I’ve always wondered why rings have been more significant than any other piece of jewelry. Why can’t we have engagement earrings? Double the gold, double the diamonds, closer to the face! Maybe because you can’t fling a pair of earrings in a hissy fit? Pulling out a ring and flinging it is far more dramatic than unscrewing earrings.
I grew up in one of the most feckless decades of all history, the 80’s. The 80’s were the end of all jewelry. Everything was plastic, ugly and cheap. No one wore anything that was worth anything. Neither aesthetically nor monetarily. People were paying for the walkman and perms. In the small back of beyond, bombed looking concrete jungle that I grew up in, the first head phoned sapien was a sight to behold. He had just spent a year in the US of A and decided to come back with a mullet, acid wash shorts, 20 extra kilos and a walkman on his hip. I don’t know if people pointed at him and guffawed, but they definitely did the guffawing. Society was putrescent.
All of them pointers are now paying dearly for that crime. They all have no hair, huge headphones and are sporting acid wash vests. With one more thing. A thing that’s more precious than anything Gollum stole. A thing that makes Bilbo’s paranoia look like a mild case of forgetfulness. A thing that Frodo would have carried to the ends of middle earth but would give an arm to not throw it in a fire. It’s the thing that rings. The thing that should only ring, but does that and also everything.
We have love for these ringers. And we have more. We have an obsession to check them every moment. The insecurity of leaving them on a table and risking others taking a peek at ‘em. The anxiety of having forgotten them. The panic when we really lose them.
We have all become ring-bearers. We all carry the burden of the ring. There’s evil there. Siri is the Nazgul and remember Sauron doesn’t need a crystal ball to know what we're doing. He gave us a ringer. And the eye is always upon us.
