Day 27

The most sacred place dwells within our heart, where dreams are born & secrets sleep, a mystical refuge of darkness & light, fear & conquest, adventure & discovery, challenge & transformation. Our heart speaks for our soul every moment while we are alive. Listen... as the whispering beat repeats: be...gin, be...gin, be...gin. It's really that simple. Just begin... again.

Royce Addington

We are so limited in the ways we access our lives. We cannot help it; the very design of our bodies precludes the possibility of processing all the information available to them. We are hard-wired to make choices, to synthesise, to select. We categorise our worlds into discrete units, simply incapable of working at the level of astonishing complexity and interconnection presented to us. Thus, our lives are illusion, an elaborate construction of personal reality based on the infinitely more wondrous and terrifying Reality. A Reality we can never know but can only imagine, through deity, through archetype, through theory and hypothesis. Through imagination. We tear down and narrow our lives to the limits of our capability, and then, by some extraordinary process, we build them back up again. We re-create the universe. Is it not a strange thing that our bodies limit our sensory input and then provide us with imaginations large enough to construct whole universes? David Almond, through his character Mina, suggests that we look at the night sky and take in every star we can see. Then, he (or Mina), suggests that we consider the wonder of the fact that our head contains all those stars, all those billions of miles of both time and space. But what is it that we see? What is real? And what the construction? We are incapable of knowing objective Truth. It is too big, too infinite for us. But our very finiteness, combined with our thirst to know and to dream, opens up the possibility of infinite smallnesses, infinite discrete units of life and divinity. We cannot see the whole. But we see parts unnumbered. We believe that Truth is thus found and reflected in every facet of existence, each a tiny piece of a gigantic puzzle. But we have created the pieces! We build a puzzle from the pieces we have to hand, each one an illusion of our own creation.

Life and the quest for knowledge thus form one of the most extraordinary stories it is possible to conceive. In the end, despite all you can dream into being, is there anything more extraordinary than the simple sensation of wind on your face and air in your lungs, the taste of tea on your tongue and the knowledge that deep within you there be dragons?

But I love to dream. And perhaps, in the end, dream is as solid, and possibly more honest, than any other version of reality we know. Have you ever stopped to think of all the unborn possibilities within you? I do, often. But mostly the possibilities I consider are not “out there” – they are not the lives I might lead out in the world. They are the truths I would create in my own mind, if only I had the time to allow them all to grow.

Kelly-Ann once created an amazing video about reclaiming our lost selves. She talked of all the “might-have-beens” and aspects of our personality that have not had the opportunity to dominate because we have been busy exploring others. Because even within ourselves we are infinitely divided. There is no one, single “me” at all. I, like every person, am made of fragments – fragments that overlap and join together, that compete and conflict with each other. Fragments that form coalitions and alliances to defeat other fragments. And each one, if we so chose, could shine forth in the “outer world” (if such a thing truly exists) and become the person the world sees. It was Kelly-Ann who taught me to honour all those fragments and to recognise them within myself. She talked about the part of her that might have gone to university, the part that might have continued her acting career, the part that might have further developed her fashion commentary blog, and many other parts besides. But when I think of lost selves, I find that I don’t think of those kinds of things at all. I think about all the imaginary mes and worlds that could exist, if only I would allow them to. And why not? Are not fictional characters the versions of ourselves we send out, devoid of the limitations of physical existence? Are they not ourselves, unlimited?

Where would I begin? Not with Jane Eyre, as Nia did. For all that I loved her story I’m afraid I’m neither as intelligent nor as literary as Nia is or was. As you’ve probably long since worked out, my tastes run more to the kinds of popular creation that intelligent types look down their noses at and find all kinds of strange reasons to want to ban.

I would be George. George Kirrin of the Famous five. She spoke to me the minute I first met her. She was very unlike me: so brave and honest, so hot-tempered and passionate. And so capable. Everything I was not. She loved her parents but was prepared to stand up to them and defy them at need. She knew herself and fought for the right to be that person. The child I was when we were introduced was very far removed from her. Despite my desire to be able to “truly” enter into the story and live in the worlds of my favourite characters, there were times when I was quite grateful that the introductions were one-way. George, I know, would have despised me and would have been dreadfully impatient with my weakness and my way of responding to everything with “Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir” and refusing to stand up to be counted. Fortunately for me, I will never have to actually face that fact.

I liked Anne too, with her gentleness and her deft practical capabilities (I remember the day I first learned and thrilled at the word “deft” through reading the Famous five!), but once again she was very different from me. And I did not aspire to be like her. I didn’t much want to be the homemaker and the one who made everything comfortable for the others. I wanted to be fierce and independent like George, capable of great love and loyalty, but also very much a lone wolf, walking with that best of all companions, Timmy. And of course I envied her relationship with Timmy more than anything else. If I could imagine any being into my life, it would be him. Timmy would walk with me always. I never had a pet and most of the ones I see are so little a part of the real, daily lives of their owners (they have owners rather than companions) that they seem little more than animated toys. But I have once met a woman who spent so much of her life with her dog that he was every bit as intelligent and sensitive to her needs as Timmy ever was in relation to George. He was so intelligent and responsive it was almost scary. I don’t mean he was well trained and performed tricks. I mean that he went out looking for animals and distress and then came back to his human friend, demanding that she come with him and rescue them. He knew from puppy-hood what most mattered to her and he allied himself to her. So I know that a Timmy can exist. Really, truly exist. And that makes all the other characters possible for me as well.

Can you imagine me being fierce, independent and entirely truthful, looking you straight in the eye with unflinching gaze, and walking into danger in pursuit of adventure? It’s hard to imagine that, isn’t it? It’s very hard for me to imagine. And yet I would love to make George live within me.

Who else? Luna Lovegood. I do not have the same sense of her that I have of George. For some reason she remains in my mind a bit more of a mythical, ethereal being. Perhaps that is because, unlike the Famous five, which series I have read a ridiculous number of times, I have only read Harry Potter once so far, and Luna doesn’t even appear in all those novels. Nor is she a central character. I’m still waiting for that delicious, perfect moment, when enough time will have passed and I can re-enter that world with fresh eyes. But Luna calls to me. She is very different from George, isn’t she? See what I mean about conflicting fragments? But in some ways she isn’t. Like George, she is a bit of a loner. Like George, she isn’t afraid to be herself. Mind you, in her case, I’m not even sure it’s a conscious, courageous choice. It’s almost like it has never occurred to her that she could or should consider anything else. But she is brave, very brave. When I first met her, I imagined she would be more meek and passive, a little like me. But that was naïve of me. I am learning that you do not get to be yourself by being meek and passive. She is full of gentleness and wonder and seems to walk in and see a different world from everyone around her. She does not necessarily accept consensus reality, as Kelly-Ann would say, but happily builds and lives within her own. But she, like George, is also capable of love and loyalty, and a desire to stand up and be counted. She becomes a warrior of light against Voldemort. That astonishes me. To see someone so apparently off with the fairies prove that there is nothing “lost” about her at all makes me reconsider the possibilities of the real.

And so, I would be a strange combination of George and Luna. No doubt many others besides, but for today, they are my champions, my heroes. And now I get to construct my landscape and people it with other beings. The very first thing I do is eliminate need. Wouldn’t that be wonderful, if we could? In my world, need has been vanquished. Perhaps it is like the Star Trek universe, in which poverty has been eradicated, and people work, not for survival, but for personal fulfilment and the opportunity to make their societies even better. Or perhaps it is like Wind in the willows, where money is never once mentioned, nor pesky little challenges like shopping. There is an apparently endless supply of hot tea and toast before the blazing fire in winter, ice cream in summer. That would be divine. I do know that my landscape would be pastoral, dotted here and there with pretty, English-style cottages. Everything would be designed with an eye to aesthetics as much as to functionality. There would be no crowding, but lots of public places in which to mingle. And there would be flowers. A mad profusion of flowers of every colour, shape and size imaginable. But no hay fever!

In this land there would be no hobbits, but there would be wonderful souls like Samwise the Gardener, who, in this world, would indeed be revered for his remarkable and life-giving talents. I can imagine no one I would rather know. In my world he would be just as humble, but with greater voice, strength and self-belief. And his wife? I have erased from my mind his wife from Lord of the rings. Instead, I discover, I have given him Sabrina from the Lindenherz channel for a wife. “Real” people are starting to enter the world of my creation! Sabrina would be perfect. She is another person I greatly admire. She knows and learns so much about so many wonderful, earthy things. She communes with trees and plants, she gardens (like Samwise) and from her gatherings she conjures up feasts of food and wonders of home-crafts. Her extraordinary sense of how things work together make of her home a world as beautiful and as meaningfully rich in symbol as Samwise’s garden.

Who else would I have? I would have Ms Crane! Tiny Ms Crane with her voluminous skirts, old-fashioned cardigans, hair in a loose, higgledy-piggledy bun and gold wire-framed glasses perched on the end of her nose. Wouldn’t she make a wonderful fictional character? She was born to inhabit the fictional world she taught. Like a character in Cornelian Funke’s Inkheart, she walks a thin line between the world of the senses and the worlds contained within pages. My world needs a Ms Crane, or maybe more than one, dancing around and about, weaving stories and teaching all to use the tools of language and imagination to discover all that is possible within themselves.

There must, of course, be a Gandalf the Grey, my favourite wizard of all time. Because I am a coward (even if I am pretending to be George!), he would not be pitted against a foe like Sauron or Saruman. He would pursue arcane knowledge for its own sake and for the wonders it brought into being. And there would also be a Radagast the Brown. Radagast, with his ability to talk to the trees, animals and birds, gets too little attention to my mind. I think Radagast would be a particular friend to Samwise and Sabrina and they would learn a great deal from him. And there would be a Strider. Not an all-powerful, glittering king called Aragorn, but a cloaked and hooded guide and wanderer, learning the ways of every part of the wide and beautiful earth in his travels.

I could go on and on. And perhaps I will. Perhaps I will create my world so richly that I never need leave it. It will become like one of those multi-player computer game worlds that people forget to leave, the ones that become so real and important to the players that their mundane lives cease to hold interest for them. Only mine would be a world entirely of my own creation and I would allow there only the beings of my own choosing. Would that immediately make it stagnant and limited, incapable of true evolution? Of course it would. And so, if I want to grow, I will have to challenge myself. Allow the “other” into my world, even if it does turn out to be a Sauron or a Voldemort. But for right now, I will keep it pure and inviolate.

If there is one life I would live in the real world if I could, it would be the life of an actor. I would make a hopeless actor! I know it. But I wish I could be one. Not because I would want to become famous or glamorous (eek!), but because I would get to live so many lives. A bit like Jean-Luc Picard in an episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation, when an entire civilisation’s memories were transferred to him and he got to live a whole other life belonging to another time and place. I would love the privilege of living all those lives, understanding all those people, becoming those people.

I always remember an interview with David Hewlett, who played Rodney McKay in Stargate: Atlantis. He said he found it difficult to immediately come “out of character” when he left the set, and so his wife allowed him half an hour when he got home in which he could still be an arrogant, annoying twerp. After that he had to be “himself” again. Think about it. If it was so hard for him to change “selves”, does that mean that his ability to play McKay was dependent on his ability to at some level be McKay? Was there already a McKay inside him, just waiting to come out? Could he, or anyone, ever play a role if that person did not already exist within them? Actors, it seems to me, come closest to truly living those untold choices and selections, bringing into being all the fragments of identity that most of us normally never get to express. If we want to be our truest selves, is that possible without being all our selves?

Michael Caine said once that if he’d wanted a longer life, he should have had a boring job because he had enjoyed himself so much that it had all gone past in a flash. What a strange contradiction that is. Someone who has lived more lives than most of us can even imagine within ourselves, and yet his time has gone unspeakably fast. Time is a strange thing and perhaps our lives are not measured in length at all, but in breadth and fullness. Perhaps they are measured in the extent to which we are prepared to engage with as much reality and as many dreams as we can possibly encompass.

I live in a world of naïve fancy, a world of dream and fantasy. I know this. I refuse to settle for less.