Imagined Realms

Welcome to Imagined Realms...

Come, leave your everyday concerns behind and step through this portal to an imagined realm...

 ~Unknown~

A Dreamweaver Lost

 

This isn't the normal remit of Imagined Realms;  it is not a post about a book, or a movie or a computer game.

Nothing so mundane.

But it is about a hero. A real one.

Jim Stynes died today after a long and very public battle with cancer.

I was stuck in traffic listening to local radio  when I heard the news.

The announcer was in tears. I was in tears.

And we weren't alone - people in cars beside me were also visibly upset.

He was that type of person.

He was one of the most important players in the club that I follow, and an ambassador for the best game in the world.

And yet what he achieved in his unbelievable sporting career was nothing compared to what he accomplished off the field.

He saved children and inspired them. He encouraged them to dream.

I learned only today that he used Joseph Campbell's work as the inspiration for much of his charity work.

So maybe it is fitting that I post about Jim here after all. 

I may not have been the best supporter over the years Jim, but you were a legend.

It's been a pretty dark journey for all of us.

I wish my brother could have spoken to you. 

You can learn more about Jim Stynes' real work here. The below is the trailer to the documentary detailing his battle with cancer which you can also get via the Reach website.

 

 

Year's End

"What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?
The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.
We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.
We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.
We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that's the burden of a year."

~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

And so we bid farell to 2011...

It's been a good year for me in all sorts of small ways.

Finding Imagined Realms has been an important part of that.

Resolutions?  

Oh, a couple. Write more. Paint more. Read more. Play more.

Imagine more.

                  Live more.

Have a good year everyone. We'll still be here in 2013.