Turn the page

When I read these fantasy novels, it puts me into another state of being. Blissful and pure and kind, and like I'm in the world I was reading. And not pretend "in" it. I feel like I should speak in medieval intricacies. My heart beats as if it was a peasant boy's on hard times, but everyone knew mine was a gentle soul. I feel in a world bigger than myself, in a place with meaning, in the grasp of magic.

A trance, almost. A walking trance. After I put the book down, and my feet take me further and further from where it rests, I lose fragments of those feelings. I don't want to walk, I don't want to think. I try my hardest to, somehow unknown to me, intangibly, vigorously, keep that trance. It fades in time, as all things do. I cannot prolong it much at all. As it fades, so does the memory of it. Preserved not even in my mind, and I only get that hypnotized when I read for a long span again.

It's almost as if being high. Euphoric, tempting, enigmatic. I desperately want to live in a world of knights and magic. I feel out of sorts in a normal place. Doing laundry, cleaning, cooking; it seems so trivial, so mundane, so bereft of life. I was meant to be a character in a book, not a speck of dust in a box. Heroic tales of my deeds would sweep through the town. Nights spent illuminated only by stars, standing atop a great stone bridge, watching a black river pass underneath. Garbed in a cloak and boots, simple, yet elegant. My essence is adventure and I'm jailed in life. Nothing so ornate, so organic and beautiful will befall me as does a hapless rogue in a storybook. For brief moments few I experience it vicariously. There aren't enough books in the world to satiate me. There aren't enough stories told to keep me there long enough. It's the most honest happiness. I have to keep trying.

Forcing myself into this feeling isn't detrimental, so I lunge for it vehemently. Continually I read, finishing one book and starting another so that I never drop it except to sleep, often forgetting to eat or move. Drunk on inertia, I barrel down a bottomless pit of written ecstacy. These stories become my dreamland, and I want to dream forever.