tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40126360595443386722024-02-20T19:05:22.507-08:00What Imagination Looks LikeThis is here because it needs to be. This is here because imagination can mean all of the difference in the world, or none of it. This is here because nothing means so much as the tomorrow we imagine, the yesterday as we understand it, and the smell of suspected magic. So, if you fancy, this is here to help in the remembering of what, for lack of a more magnificent word, is imagining.wytwavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10999942682216870834noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012636059544338672.post-52511808324805220512013-11-03T18:51:00.000-08:002013-11-04T07:27:44.414-08:00Summertime Headaches<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This summer, I got a concussion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, considering how many dangerous and
life-threatening things I’ve done in the past, the story of how this happened
is rather silly, and I’ll leave it for another day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what happened in the days after the
concussion wasn’t silly at all—at least not to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, I forgot how to dream, and it’s one
of the most terrifying things I’ve ever experienced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It shook away my confidence, and briefly took
away many of the things I know to be true about myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, the truth is that I forgot how to
be me, and I had to wait—uncomfortably—for my imagination to rescue the self
I’ve taken so long to grow into.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thankfully, it did, and this is that story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Let me back up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once
upon a time, I wrote a story about a man who forgot how to dream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For so long, he dreamed of the same basic
things: a good car, a lovely loving wife, and a job he enjoyed that provided a
good paycheck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then, once all those
things were found, he missed the dreaming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And he realized that ne no longer remembered how to dream because he’d
spent so many years dreaming about only those same few things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The story came from many places, but especially from the
discovery that I spent much more time daydreaming than many of my colleagues
and friends did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me, daydreaming was
a way of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t imagine a day
going by without my imagining what Might be instead of what Was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, this isn’t to say that I was living for
tomorrow—I just loved telling myself stories in down-time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While sitting in traffic, while trying to go
to sleep, while killing time between classes or waiting for friends, I’d tell
myself stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I was bored, or
feeling down, or sick, or lonely, I automatically resorted to daydreams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, maybe just as significantly, I’d always
imagined that everyone around me was doing the same, carrying on a life in
their minds just as they carried on their wonderful lives on the ground.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly, I found out that my friends’
daydreams weren’t nearly so involved as mine were, that theirs were often
repetitive or short lived, whereas mine might continue from one day to the next
in installments—one afternoon, I’d pick up where I’d left off the night before,
and so on and so on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My dreams were
never simple, and rarely even based in reality, and never complete.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They didn’t have happy endings because they
never ended.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now, saying all that, it may sound like I live my life
daydreaming the world away from my couch, but the truth is that most of my
daydreaming occurs when I’m telling myself stories to go to sleep at night, or
sitting in traffic on the bus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Otherwise, I’m working, writing, reading, and spending time with family
and friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never get bored because I
can resort to those daydreams at any given moment, but I don’t spend
significant chunks of any given day lost in my mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unless...and there must be an ‘unless’ after
all...I’m ill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m lucky enough,
admittedly, that this rarely happens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
can count on one hand the number of times I’ve spent more than one day home
from work in the last few years, and only twice before this summer have I
missed two or more days in a row—once for my wisdom teeth, and once with an
inner ear infection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In both cases, I
went into a semi-hibernation-mode, daydreaming constantly and spending all of
my time with my pets, sipping hot tea and watching favorite re-runs in between
daydreams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, in this fashion, I
recovered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, in all truth, this is
how I am whenever I’m sick—I get better with the help of medicine, but what
keeps me sane when I’m stuck at home sick boils down to two key
ingredients:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my pets and my
daydreams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, if more than a day or so
goes by with me being stuck on a couch, re-runs of favorite shows for human
company, seaQuest in particular.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Well, fast forward to this summer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I manage to get a concussion when I’m
teaching at a boarding school twelve hours away from my animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, to make things worse, the concussion makes
it impossible for me to gain enough focus to sustain any sort of daydream at
all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Adding insult to injury, any sort
of attempt to tell myself a story gets me no result but a headache, and there’s
no television at hand to allow me to listen to that old comfort, seaQuest (my
dvds were twelve hours away, anyway, along with my hounddog and cats).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For two days, I was in that hibernation-mode
I spoke of, waking long enough to drink some water or eat a banana before going
fast back to sleep, doing little more (I think) than grunting a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hello to anyone who might stop in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After those two days, though, I was
awake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And terrified.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because I couldn’t daydream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any
attempt to call up those old characters and story-lines stalled out at the
first picture I could create, leading to either headaches or exhaustion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t explain the problem to my
colleagues, and the furred companions who might have provided some relief were
too far away to be of any help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a
full day and a half, it felt as if I couldn’t remember how to be myself at all,
and as if that bump on the head had stolen away far more than a few days of
work--instead, it had stolen my imagination as a whole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Mentally, I was in more of a panic than I’ve ever felt in my life, and I
was utterly terrified that verbalizing the panic would only make the loss more
real. Plus, how on earth do you tell your colleagues that you've forgotten how to daydream, and are now living in terror as a result?</span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Then, three days after getting the concussion, and a day and
a half after realizing I couldn’t muster a dream, I went to sleep to discover
that my imagination had been concocting a solution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now, this may seem an odd way of putting it, but you have to
understand: my nightdreams are very different from my daydreams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My daydreams are continuous, fairly linear,
and peopled by consistent characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
nightdreams are the same, but far less realistic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rarely do I have a simple conversation or any
sort of sustained calm scene in my dreams at night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somehow, though, my imagination changed
habits for some few days to help me heal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In my dreams, I suddenly found myself surrounded by
animals and friends, curled in their apartments for long conversations and time with creatures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most especially, I was surrounded by the
friends I’ve had over the years who are allergic to animals, some of whom I’ve
seen as recently as this summer and some who I haven’t seen in more than a
decade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the dreams I had on and off
over the next forty-eight hours of recovery, I kept on closing my eyes to find
myself in the homes of those friends I’ve known who couldn’t be around animals—dogs
or cats or both.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the dreams, I’d be
sitting by, surrounded by their animals as they relished the discovery that
they were no longer allergic, and adopted countless animals as a result.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my dreams, I saw my friends’ apartments and houses
covered in animals, I held countless cats and dogs, and I discovered the
comfort of animals all over again while catching up (in my mind, at least) with old friends. Each time I slept, my dreams were continuous, calm, and more linear than any (night)dreams I've ever known.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d
wake up feeling refreshed from conversation with friends and from creature
comfort, and knowing I was healing, finally. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For a few days, I still couldn’t dream when awake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But my nightdreams were so different from
those I’d normally have, and what I needed so clearly gifted to me by my
imagination, that I suddenly didn’t doubt I was returning to health, and that
all would be well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Always, I’ve thought of my imagination as my self—it is so
much a part of me that I’m simply not anything at all without it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This summer, I lost it briefly and learned
otherwise (in a way), but I also grew to be ever more thankful for my
imagination, and for the daydreams that wait to greet me whenever I happen to
need them, or simply want them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
meanwhile, I’m back with my animals, fully recovered, and rather thankful for
that terrifying week, strange as it seems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After all—now I know that my imagination is there to come to the rescue,
as needed, as I always somewhat suspected.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
wytwavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10999942682216870834noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012636059544338672.post-73853308042788289322013-04-10T19:45:00.000-07:002013-04-10T19:45:10.395-07:00Safe Enough to Imagine Safety
It’s something we’d like to forget, but the truth
is, we imagine safety.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
We imagine that we can keep our loved ones safe,
and that we ourselves are kept safe by them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We imagine that our sense of safety is more than a feeling—that it is
something powerful, something worth something, something real.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, the truth is, it isn’t.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Safety is something I’ve learned to imagine for
myself, and while I treasure the power to do so, I know fairly clearly that the
comfort I feel is a by-product of my imagination, and nothing more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t matter whether or not my locks are
latched, what time it is, who else is in my home, or where I live.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What matters is that my imagination has
learned how to believe in the possibility of safety, and with this education,
my imagination not only allows me this sense of comfort, but actually helps me
reinforce the sense that, for now [for ever?], I am safe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Go ahead—plop me on a city street at 2 AM, on
my couch at 4 AM, on a bus at 6 AM, or in a broken down car at any time at
all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chances are, I’ll feel safe because—and
this is key—I Know How to Feel Safe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
have the Confidence to Feel Safe. Simply, I’ll repeat:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve learned how to believe in the
possibility of safety, and so I feel it.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
I’m reminded of this tonight, when someone in my
home feels unsafe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, some of you
might discount everything I say because you know that my beloved Arthur is a
hounddog, an English Coonhound (mix?) to be exact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He came to us from a shelter, which he came
to after being homeless for one of the rainiest months (or longer) that I
remember, and that state itself was a state he reached after some significant
abuse at the hands of humans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We know
his history from stories and from scars and from reactions, and we know it is
real.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We know, without a doubt, that any
safety he ever felt was the by-product of those he lived with, and shattered
with what came of that situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To put
it simply, he’s mostly forgotten how to feel safe.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Now, I can imagine resolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can imagine that, even if the unthinkable
(of any nature) were to burst my world, I could then recover.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Well, I grew up knowing safety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
grew up in a world where I was never intentionally hurt or humiliated, and
where no stranger ever injured my reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I grew up day-dreaming happy endings to horror stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I grew up believing that death was the
closest thing to unsafety that I could ever know, because I learned at a very
young age what death seemed to mean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thus, in my mind, as long as I could think, my own safety was real.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My only worry was the loss of others, but at
the least, daydreaming was a mental refuge...a mental safety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if only in my mind, I knew what safety
felt like.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Tonight, watching our rescued pup pant and tremble
and wish for safety, I’m reminded of the luxury of my imagination, and of its
blessing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because while there may be
people and spaces who make me feel especially safe, and other people and spaces
that make me feel threatened, I am for the most part a creature who knows the
comfort of safety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I grew up believing
that I could be safe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I grew up knowing,
falsely or not, that everything would be okay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
I would give anything—even, probably, my own ability
for safety (and, yes, I’ve come to believe that it is indeed an ability allowed
by imagination)—to help my Arthur believe that everything will be okay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this isn’t a question of language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much as I’d like to be able to have a
conversation with him, it wouldn’t matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What matters, really, is the fact that someone stole this part of his
imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someone made him unsafe,
someone showed him the falsity of believing in guaranteed safety, and someone
wounded his imagination...and thus his health...without giving a second thought
to why that was an evil. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, Arthur is
a hounddog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is a sweet, loving,
handsome, scarred, and terrified hounddog, but watching him, I know that his
fear is the same fear any creature—dog or human or otherwise—must feel when
safety, or the possibility thereof, is stolen. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Now, I’m left to imagine safety for both of
us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m left to imagine that he can
eventually come to imagine safety again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m left to believe, however falsely, that safety is more than illusion,
and that imaginatio is more than passtime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m left to imagine that imagination can help us to remember how to feel
safe, even when both imagination and safety have been stolen, even when
imagination seems, unforgivably, unimaginable.<o:p></o:p><br />
wytwavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10999942682216870834noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012636059544338672.post-52415754542549634582013-01-26T04:21:00.001-08:002013-01-26T04:21:54.396-08:00A Wounded Imagination<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a little girl, I lived in many different worlds. Whether it had to do with books read out loud at bedtime, loving parents, the space to be myself, or going to sleep still reeling from stories of MacGyver and Trixie Belden...well, I don't know. But many different worlds all belonged to me, and I belonged to them. My favorite was a simple fantasy that left its marks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I believed--without doubt or suspicion--that there was an entrance to a world somewhere not too far away, one way that I could simply stumble into. There, all of the characters I knew from film and tv and cartoons were real, and they watched our worlds and others on their own televisions, assuming they had them. Of course, stumbling into one world meant you could no longer exist in the other. And certainly, you could never go back, stumbling or otherwise. For a very very long time, the world inspired me and saved me in turns.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Some few years ago, I saw previews for a movie called <em>Enchanted</em>, and I was terrified of all it could be...or not be. And so, thrilled at the possibility that someone else might have brought to film some shape of ideas I'd once thrived on, a character from elsewhere finding this world in the reverse of what I'd once imagined, I went to see the movie...and was heartbroken. You see, it immaturely mocked, and attempted (in my mind) to ruin what I'd once known so well. Piece by piece, it picked apart some of the magic I grew up with. From what I remember, it got lousy reviews, and though I put little faith in critical acclaim, I'd say that that's for the single fact that the filmmakers underestimated the power of imagination, and the bravery of children, and the potential for adults to still believe in fantasy. I left the theater in tears, heartbroken, angry, and more disillusioned with the wrong power of hollywood than I expected. The emotion was for myself and lost potential, and for the kids who I thought would never find what I grew up with, because a movie ruined it for them before it ever began. Certainly, the world and magic from my childhood wouldn't disappear from memory, but I never expected that they could be remembered with all of the splendor I thought was lost in that theater. After all, how could I think back to them without being touched by the ruin of that disappointment which had so much untouched potential? I didn't expect the magic of that world to reappear with all of its grand force, ever.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And yet, this week, it was brought back by the same medium that tarnished what I thought to be untouchable. After putting it off for a very long time, perhaps in part because of the disappointment noted above, I began watching <em>Once Upon a Time. </em>Now, no television series or movie can fully ruin or recreate the imagined world of a young girl lost in her own creations. But watching the first episodes of <em>Once Upon a Time</em>, I began to re-believe in the magic of film, and to see the potential and possibility of that art which I'd lost the magic of in a quick and irreverant mocking of imagination. I don't know--and nor do I really want to, truth be told--whether the creators of <em>Once Upon a Time</em> saw <em>Enchanted</em>, and were inspired to eventually fix that undone magic that I must believe others imagined along with myself. But, if they did, for this viewer at least, they succeeded, and fixed in place some magic of their own. And, I don't know whether the future episodes will stand up to the magic set forth in the beginning, even the ones which aired a year ago and I've yet to see, but what's already done is created, and the magic in my memory is no longer wounded, which I'll be ever thankful for.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">So, here, at this point I begin. And this won't be a blog of fiction or poetry, or hopefully even of what you might expect, even from an odd creature like me. Simply, here, I aim to celebrate the magic of imagination, and the glittery potential of our thoughts, which we too often forget. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span>wytwavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10999942682216870834noreply@blogger.com1