The image of fiction

Harsh truth being the realm of just that, reality, why should I search for it in fiction as well? I do not desire to be taught that life is hard and harsh as I gather age to me as a stone gather moss as it rolls farther and faster down the mountain. Truth is the realm of the young, those who wish to learn of life and what it may hold. The young may bear it up and brandish it about as swords. As youth fades this truth that once cut so finely and passionately is not dulled, rather youth is no longer there to heal the cuts that truth made.
It is for that reason that I hide myself away in the realm of fiction, which is merely a beautiful image of reality, without its wounds. I look for the admirable, the lovely, the turn of phrase or the look that I will not see in life. For the irony and the wonder is so rare and precious in the realm of reality that it must be captured and examined in works of fiction so that all or any may encounter it. The news is more reality than one can want, and it is encountered everywhere. It does not seek out the beauty of life however, so no balance can come from it. Rather it seeks out the heart-wrenching, the sad, the despicable and the frightening. In all there is I suppose a stark and terrible beauty, but it is not what I would wish to cuddle up to, to wrap my thoughts and desires around as I console myself at the end of yet another day.
And so I console myself with pretty images and wonderful lies about who I might be and roads that I never followed that have vast and gorgeous treasures at the end of them. I release the part of me that is all day tied down and held back waiting to emerge in thought or word or action. I let the stories bombard me, given exotic locals and interesting people. Looking for in those dreams some meaning or prize that I can keep in my secret treasure trove of an imagination. A turn of phrase or habit or wonderful thought that is mine and mine alone. Some beauty that I can keep for me, to convince myself that it is, in the end, worth all the rest of it.