Faery and Flow - the Passage of Time

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by Esty

Have you ever had the impression that you were in another world, so to speak, while caught up completely in an activity?

Certainly. Frequently.

"And I look over and see him thrown through the--"

"You're joking! He didn't throw him!"

He nods solemnly, a twinkle lighting his dark eyes. "He did."

We laugh at his audacity. The fool. What was he thinking, picking a fight he could never win? I stare out the window, listening to the sound of his voice, recalling the events of a weekend that I missed. I was only gone the weekend. How could so much have happened? Were even the trees changing without me? The leaves were greener... maybe golden. Had they been so bright before? The flowers... they certainly had not been in bloom. I love tiger lilies. I'd have remembered. They could not have been there.

Tiger lilies... mum's garden. A childhood of fantasy; thank you Rowling and Tolkien. We never played house... we played potions. Raiding the gardens for fallen blossoms, purloining fruits and vegetables. Chopped fine and stewed over nicked candles, we brewed noxious mixes that were magical and drinkable only to the Elves in the field behind the house. We were not divine enough to try; brews so special could not be consumed by humans. Mum always wondered where her nutmeg went. And the dented broom... sword fights in the yard... Everything seemed bigger then. More inaccessible. An adventure behind every door, always waiting. A time when growing up was part of a hazy someday.

"Are you with us?"

"What?" My head was resting gently against the window of the car, my eyes unfocused gently upon the vibrant blue of the sky. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm here."

"What did I just say?"

I did not remember. Another part of me heard it, but I was not there. I wasn't in the car with them, flying down back roads, sharing stories. I was in another time; another world. A world wherein concerns lay mostly within the acquisition of rose petals and cinnamon. I don't know how long he'd been talking, but I'd relived a good portion of my childhood in that time.

Daydream, I suspect, is the essence of faerie in my life. An entire world wherein time passes differently, without the aid of sleep. A world in which there is little regard for continuity and even my past is susceptible to a sudden change reached by way of what if. A world with magic and wonder and infinite possibility.

Surely I'm not the only one with a distinct inability to pay attention? I lose myself in my mind at the least provocation, and if I have a pen in hand, so much the better. That way I can act as narrator to the world of what it is I see. Think not cogito, ergo sum. Rather, I think, therefore I am in faerie.