Not only could i live in imagination, i deeply feel, maybe even fear?- that is where i have been living my entire life….the old idea of “life is but a dream…”…that sort of thing.
I’ve lived in my imagination as a child – but i suppose what child doesn’t ?- and was joined in my fancies of imagination by such partners as Disney, Saturday morning cartoons and amenable neighborhood pals who liked to play all sorts of games with me. Funny, though, now i don’t remember those games, really….just lots of running around…i vaguely remember playing some sort of cops and robbers, or cowboys and Indians games with some of my older brothers friends…running through woods….the smell of the leaves…dry leaves of Fall..the crunch underfoot….but that dry crisp leaf smell….comforting.
I’ve lived my adult life almost totally imagining what it is, was, or should be, or what i wished it to be….my entire life in show business was nothing if not the pushing of the boundaries of my imagination to attempt to realize what at times seemed impossible,….often it turned out to be possible…not only possible, but truly fun and real…at least it felt real at the time…
But I suppose that is the imaginations job: to make it all seem real
Imagination…a curse or a blessing? Both, of course.
I imagined my entire first marriage…i imagine him to be straight, or at least i imagined our sex life proved he was straight….i imagined a strength there, a strength that was really only mutual need that lasted for
half a century, although the marriage did not…our friendship lasted fifty years, until his death…but my imagined Prince became very much a commoner throughout those years. Very much a vulnerable, down off his horse commoner indeed.
Then, my 2nd marriage? A journey of the imagination if ever there was one: to imagine a man, a beautiful man 25 years younger than me could not only love me, but choose to stay married to me for 20 years….we are still married, but now he is in his mid-life growing phase – a phase i remember all too well – and it scares us both with its power of yearning and dissatisfaction. While we remain devoted in our love, devoted in our
caring, it is so hard for me not to step in and try to fix everything…..which is an impossible thing anyway, but i imagine i can do it, right…there’s that imagination again.
SO…blessing or curse?
Only the imagination- whatever mysterious realm it comes from in the mind or the brain – can cause the sort of anxiety humans experience, perhaps animals as well….i imagine they feel terror like we do….but if it were not for that son-of-a-bitching imagination, with its wild and wooly ways, maybe fear would not be such a ravenous monster.
Then, again, it is our imagination (break down that word: image- in- nation….a land where all things are mere images ?) …it is our imagination that has the power to lift us out of the terror and into a land f calm and meditation……..
The windmills of our minds, a a famous song writing duo came up with.
WE are tossed on its capacious sails, and like a classic old hero on horseback, we try to ride those sails.