Life is just a fantasy
06 October 2011 12:22 PM Categories: Quotidian existence
It was for wish fulfillment, the opportunity to recreate reality in a rosier hue.
Who can resist a life of fantasy, the ability to live in one's head? Unfortunately, it’s my head. The stories I come up with, the reworked scenes from the past, the present-day complaints, are all about me. My brain is no fiction factory. It’s a self-obsessed dreamworks with me as the witty, darkly sensitive main character.
I am slowing down my obsessive mind, discouraging it from wanting things it can’t have or from believing that want equals need equals reality, that desire and obsession have predictive qualities, that old hurts need to be palpitated until the sting fades. Still, the desire to fantasize reappears on occasion and I have to tamp down the story that forms. This morning, my mind lingered over a gesture. The gesture could have been two weeks ago, it could have been years ago. Maybe I still know the person, maybe we parted ways. We certainly aren’t confidants, but my mind holds this gesture, this last touch, tenderly.
It was a friendly, light punch to the arm, almost lingering, the warmth of what wasn’t. We were slightly out of context, separated by a foot or two, and there was the reach and recede. His aura, his energy, was palpable, a force field of comfort and heat, something to sink into. I was receptive, though it no longer mattered.
This was a moment to slow down and savor. To interpret endlessly. It was about possibility and hope, about what could have been. I could write paragraphs about it, sensual things on unfulfilled hunger and hidden intent. But I’ve gone on enough about it, have captured it. Away it goes, stored up for the really lonely times.
We kissed in the dark on the hood of a car. We fumbled against the wall. Your now-or-never lunge across the couch sealed the deal. All these memories, these ruminations and relivings, are part of a comforting fantasy that nothing ever really ends, that I am connected to everyone I’ve ever loved forever, that what happened between us gives me continued possession. I even entertain the notion that we could recouple, like those older people whose weddings are sometimes in the New York Times, the old flames who love anew, entire happy lives behind them and more happiness waiting.
On my new march towards realism, towards a life not lost in fantasy (still, the heat of the gesture lingers; I don't want it to go away), I remind myself how wrong most of these people were for me. Non-thinkers. Homophobes. A Republican? A hunter? A stoner? Our politics clashed. Our ways of being in the world did not match up. Long-term love was never an option.
Give it up, fantasy maker, I told my mind. Live in the now. Remember? Kid, husband, house, animals? Your good, lucky life?
It seems to be working. For the most part.
For those who now have the Aldo Nova song going through your head, I apologize. And offer this link.
Image by Biscotte.
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