Why do you read HoME?

[mark12_30]

In the early seventies I had the psychedelically-bordered map of Middle-Earth on my wall, and I used to gaze with great longing at the Ered Luin. There was an elvish air about them, sketched, hinted at, remote and unknown and wreathed in mystery.

I've collected most if not all of HoME, and have opened each book, and read a fair amount if not all of most of them. But the tale (and poem) I return to again and again is The Cottage of Lost Play. There is an innocence and mystery about it, and about Kortirion; a dreamy longing, sensucht, what could be, like the misty Ered Luin on the far western edge of the map. It is that that I love the most about Tolkien. And when LOTR feels too finished and packaged and done, and I want the mystery and the desire again, I can go to the cottage by the shore, or to Kortirion, for the hint of something ancient and filled with longing