The Fantasy...& A Beginning

I'm not sure that I should be starting this blog with a post about a fantasy that is far away from the home I'm about to create, but it's a fantasy that will color... perhaps taint... all moving forward from here. It seems, if nothing else, an honest place to begin.

In the midst of my husband's and my search for a more permanent place to call home and the immense struggle this has engendered for me, I asked myself to imagine what my ideal home might be. Somewhat surprisingly, my imagination, or unconscious, drew up a picture of a Thoreau-like shack in the midst of a clearing within the woods: Sunny, yet private. The shack is one room, and to describe it as sparsely furnished is an understatement. There is a mattress in the corner and pillows scattered on the floor for seating.

And it is beautiful.

I buy yards and yards of lovely fabric and hang it from the ceiling while I line the perimeter of the floor with white candles, which I light every night. (Because it’s fantasy, I don’t worry too much about the fabric igniting and burning the place down.)

And I live with a guy—it was originally his shack, and he invites me to be with him. In the original fantasy he is a glass-blower; though sometimes he shows up as a musician. Either way, he’s the creative type: The kind of guy who forgoes wealth and the accumulation of material things for the sake of his craft; uncompromising in his creativity, and in his life. I get to play the role of muse, sometimes helping to write song lyrics or inspire the color of his glass, always inspiring him to bridge the possible and the real via his imagination. And we understand each other without talking. Present between us is what I might describe as a soul connection that we both just feel. And I realize that that's home—the connection, the understanding, the belonging. I further realize that, fantasy or not, it doesn't matter much if my fabric catches fire and burns the place down, because home will still be there, in that invisible something between & connecting us.

The creation of my actual new home, which is about to begin, is happening against the backdrop of this fantasy.

I'm doing my best not to compare reality to something that does not exist.