“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality”
The Cheshire Cat
I’ve spent great periods of time living inside my own head. After all we have to spend far too much time living in the real world. A place where we work for a living, have bills to pay, relationships to maintain and families to keep happy. The world provided by a book, TV programme, film, music or even the internet can be great sources of escape into our imagination. Or someone else’s if another person created it.
The world of reality was always a scary enough place, but it tends to feel worse as you get older. I was pregnant and gave birth to my son during the first gulf war. Suddenly news was available 24 hours a day, just at a time when I was up half the night. It made me fear the future more than I’d imagined I ever should. It was irritating that the additional responsibilities of motherhood made it difficult to escape reality. But it was a learning experience.
That was 30 years ago and now it is almost impossible to avoid world events unless you actively distance yourself from all electronic devices. During the pandemic I’ve founds myself at the same time sucking up all the available information and actively avoiding me. For one things it’s exhausting.
During this most recent lockdown I read about a dozen books. Which considering I started back to work in January was no mean feat. It did lead to a bit of a lull here on my blog, though February photofest came along in a timely way. I chose books of all types of genre, but especially enjoyed this trilogy. Escaping reality for a murder mystery definitely floats my boat!
Just before I started writing for the April A-Z, I revisited some kink / erotica and got myself down a bit of a rabbit hole of M/s novels. It’s a struggle to find something that catches my imagination, either they are too short, or too much of a prescribed formula. But I’ve been reading some of the Claire Thompson books, I actually go for some of the extreme stuff. Kidnapped to a desert island and turned into a slave, kind of thing. Probably because that kind of erotic fiction really only belongs in the imagination. The reality would be brutal but offers escapism for someone like me. A slave who likes a lot of things more in theory than practise.
For the last few weeks I’ve been able to get back to swimming, walking there and back. As well as stepping up my exercise regime at home. This is another way that I can escape the realities of life, allowing my head to clear. In the pool I find I stop thinking about anything but each length, focusing on and in the moment. There are few things that ever allow me to do that.
Course there are times when I don’t need to be doing anything at all to daydream and escape into my own imagination. But I’ll leave that for another time.
In the modern world, it is difficult to escape from reality. Even on a desert island, they will find and infect a covid.
I also try to read everything I find if I liked the author. This sometimes leads to frustration. It is wrong to think that if you like one piece, then others will be interesting. Although it also happens.
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