It is an odd feeling when you are physically located somewhere, doing things there with your hands, but your mind is somewhere else. When I'm at work, this feeling often comes on me.
I'll be standing there in the aisles, ordering the merchandise on the shelves. As I turn the cans of soup so their labels face outwards, and pull them forward so the shelf looks full, I find my mind drifting away. Often, I end up in a land very far away.
With my hands, and with a small portion of my mind, I'm at work. But with the rest of me, I'm out wandering in the woods with Alathea, Farmer's Daughter. In my mind, I'm not standing on a hard cement floor, staring at bright blue and red cans of soup. No, instead, I'm riding a giant charger named Heavy, wandering through the forested wilderness, on my way to the army of Fitzdraco, seeking my long lost parents.
Or perhaps I'm in another place, this time galaxies away. I walk without a lightsaber, for I am a Jedi who doesn't believe in such things. To some, I am a heretic. To me, they are the ones who follow the roads that lead to darkness. I am much older than my real age in this world, a Jedi who has lived the traditional Jedi life, but has discovered a way that allows me to live peaceably with all beings. My apprentice has not yet given up her lightsaber, but I know she agrees with me, otherwise she would leave. I hope Luke Skywalker will pay us a visit, for I think there is much I could show him, and convince him to leave his tendency to violence behind.
Or maybe I'm watching a young woman trapped in her own house by the scheming of her step-sisters, and step-mother. I know she will get to the ball, and I just wait until her fairy god-mother appears. At the ball, I am astonished. Yes, the Prince falls in love with her, but there is another who has loved her since a boy, who recognizes her even with the makeover from her god-mother. I watch him, watching the Prince, and I sense some possibilities for the future.
Or I move back in time, visiting Newport, RI in the 1890s, a time of fashion and status, especially in the summer when the aristocrats from New York descend upon the island resort for a month. I can see a governess, a woman on the brink of spinsterhood, following her charges along the Cliff Walk. Ahead of them, her charges' uncle walks, attended by a handful of sparkling young women, laughing and light-hearted. I notice her eyes follow the others' activities, perhaps more than they ordinarily would. She knows this is the last time he will see Newport, for the war with Spain is about to break into open fighting, and he will answer the call of his country. She knows there is a depth to his character that he has shown only to her and the children, and she admires him. I hope he returns from Cuba safely.
Someone asks me, "Can you tell me which aisle the breadcrumbs are in?"
"They're in aisle seven," I answer automatically to the most common of questions. When they leave, I find that I'm back at work, and have moved beyond the soups. Now I'm zoning the ramen noodles and tuna fish. But the spell has been broken. The mundane has broken into the imaginary, and I can't get the latter back.
Well, at least I finished the aisle. It was nice to be temporarily misplaced into the fantastic realms of my mind. I give a little sigh as I go off to get the carriage of reshops. Someday all those imaginary worlds will be in books, and they won't be distracting me as I work.
*Cross-posted from Xanga*
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