Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Absent Fantasy

Words fill my head like a stream, a river of consciousness, the thoughts flow. My waterfall of thought crashes against the rocks of depression only to end there. The thoughts are destroyed and motivation banished. Words mean so little to me these days. I say them and feel nothing. No rainbows and giant trees, orcs and trolls are absent from the strange lands that my mind used to inhabit. The world of fantasy is empty and I am left alone in an empty field with gray skies. When the world of fantasy starts to look bleak then I begin to live more in the real world. My mind and my time are spent longer and longer in the real world. Bills, responsibilities, pain, depression attack from all sides, but the real world has beauty in it too, love, friendship, excitement and deeper sights and smells than my fantasy world ever had. I the rich smell of wood smoke and the feel of an autumn breeze exist in the real world but they are passing experiences. So I hold them tight and steal them away in through the door of fantasy. I grab as much of these experiences as I can but when they get into my world of fantasy they don’t have the same splendor. The imagined autumn tree has become flat and the rich fragrance of wood smoke is nothing but a wisp of a memory.

            My fantasy world used to take a tree and create a forest. One unique tree could even inspire an entire story. The tree could be ugly, strange or beautiful, it didn’t matter. Whenever I saw something so unique that I felt it didn’t belong in the real world I would steal it, I would take it to join the fantasy in my mind. In my fantasy world trees could talk if they were ancient enough, regular people could be heroes or villains, cats were magical, well more magical than in real life, and I could be free.

            I feel like my world has started to mirror the never-ending story. The nothing consumed the Never Ending storybook and destroyed the wondrous creatures that lived there. I feel that the Nothing has come for my fantasy world and it makes me nervous. Though I hope that this absence of fantasy is temporary. Maybe the Nothing didn’t consume my fantasy world, but instead I have become too tainted by stress and the real world to see the fantasy before my eyes. The fantasy creatures that once lived in my world still exist, but I just cannot see them. I miss them. I write about characters like Pumpkin Jack, the Gravedigger, Hobbs, the Vanguard, those hundreds of characters named Joseph and Jack, the lands like Hallows end, Bokro, Dark town and autumn carnival, I write about these people and places but I can’t see them as much anymore. I used to be able to picture them so clearly as if they stood in front of me but now I write about them from memory of what I think they would do and say. I miss them and I don’t know how to return to the worlds I once created. This is not the first time I have felt distant from my stories, but it might be one of the longest times I have gone without writing, or without visiting the fantasyland in my imagination.

            I am sure there are plenty of people who would be confused or not understand the severity of what I am talking about, some might think I am insane and lost my grip with reality, sadly I have not, I know all too well what reality is. To dream makes us human and the capacity for fantasy is one of greatest gift you could have. Children have the capacity for fantasy and the live half in fantasy and half in reality, but parents either choose not to nurture this gift or they straight out destroy it. Some people die but continue to walk through life thinking they are alive. This society is not made for dreamers and artists, this world is cold and hard and you have to look for the good and the warm. Every human has to search for the good in life and some never find it.

            In my opinion, the nicest thing you could do for someone is make them a meal and tell them a story. 

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