Do you remember your dreams? I do, in resonant detail. I can remember dreams from childhood, and a strong or disturbing dream can echo throughout my day, which begs the question: where in “reality” do they exist? My reality is that I remember things I’ve done in my dreams, as myself or a projected idea of myself. Some of these things are good, some are not. Maybe they are ways my mind plays through the emotions I’ve felt during the day and at night I’ve no screen to protect me from pure emotion.
All this is a gentle way of telling you, brothers and sisters, that your reality is nothing more than a house of cards. What you think is real is a flimsy construct of filters and systems you’ve built up to categorize and make sense of our confusing universe. When you are young, your reality isn’t quite as burdened with these constructs so play is more enjoyable. Especially when you are making a fairy house.
Will little gnomes come live in this house? Do they need solid walls and doors or is that uninviting? How much protection do garden fairies and gnomes need from the neighborhood cats? If your reality is at a scale no bigger than your thumb, little details make a big difference. If your reality is concerned about the feelings of shy garden fairies, you’ll worry over how the steps up the front walk are placed. And if your reality thinks about these garden fairies during the day and dreams of them at night, it doesn’t make them more or less real. Only your real.
The sleeping gnome, the butterfly made from a cork and popsicle stick, the polished river rock, all are real for us. Maybe they will be real for the fairies too.
Writer, architect, father, husband.