I sometimes complain about my tiny apartment and the crappy state in which I keep it, but I only do that when I bother to notice it. That's not where I live, not really. I vow to clean it and organize it and upgrade it, but then I slide into one of my more important worlds and the disordered state of my humble earthly apartment no longer holds a position of any significant priority.
Don't get me wrong. It's not disgusting. There's nothing rotting or smelling too bad, and the garbage gets taken out weekly. Well, pretty close to weekly. I feel bad about neglecting my place, mostly when there's a chance of having another human being over, but the feeling slips away as soon as I have somewhere else, somewhere better, to be.
Where do I live? I live in a fantasy world. Actually, I live in several fantasy worlds, and I always have.
I live in a world where, when I go to work, I am surrounding by people who are laughing, and dancing, and singing, and joking. They are spirited, emotional, smart, funny, and compassionate, with positive views of the world and optimistic visions for the future. They like working hard, even requesting of me the privilege of doing so, even if their focus is occasionally brief and personal goals are mobile targets. I've read Lord Dunsany, Hope Mirlees, Spenser, and Shakespeare. I know the land wherein I work, and the nature of the folk with whom I work. I get to work under the crepuscular canvases of distantly glittering diamonds on backgrounds of Indian ink, and also under Monet dawns and Bierstadt sunsets. These are not, I suspect, the skies that most of us see in our everyday lives.
And that's just when the weather is nice.
At other times, I work under fay skies of gray under which distance and dimension are lost along with perspective, and when I'm really lucky, there rolls in a fog worthy of Doyle or Hammett. When the day lacks the interesting character of notable weather, it reverts to the default mode of beautiful and mild-to-warm, the take-it-for-granted weather of dreams and childhood memories of transplanted Midwesterners like myself.
Truly, when I walk out my front door, I get confirmation that I live and work in a place not quite of the quotidian.
Should I then talk of my social life? I dine like a fantasy of a hungry youth: pizza for the asking any and sometimes every night of the week, with an auburn-haired princess by my side, consumed with world-class beer or exquisite wine, any of which- food, companionship, comestibles- would be the envy of kings and caliphs, khans and czars. Every dinner is the stuff of fairytales. And when my princess cooks...well, there are even limits to hyperbole. How much can one use the terms "best ever," "unbelievable," and "fantastic?" I cannot imagine better food. It is said that an employee at the best pizza restaurant in town tells his customers how much better was the pizza that he had from her hands.
That's just what, for sake of a simplistic reference point, I refer to as my "real life." The worlds where I spend most of my time? Well, that will just have to wait until the next installment.
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