thoughts on the day, (another emailing)
AT THE MIDDLE PASSAGE
By Walter Mills
Different Realities
When you are considered strange as a child, you cannot forget it when you grow up. The only difference is that now I can appreciate strangeness, and I recall that strange kid who was me with fondness.
When I was a teenager, living in my attic room in my parent’s house on Krick Street, I owned a huge collection of science fiction and fantasy novels and science fiction magazines. For years I read almost nothing else, caught up in dreams of distant futures and alien worlds, far different realities than the one my schoolmates lived in.
At the time I never thought of it as an escape: what did I need to escape from? My life was not burdened by any noticeable hardship. Although we weren’t well off, both my mother and father worked, and we always had enough. We lived in a neat house on a quiet street in an older neighborhood in Norfolk, Va., which is a medium-sized, working class city. I had friends on the block who came over and played touch football in our backyard. It was an ordinary mid-century boyhood.
Except that half of the time I was living in a different world. My desire to inhabit these strange universes was so intense that I would carry paperback books in my coat pocket and read sitting on a curb while waiting for a bus, in the short breaks in between classes, and in my room late into the night, reading with my eyes burning until the last sentence of the last page was finished.
Anyone who has been an avid reader as a child has probably been accused by parents or other grown-ups of living in a fantasy, being unwilling to face reality, or just wasting time. Although I didn’t accept their judgment back then, I’m beginning to think there was some truth in what they said.
I didn’t just want the world to be different; I wanted it to be different over and over again. It was the sheer weight of reality pressing down on me that made me want to escape.
Almost everyone has had a dream in which he soars like a bird above the countryside, swooping effortlessly with outstretched arms. This is the dream about escaping our daily life and physical bounds, our boundness to a particular time and circumstance. So much of what we are is fixed, and most of our freedom is illusory. This seemed particularly true when I was a teenager and I really was limited in my freedom, unless I was willing to run away from my comfortable home and live a marginal existence on the streets of a strange city.
What bothered me was the difference between what I imagined, with the help of these wonderful books, and what I could actually be. It is like that tale of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and as a result was chained to a rock and pecked at by birds. Instead of a literal fire, I think of that tale as being about the fire of our imagination or self-consciousness bound to the rock of a physical body. Or in the lyrics of the rock song by the Police – “We are spirits in the material world.”
Which is why in this season of twilight and shadow, we are susceptible to a little unreality. On the last night of October the veil between human and spirit is at its thinnest. On this night, fairies step across the boundary and walk down the lanes, stand in the doorways, rummage in the kitchens of humanfolk.
Halloween retains the remnants of this old belief. The old Gaelic word, Samhain, pronounced Saw-win, was the Irish name for the last day of October. It means summer’s end, and fires were lit inside hollowed out turnips and pumpkins, and the hearth fire was allowed to go out. Spirits of the dead walked the earth.
(The above column originally appeared in the Centre Daily Times and is copyright © 2006 by Walter Mills. All rights reserved worldwide. To contact Walt, address your emails to wmills@chilitech.com ).
By Walter Mills
Different Realities
When you are considered strange as a child, you cannot forget it when you grow up. The only difference is that now I can appreciate strangeness, and I recall that strange kid who was me with fondness.
When I was a teenager, living in my attic room in my parent’s house on Krick Street, I owned a huge collection of science fiction and fantasy novels and science fiction magazines. For years I read almost nothing else, caught up in dreams of distant futures and alien worlds, far different realities than the one my schoolmates lived in.
At the time I never thought of it as an escape: what did I need to escape from? My life was not burdened by any noticeable hardship. Although we weren’t well off, both my mother and father worked, and we always had enough. We lived in a neat house on a quiet street in an older neighborhood in Norfolk, Va., which is a medium-sized, working class city. I had friends on the block who came over and played touch football in our backyard. It was an ordinary mid-century boyhood.
Except that half of the time I was living in a different world. My desire to inhabit these strange universes was so intense that I would carry paperback books in my coat pocket and read sitting on a curb while waiting for a bus, in the short breaks in between classes, and in my room late into the night, reading with my eyes burning until the last sentence of the last page was finished.
Anyone who has been an avid reader as a child has probably been accused by parents or other grown-ups of living in a fantasy, being unwilling to face reality, or just wasting time. Although I didn’t accept their judgment back then, I’m beginning to think there was some truth in what they said.
I didn’t just want the world to be different; I wanted it to be different over and over again. It was the sheer weight of reality pressing down on me that made me want to escape.
Almost everyone has had a dream in which he soars like a bird above the countryside, swooping effortlessly with outstretched arms. This is the dream about escaping our daily life and physical bounds, our boundness to a particular time and circumstance. So much of what we are is fixed, and most of our freedom is illusory. This seemed particularly true when I was a teenager and I really was limited in my freedom, unless I was willing to run away from my comfortable home and live a marginal existence on the streets of a strange city.
What bothered me was the difference between what I imagined, with the help of these wonderful books, and what I could actually be. It is like that tale of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and as a result was chained to a rock and pecked at by birds. Instead of a literal fire, I think of that tale as being about the fire of our imagination or self-consciousness bound to the rock of a physical body. Or in the lyrics of the rock song by the Police – “We are spirits in the material world.”
Which is why in this season of twilight and shadow, we are susceptible to a little unreality. On the last night of October the veil between human and spirit is at its thinnest. On this night, fairies step across the boundary and walk down the lanes, stand in the doorways, rummage in the kitchens of humanfolk.
Halloween retains the remnants of this old belief. The old Gaelic word, Samhain, pronounced Saw-win, was the Irish name for the last day of October. It means summer’s end, and fires were lit inside hollowed out turnips and pumpkins, and the hearth fire was allowed to go out. Spirits of the dead walked the earth.
(The above column originally appeared in the Centre Daily Times and is copyright © 2006 by Walter Mills. All rights reserved worldwide. To contact Walt, address your emails to wmills@chilitech.com ).
posted by eccentric recluse at 6:01 AM
3 Comments:
Happy Halloween, my dear. We are the things that go bump in the night... though mostly now we just go... type type type. Pity the children who succeeded in fitting in. They gave up their individuality for temporary "cool." Some others, failing to fit, learned to revel impishly in their individuality. ;)
Nice post.
I didn't read much as a child because my imagination was so strong I didn't need any kind of help LOL.
Unfortunately the world and its discouragements helped to ruin some of that.
BTW, one of the drawbacks of the phone is that I can see some images and not others. I am at a regular computer right now, and just saw your "catolantern" for the first time. Sooooo cute!!!!
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