Mirage

I recently did a personality test called "The Cube". It was a very right-brained test and very symbolic. I love personality tests, and this one ranks high in my book. It involves 6 questions in which you describe 6 different things. The first is a desert.

In my mind's eye, I see this desert. The sand is a gorgeous red and has little ripples in it from the wind. It also has a couple large rolling dunes, peaked at the top with a little sand spraying over the peak from the wind. The sky is a brilliant, shocking blue and completely cloudless. There is no life for miles around, except small plants here and there. I'm vaguely aware of small desert creatures hiding in the shade of these plants, but I can't really see them and they are not important. I'm also vaguely aware of some blue, snow-capped mountains, far, far in the distance kind of off to my left. The sky is a darker, more dangerous blue over there and I can see flashes of lightning. But since it is so far away, it is not important either. There are shimmering heat waves that I can see on the horizon and I periodically see mirages ahead of me.
The sun is scorching hot, the sand burning my feet. At night, it is freezing cold. Even though the sand is hot, I love the feel of it on my feet. Sometimes I feel like I'm only looking at the desert, though, not actually in it.

The focus for this blog is the mirage. By interpretation, this means two things for me. The first is that my trust has been betrayed at some point in my life by someone and so I no longer trust, or at least I am wary of trusting easily. This is very true for me. I can think of a few applications for this, but these are still not the focus of my blog. The second interpretation is the main point I'm trying to make. Seeing mirages in your desert means that you are intrigued by fantasy, by mythical and magical elements. Which I very much am. I love the idea of the ethereal. I love imagining that there are magical, sparkling, shimmering things in this world that you think you see out of the corner of your eye--- then you turn your head only to be disappointed. I love imagining that one of these times, I'm going to discover that all these mythical creatures are actually real. And I think I know why I like this. These creatures live for joy. They seem to be always happy, always mischeivous. They seem to be passionate, beautiful and exciting. I long to know that there are beings out there who live this way every day! It's such an enchanting thought!

The Impish, The Mythical and The Ethereal

I have a theory. I may be crazy. But here's what I think (or rather just kind of hope without a lot of gravity attached to the hope). I personally think that somehow, somewhere, there really do exist these fairy tale creatures. You know the ones. Mermaids, faeries, imps, centaurs, satyrs, giants, dragons--- all of them. I think they exist. I don't know how close we really are in the descriptions we give them, or if the pictures and ideas we have of them are accurate.

But think about it. There are SO many stories out there with various mythical creatures in them that I think there's got to be some basis for them. I think most legends and stories have roots in truth. Either way, I don't care what anyone says. I'm going to go on hoping that these enchanting creatures exist until I'm told unequivocally that they do not. Whether C. S. Lewis got it right and there is somehow other worlds in which these creatures reside, or they are somehow hidden in a version of Tolkein's Middle Earth, I want to believe in these charming beings in the same ways that they are portrayed in some of my favorite fantasy novels (mostly just the Chronicles of Narnia).

Under Construction

Don't you hate that?