so i saw the final episode of Escaflowne by chance today. it's been running for about a year now, i guess, on YTV, but i haven't watched it because a) they kept changing the time slot, b) i can't stand american voice actors (most of the time), and c) having missed a few episodes, i felt like i'd never catch up and everything would be spoilers. (except they weren't because the story, like most anime stories, is not that easy to follow.)

all that aside, i was channel surfing this morning and happened upon Escaflowne, and it was, by all appearances the last episode. synopsis: there's a battle, then people are reunited, 'good' triumphs over 'evil', and... Hitomi goes home.

why? why after everything she's seen, everything she's been through, why does she have to go home? why does it always end this way, with people having to 'get back to reality'? like, that was a nice excursion into an elaborate Fantasy (in all connotations of the word) world, but now we must go home to our 'normal' lives, because, after all, that's reality. why?

why should the people she left behind in her home world be more important than the people she was leaving behind in Fenalia? why couldn't she choose to follow her heart and stay with Van? why was it assumed that she'd go back?

why couldn't she have chosen both worlds and walked between them, as she'd been doing?

...

if i told you i was from another world, would you think i was crazy? maybe it's just the harmless kind of crazy. maybe you'd think i've just seen too many animes, or read too many Fantasy novels (ok, guilty as charged there), or played too much D&D (i've never played Dungeons and Dragons, thank-you-very-much, it's not my thing).

people like Hitomi can travel to other worlds, and it's seen as maybe a little miraculous, maybe (in the worst cases) fulfilling a prophecy, or maybe just an oddity that happens. but try telling someone in THIS world that you're from ANOTHER world, and what are you met with?

disbelief. judgement. condemnation.

at best, you might think i'm one of those 'new agers', and again, stick me in the little box labeled 'crazy, but mostly harmless'.

there is no room for other realities in the consensual reality of North America. and i don't mean 'alternate' realities, because they are not just alternatives to this. i mean 'other' in all the myriad of differences possible.

it's why Natives, homosexuals and transsexuals (to name only three examples), are opressed and marginalized. because their realities are 'other' than the mass consensual reality.

and it's why trying to get 'multiplicity' or 'plurality' or whatever you want to call it accepted is fighting an uphill battle. we're not just trying to get away from labels and diagnoses and boxes. we're trying to make room for the possibility of other realities.

but there comes a point when acceptance can become detrimental to the cause. the media loves its freak shows. it's interested in the extremes, the spectacles, the strange and unusual, not the reality of day-to-day life a little to the left of reality. that's why 'feminist' became synonymous with 'man-hater', why 'gay' implied extravagant bois calling each other 'girlfriend'. those were not the realities of the mass majority of people behind the movements, but they were the extreme portrayals that the media latched on to.

and the same has been true for multiplicity.

we may be complicated people leading complicated lives, but the world isn't interested in how we make sure the laundry gets done, school assignments get done on time, pets get fed, etc. and so on. unless we're being extravagant, we're invisible.

maybe it's better we stay that way....

as much as we would appreciate a world in which we didn't have to abide by the 'one name, one person, one body' rule, that is the reality of this world. we make do. we live our lives for us, not for outside acceptance or approval.

we know that other worlds, other realities, exist, and, quietly, one-on-one, we spread the word to those we know we can trust.

we may never change the mass media perception of multiplicity, but we change one person's mind. and if that person changes one more person's mind, the ripples will spread.

and maybe, someday, other realities will be accepted, will be discussed. but that day won't come until the absolute power and control of the media and our alleged 'democracies' has given way to something bigger, something broader, something more all-encompassing.

we're not holding our breath, but we're not saying it's hopeless either.

dare to live: a little to the left of reality.

~*~*~
Tavam
Oct. 7th, 2001