"How did it come to this..." revisited.

"The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow..."

And here I am, a traveler to the west, looking for that middle ground between reality and dreams. My wanderlust is a byproduct of dissatisfaction, and, as much as I love my books, reading seems to be ascerbating the problem. Those moments where I pause to sigh, to hold the book close to my heart, or even to curse feeds this internal weight I've attempted to balance since childhood--there just seems something so sad to me that the worlds, peoples and ideals which enrich these stories don't truly exist within the world we live in. We've gone past the days where honor was what made or broke a man, where a lover was saught after with unrelenting fervor, and where mysticism was real and spoke of things hidden just over a hill. Now honor is cloaked by ambition, lovers are discarded, and mysticism is dispelled beneath cynicism.

Can you tell that I've recently endulged in a LotR (extended version of course) marathon? I love the books and the movies, but damn, Tolkien can really pull off depressing. But then he makes up for it with the poignancy of the moments of hope and connection, made so much more powerful by the darkest moments. And yet, mixed in with my love for the literature is my aforementioned conflicts with my own thought processes. As crazy as it sounds, I just spent almost a full week in the duldrums because I cannot seem to divorce the emotions which are stimulated by the experiences within what I am reading/watching from my own reality.

Perhaps it's because I don't want this to be my reality. I feel as if I was born in the wrong place, the wrong time, or even the wrong plain. There always seems to be something I'm looking for, but what, I cannot seem to find. I write, I create, and I find joy in that save for that seed of discontent. What does it mean anymore to be a dreamer or a romantic? I want a life that I cannot seem to make for myself (and don't ask me what that is because I can't even tell you). And, I want a love that will consume me--that will pick me up, shake me about and leave me invigorated.

I want, I want, I want.

And I will find some of it, I know. It's what I wont find that scares me, or that I will give in to my moments of depression and give up altogether. So, for now, I will content myself with the moments I can steal from the pages of a book, or from the flickering images of a movie and hope that I can remember to live the moments of my own life along the way.