[and Flash Gordon was there in silver underwear...]

I'm reading a book about Faerie, musicians and... other things set in Edinburgh called `Singer of Souls', by Adam Stemple, Jane Yolen's son, and it's made me realize something.... There was a reference to the Baker Street Irregulars, from Sherlock Holmes, of course, and when I read that, reminding me of my childhood adoration of every Sherlock Holmes story I could find, I felt this overwhelming sense of peace and happiness. Connecting these two stories in my head, making me feel that they're connected with each other, gave me this sublime feeling of sheer contentment and joy. It's like every story that I love combines and entwines in my mind, and creates a world I can always carry with me, can always tap into whenever I let go. A world to sustain me when this one alone just wouldn't, and couldn't, and never has.

    It's all kind of meshed together in my head, but... the thing I love so much about reading fantasy, and living, and being a writer.... It's all got to do with that moment when I see that world, that other world, the one that feels beautiful and mine and only mine. I just know it intimately, at the same time as I know there are many corners I've not seen yet. All these fantastical places are in my head and only accumulating with time. And it's so bright and warm and always there with me, no matter what happens. It keeps me sane, and has done for ages. I'm still so -familiar- with all of it, with the bits I'd added when I was ten and the bits I'd just added now, reading this book, and even its coldest places are warm to me because they're home. I haven't created this world alone, I don't think, but only I see it precisely this way. And as long as I live, the world is mine-- and as long as I write, the world is passed on to be someone else's.

I don't know if I can explain it, but every story I come across becomes part of my own personal Dreaming, a place where I can always go back to.... My own Neverneverland. It has all my favorite characters and all my favorite places, and it's got this spirit, this vibrancy and meaningfulness that I can never put into words, but it overflows and feeds every word in every story worth anything that I've written. It's something like home, I suppose.

I think that's really it-- that's why it's worth it, to me. I always wanted to go to that world and actually live there, always wanted to make it a reality-- wanted to escape to Faerie, wanted to become a princess, wanted to do things I couldn't do in consensual reality very easily.... And it just occurred to me, just now-- just now-- that this world does exist, and not even only in my head. It exists, and it's worth living for. It's worth waking up every day for.

I've always wanted it to be real, in other words, but I've missed something so important, that kind of sidesteps the word 'real' and yet actually fulfills it.... Whatever else it is to anyone else, this world of mine is real-- to me.

I think... if I could dream another day, perhaps, then it's another day worth greeting with hope.
~~

( 10 Things That Make Me Happy Right Now - meme from Aspen. )