Dream Factory

You asked me if I believed in magic, and I said yes, and that's how. You just step out, start pulling your life out of the air. You make friends, you find work you really like doing, you find places. You find diners and Laundromats. You find beaches. You find a junk car and drive it for a month, then lave it beside the road. You find someone to fall in love with you. You make it all up as you go. Or, you know, maybe it makes you up.

Ella, if it's magic, then nothing is supposed to happen.

If only your life were a costume, and you could just take it off when you wanted to, leave it hanging on a hook, and walk away.

Here is where they tell you, if you only believe, you, too, can live happily ever after.

Okay, Ella. Is it possible for you to be any more vague?" "Maybe," I say, smiling at her.

It’s funny, really, all the ways we tell ourselves every day that things are going to be okay. That things are going to get better, or that things can’t possibly get any worse. We all have these elaborate mechanisms to take care of our disappointments, our sadness, our pain. We build these walls around ourselves, placing bricks between us and everyone else, telling ourselves that we’re just protecting ourselves, just staying safe. Sometimes the bricks are easy to see, hard things that you bump up against when you try to touch someone. Sometimes they’re subtle. A slight turn of the head, a fast good-bye, a faraway look in the eyes. Sometimes I wonder why Disney never took to Rapunzel, why they never tried to take that story and put it on lunch boxes and in video stores and on pink sweatshirts. Maybe it’s that some fairy tales don’t need to be computer animated. Maybe Randy New-man doesn’t need to sing their songs. Maybe some fairy tales don’t even really need to be told, because they live inside of us, scaring us with their witches and their evil spells, making us wonder if maybe this time the prince won’t come in time, the princess won’t wake up, and maybe for once there won’t be any happily ever after. Maybe some fairy tales are just too scary to even think about.

I wasn’t at all surprised when Cinderella gave me the finger.