Fantasy

Have you ever felt out-of-joint and out-of-place, never quite fitting in, never quite 'human,' never quite being in and with the crowd, never quite part of the 'norm,' never quite believing in the fictions that life has turned reality, never quite belonging to any place, any one, or anything; always an alien in a dislocated time and place.

I've always and that has never changed.

Perhaps, in theories of past-life regressions, it is who I once was in a different life; perhaps its the neurons that have shot wrong-way round in my head; perhaps its the unconscious manipulating consciousness.

Whichever the reason, if there is, I long to be in a different time, a different place. Where the world was still right-side up and humanity had clarity of mind and vision (perhaps there never was); a place and time where we knew less and believed more, rationalised less yet understood more.

I long to be in a time and place where my life meant less than truths and beliefs that extended beyond selfish desires which centre no more than the meaningless and incessant materialism and consumption. A time and place that I would readily give life up for a greater value, a deeper purpose. A time and place that had meaning...

It's probably a romanticisation of the heroic past or the idyllic pastoral, a world of More's utopia that never was when we strip history of its nostalgia. Perhaps it's a world that exists only in Tolkein's imagination, where myth, fantasy, sacrifice and truth had greater value thanthan an iPhone or crude oil...

But it's a world that I long to be in. Even if it were only in imagination.

Modernity, for all its material progress, has lost its soul...