The Problem of Being

The problem of being a dreamer, a reader, a writer is fantasy. Most other people live in the world, whereas the dreamer, the reader, the writer is carried out of it, either involving themselves in the true or fictive tale of strangers, or dreaming for themselves the impossible, the miraculous, even to some degree believing this reality could happen, or at the very least feeling these delusions to be safer. There is no possibility of being really hurt or causing pain to someone else, and any perceived deficiencies and inadequacies don't matter – they can more easily be overlooked or overcome. And illusions, well, they have none of the humdrum, as they naturally take place in a different world than the one inhabited; these two realities are separated, one inside the mind, one without. Although, of course, if this line grows blurred, converges, sanity may depart or the closely observed discipline of isolation may be more and more strictly exercised. In isolation – circumstantially or self imposed – starts fantasy and self-denial, such as pledges to perhaps admire those persons who are “wild” or less meek or have a geography, a personal and public history. Those who were born in one place and ended in another; those who in exile found their voice or talent, and perhaps too the “home” they failed to see when they lived there; those who like our ancestors are forever moving, making, and marking, their territory by naming their “things” in it; those whose instinctive sense of direction is not like the dreamer, the reader, the writer blunted by settlement and rootedness.

Picture credit: Guardian of Desert, 1941, Nicholas Roerich (source: WikiArt)

From journal, September 2022.