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http://redclaydiary.com/
or read his story:
Booking the Magic Carpet Ride to Reality
I am sitting cross-legged and pious atop a floor mat that looks sort of like a Persian carpet. Since I have only seen such a carpet in movies and in fairy tale illustrations, it is easy for me to imagine that this floor mat might just be a Persian carpet in disguise.
I am only a kid now, and it will be years, even decades, before I learn to distinguish reality from fantasy, so this is a good day.
I close my eyes, keeping in mind that some of my fictional heroes—Sinbad, Abbott and Costello, Hope and Crosby, Aladdin—have managed to levitate and pilot magic carpets. If they can do it, why can’t I? Even Bugs Bunny takes a magic carpet ride once in a while.
I press my palms together in some semblance of Judeo-Christian-Middle Eastern prayer mode and wish for levitation. Time flies, but the mat does not. I open one eye to see whether I’m still aground. In my imagination, I am flying, but in my reality I’m rooted to the floor.
Maybe I should wear a turban, but I don’t know how to make a bath towel remain on my head.
Since nobody in the family is around right now to witness my liftoff failure, I am relieved. I stand straight, fold the mat, place it in the closet, and return to my room. I open a volume of The Arabian Nights and return to my imagination, searching for further adventures that apparently happen only in stories. But what fun they are.
I now appreciate how clever and imaginative Scheherazade must have been to make up those 1001 tales designed to entertain and distract the doltish sultan who threatened to take her life. I now know what she knew. The tale is everything, the story is everything. If the tale does not carry you away and suspend your disbelief for a few moments, it could cost you your joy, even your life.
From this day forth, I often find myself simultaneously in two worlds, the real one and the hoped-for one. As long as I walk the tightrope between them, extracting the best from each, I am guaranteed a good day.
And perhaps a good life
© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.