Image by miss mimee at dEviant Art
I sometimes feel that things are nothing to do with me. Conversations over lunch. Phone calls. Emails. Texts. Greetings in the street. Discussions at work.
It is not disinterest that causes this feeling, it’s just a sense that my mind needs to go somewhere else. I am cooking and I see castles made of stainless steel in a casserole lid. I imagine hieroglyphics on invoices. I could swear the ping of the cash register in the supermarket is actually secret code being sent directly to MI5.
I am usually a million miles away from where I actually am. It’s the way you feel when you wake up in the morning and you can’t quite remember what day it is.
Friends often complain I don’t see them waving to me in the street. That I seem to drift away when they are talking to me or that I bring up something in conversation that has nothing to do with what they’ve been talking about; a quirky little snippet that has stuck in my head.
Some people think I’m vague. Others think I’m rude. I think I’m merely daydreaming, a habit I’ve had since childhood when Sister Benedicta used to constantly chide me for gazing out the window in class and dreaming of wonderlands in the air.
I know I do it. I try not to. I think it stems from feeling I just don’t fit in. Sometimes in a group I just smile and nod, suspecting I have nothing to offer; and the daydreams rise unencumbered.
I can’t help but notice that shopfronts look like theatre backdrops and that at any moment they might change, becoming the sea or the sky. I can’t help but see the buckets of iris in the florist, loaded like arrows. No matter how hard I try the boy with socks the colour of lemon drops catches my eye.
I am incorrigible. I can’t help myself. But I am a believer of dreams. The day is full of paintings and songs and poetry. The focus of the day is illusory. The slivers of reality hiding in daydreams are what’s really going on. And I don’t think I can stop seeing them, even though I try.
