When do we lose interest in “let’s pretend?” When do we stop allowing ourselves to kerplunk right down in foreign scenarios, dreams, flights of fancy? I know the why (too many disappointments to risk one more), but when is the when? And (egads) why do we allow it?
I’m “away” for the weekend — my favorite place to be. It almost doesn’t even matter where “away” is — but as places go, this one tops many lists. I’m sipping tea on a deck with a rail made of handcut and hand-reassembled mountain laurel branches — a wood and air mosaic if you will. A bird visits for handouts. A mist rolls across the faces of my hosts: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, is that an eighth? mountain ranges. Peace.
I like to pretend. What if I lived here? What would I hang on this wall, what mountain tomatoes would be the best to slice for lunch, which fruits in the feeder would bring the most colorful birds? And best of all, with ample time to look, what would I see in the faces of the mountain? What whispers would I hear in the night?
My life opens up when I pretend. I live in beautiful spaces, raw places, dine on the exotic or on the field greens I watched a woman in black gather from an empty lot in Greece. I imagine a new wardrobe: floaty and aqua near the sea, downy knits for the hills, pintucks in muted neutrals for France, accessorized by a long and skinny linen bread bag for markets.
But I can pretend just as well in my own backyard. I love to walk at night past the houses that look so alive, so exciting, with lights ablaze, the colors of various rooms leaping out (hello!), while I admire the addition of this or that piece of art. What if I lived here? Or there? Or, ooh! there!? Drop me down in a new surrounding and I fantasize: how would I be different?
Would the deep rose walls warm me? Would a daily infusion of Greek herbs clear my head? Would these blue mountains ground me, or would my spirit heal from the constant tumbling and resurgence of the sea? Am I fully a product of my current environment? 80 percent? 50 percent? How much of myself do I take with me from place to place, and how much of those places do I bring home?
Is there a dividing line between the life I lead and the life I dream, or do they commingle to make me whole?
Pam Goode Writes 
I like this, Pam. It feels very much like the Pam I know. You’re restless, you know that, right? One spot will never do. I escape by escaping into myself. It’s never as good, of course. I have a harder time than you being creative when I’m escaping for real. I create better when I escape in… pretend. 🙂 Glad you are at peace.
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I like to pretend too and do it often to keep my dreams alive. Especially when things are not going the way I would like or I have made big commitments. Then I do the what ifs’ and see everything turning out even Better than I had planned – yeay!
I pretend I live in the house of my dreams and life has just enough challenges to make it interesting and fulfilling.
In pretending the Happily Ever After and all of the lovely details, it let’s me “Dwell in Possiblilty” and that makes all the difference in the quality of my life :~)
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I, too, am often entertained in my imagination. I call it checking out the possibilities. If I shop, I need not buy anything. But everything I touch can bring to mind where I might wear such an item. How would I look in it at the next place I go. I can and do spend many of my leisure hours this way.
Someday I may be blind and years ago I figured, if blind, it wouldn’t matter where I eventually lived if I built a dream house in my mind. So I began building ‘Lottery Hill’ (need to win the lottery to actually build this) in my mind. The floor plan has been determined but I can look anywhere at things or arrangements and decide if they would be perfect for lottery hill.
Possibilities are endless! Keep your mind alive by playing with them.
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