking about the very beginning shot tonight. Smeagle is fishing and yet he is the one who will be caught. I thought about Smeagle putting that worm on the hook, and how he becomes a hooked worm metaphorically in the face of The One True Ring's power. And I thought about T.S. Eliot's Prufrock:

And I have known the eyes already, known them all
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

I'll formulate all of this more later, but I just wanted to get that down. I am so moved by this mythology. It's opened up something in me-- some greater universal understanding. And not to be cheesy (which I'm gonig to be) but I think I can safely say I'd be alright in any situation if I just asked myself, What would Frodo do? and then behaved accordingly.