Jaci Dawn

Soon, I will be in the heart of Faerieworlds, playing dress up. This year, my costume is more elaborate than in past years – I’m going with a mask and as a character I have created.

The Realm is advertised as a transport to Middle Earth, and I think this is part of what draws me. The mystique of Middle Earth, the strangeness of the creatures, the realm of fantasy worlds that I usually can only sink my teeth into when I have a great novel in hand – I can go and enter the Realm and live it.

I read an article in the early 1980’s about adults who have a very full fantasy life – not one of those X-rated “fantasy” sort, but one full of imagination, alter-egos, novel-length story lines. The gist of the article was about how these adults often hid their rich imaginations out of fear of ridicule.

I was one of those adults and I wondered if there would ever be a place for me in society. A place that would accept my freedom of expression, my creativity, and whatever alter-ego I wished to be.

I especially wondered if God might find a way to smile upon this activity of mine – after all, He created me in His image.

I am a born-again Christian stepping into a realm populated more by pagans, pantheists, and wiccans. Didn’t God create actors? This is my actual question; I’m not worried about my faith being absorbed by those other faiths . I question why God made me like I am and why I am drawn to this world of mirror and smoke.

I don’t question that I am drawn to it. That’s a fact. I love the pretend, the costumes, the absurdity, the earthiness, the drum beat of the Celtic music, the colors, the feel of the earth beneath my feet. When a young pantheist tells me how she’s so “in tune” with the yew that she cut to create her wings, I wonder if she really can feel the heart of the yew… but I know I have felt the earth move under my feet (thank you, Carole King). I love to stand barefoot and feel the earth.

I think it was my second Faerieworlds when I heard the first disparaging comments against Christianity. I remember saying, softly, “But you know I’m a Christian, right?” No argument, just a statement. This is who I am. Who I believe in. Who I bring with me to the Realm.

A couple years ago, we debated different religions as we drove to the site of Faerieworlds. Why do you believe what you do? And why do you come to Faerieworlds?

I can answer the one. I can’t answer the other.

I want to say it started with J.R.R. Tolkien, but that would not be right. It goes back further. I remember a March day, standing in the sunlight of the picture window at 64 East Minor Street. I was ready for school. Had my green on. Was certain I would capture a leprechaun. My mother cautioned me, trying to tell me they weren’t real.

BUT I KNEW.

Eighth grade art. Mr. Little let me go outside to sketch while he leered at the girls who were developing breasts and threatened to feed “camel snot” to the boys who mouthed off in class. I felt like his star pupil – and maybe I was. He never treated me as anything but an artist. I never knew he was a lecher until I was older and he was dead. But I remember his disappointment when I turned in my sketch of a dragon in a tree outside the school.

Really? He said. A dragon? Can’t you draw what’s there?

Ah, but dragons were there, if only he would have looked.

This is why I go to Faerieworlds: because – as my father once exclaimed*, “There be dragons out there!”

*My dad was normally quite sober and not given to imagination. Therefore, when during a wild drive in the dark across ditch and sagebrush with a frog gig hanging over the hood of a Jeep being driven by a less-snockered person than my father, he drunkenly asserted that dragons existed, it became my mantra. (Should I have used commas???)

THERE BE DRAGONS OUT THERE!