Friday, September 21, 2012

Why I love Fantasy

The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, 
rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.

— George R.R. Martin

Saturday, September 01, 2012

Transcience

There is something very beautiful and potent about transient moments.. fizz of a soda bottle, passing gaze of a stranger,  stolen glances, arriving at an idea, an image or a brush stroke ... they make you realize that your heart is deeper than the deepest well you have seen, that you are not just a random stranger walking on the road but that somewhere you are connected to a whole, that you can cause a ripple in the cosmos, that your insignificance doesn't contain you, or you realize that any mould whether physical, mental or societal ever made, cannot contain your heart, your mind...that somewhere you can free yourself from the fabric of space and time and bounce and jump and even fly ... and the truth is that it's only in these moments you realize that you are fully alive and finally through these transient moments you will live forever....