I have an imaginary life. Everyone does, right? A little place I go to in my imaginary future, where I’ve figured out the grimy and annoying details, smoothed them over, and put them in their place. Where I can step forward into a light that looks like artful monochromatic photos of models in model homes overlooking Manhattan through picture windows. So I can move the way I want, dress the way I want, talk the way I want, be the way I want, everyday.

Some parts of that life are so clear it almost feels close enough to touch. Between this life and that life I can see webbed strands of connection, like the gelatinous bridges of the mind. Cartoon sparks run back and forth across them, feeding one into the other. Somehow I have images of that self and that space as if they were memories; a parallel existence I’ve lived through a double-sided mirror.

In an effort to piece that reality together within this one, I have mood boards and collages of items and people and tastes that seem accurate. Ok, really, it’s Pinterest, but it’s no less real, no less saturated with desire. And the elements are no more clearly defined than my just knowing what feels right. Each piece completes a puzzle picture that, like real life, continues to evolve over time. But with a glow, an undercurrent, that is cohesive and always me.

What do we do with these lives that are such a pleasure to construct, but have absolutely no value in the real world? Could they be actual goals, or is that too naive? Maybe reflections, premonitions, overactive idealizations? What do they say about us, in their complexity and investment of real world time. Do they make us seem hopeful or pathetic? Are they something to be shared, and do we need to explain them? Would we even know how to begin if we did?

I would like to have that life, despite my few complaints in this one. I would like that body, that broodingly beautiful gaze, that wardrobe, that gaussian filter on normal afternoon light. I’d like to put it on like a silk shirt over an unlined bra, slipping over me and hiding very little. Or grip it like brass railing along a marble staircase, to steady myself as I click down in stilettos. I’d like to tell it a joke, make it laugh, and find that I’m popular and engaging to the glamorous crowd around me. Say, ‘money is no object,’ and pop champagne, my leg languid through the slit in my dress. Then wake up next to it in the morning, amid a swath of white sheets and huge pillows, with tea and the New York Times.

And nowhere else to be.