“Come fairies, take me out of this dull world for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame.”
The Land of Heart’s Desire, by Yeats.
It is the transformation that astounds me, the way I am taken in his arms, his voice and his eyes, from the mundane to the fabulous. It is still believing that there is more and that there could be more. It is accepting that you can love a world that still has darkness in it, and horror and fear, and knowing this only because there is love. It is knowing that there is more because he says it is so.
I have always loved fairy tales. I have always loved the escape, the fantastical flight. But I also love the real world in which I live. Whose eyes would not be wide when they hear about red dwarfs anddark matter? We live in a universe surrounded by this unexplored, mysterious, powerful material, and we know almost nothing about it. I love magical realism and sometimes I think much that is real is magical.
But it takes effort, it takes courage, it requires a step into the void. Because we work hard and the everyday greets us every day; we get up early and have to do a lot of little tasks. We toil, we muddle through, we do our best, and then we go to the supermarket and do the shopping. There is something on the kitchen floor that needs getting up; it is best not to think too hard about what it might be.
The word “fairy” comes from Latin “feta” which is not cheese but instead it means the fates or the word “fatum,” which is not how one feels after eating too much feta but rather means enchantment and destiny.
And this feels so much like how this life is, this way we live and what we long for. I am lucky enough to have met the man who makes the mundane amazing and the daily delightful.
But the fate we all are under is more than that.
We were fated to be like this, we were fated to raise our eyebrows and our heartbeats at everyday objects such as hairbrushes and belts. We were fated to submit or to seek submission in others; we were designed for this and excel when we express our nature.
Objects that should be everyday and mundane are transformed for us. I see his dining table and catch my breath; his hand casually touches his belt when he glances my way and I stop still like a rabbit before a fox. He calls me “little girl” and I lower my eyes and settle down into his authority.
I am writing this with my feet resting on my sleeping dog. I have to do my grocery shop in a minute and I should vacuum my sitting room floor. My lover is three thousand miles away and there is a pile of clean clothes on my bedroom floor that needs putting away.
I will remember that I am loved in the way that I did not even dare to dream of when, as a girl and a woman, I cried alone in the dark. I whisper to a thousand ears the incantations that I have made my whole life. Every evening when I see his face and I hear his voice I become who I have never felt good enough to be. My friends look at me and ask what it is; they ask what I think about.
I laugh and tell them to read fairy stories.
“In mythos and fairy tales, deities and other great spirits test the hearts of humans by showing up in various forms that disguise their divinity. They show up in robes, rags, silver sashes, or with muddy feet. They show up with skin dark as old wood, or in scales made of rose petal, as a frail child, as a lime-yellow old woman, as a man who cannot speak, or as an animal who can. The great powers are testing to see if humans have yet learned to recognize the greatness of soul in all its varying forms.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
