Another Era, Another Times

Browsing through the net, I've been checking pictures of other times - the forties this time around. Enchanted by the black-and-white pictures, where the shades of gray replace color gracefully to throw back at us an image that lives and still remains out of reach, at safe distance from our daily rutine, gliding over the waves of time ethereal and dreamy.

Have you ever dreamed to have been born in another era? Or just another decade, another century... Well, probably you know you are not alone in your wish, but would we really, really want that? And really... why?

In a state of wonderment and arrested emotions, I feel like living in a movie of the 40's. Knee lenght clothes of heavy fabrics, clunky shoes and funny little hats, lighting cigarettes under the lamp posts and smeaking the mouth with furious red colors. Sitting at cafés nursing a black coffee and reading the papers, reading a hard bound book and rolling a handkerchief between the fingers while wondering about this and that. A life with none of the current matters, where pens were still fountain pens, penpalling wasn't a dying art, but the way you communicated, phones weren't granted at every home, and electronical equipment was expected to last at least 50 years. But if I had a time machine, would I go there? In the middle of World War II? With women still having to fight for opportunities and overthrow all sorts of ideas and judgments that kept placing them several steps behind men?

It's not a secret either that one of the eras that really catch my fantasy is the Middle Ages. The clothes, the stories, the root of so many fairy tales, the lush forests and woods, clear air, living closer to the Earth and nature... and would we go there to live? Wish badly to be there and live there? With the witchhunting (because I would surely be prosecuted as such just by general principle), the scum, the violence, the lack of rights, the health care... the toilets!... no running water, no TV, no books (unless I would successfully pass for a man and become a monk of a rank high enough to be let around books), no fanfics, and lots of public executions... Thanks, but no thanks.

Though we may feel identified with another era, and yearn for some of its best features, in the end we've all been born where we should be and where we can contribute to the larger cause. Yes, I'm one of those that - from as long as I remember - I'd LOVE to get the chance to wear long dresses and skirts, layered and following some sort of Medieval style - I'm not one to squeeze my lungs into a corset! Or go more primal and run around with just a sheet wrapped around, or naked - fuck clothes! (That way I could sleep longer and still get to the office in time :-P)  - but if sent back, would I have the strenght to face the Holy Inquisition and make a difference for the freethinking women? Or just women? If sent to the 40's, could I stand up as bravely for the rights of my sisters and I? Could I stand up for the rights of the people of other races or fight shoulder to shoulder for the rights of gays and lesbians? Could I fight for the right not to be discriminated on religious basis? (I'm mainstream, ok? But just because I'm not gay or because I'm Christian, it doesn't mean I don't realized that stepping on the rights who are not like me is also stepping on my human rights as well. Any discrimination: in favor or against, IS discrimination, and we are all being discriminated.)

Fantasizing and wishing is fine. Hell, how many haven't gone further even and wished to be in the world of a movie or a book, or a comic book, or a game (Final Fantasy!)? Dreaming and escaping reality for a moment to live in a make believe world is okay, we are humans, and that's also why we made art. That's why reading novels is so cool. That's why fanfics are so popular and loved. BUT there's a difference between wanting to be there and not being here. If you are here, there's a reason for it. Find it and fulfill your destiny.