Pack Your Bags

I love to travel. Everyone who knows H and I know that pre kiddos we lived in a 900 sq foot house by design, becasue we were almost never there. We traveled alot, short distances and long ones. We took at least two week long trips a year and honestly that has slowed a bit after kids, although L has been more places than many people I know. Honestly she has logged more miles traveling overseas than she has within the United States. E first long trip was FLA and his second was Germany.

But for the record there is one place I hope to never go. Disney World. It holds absolutely no allure for me. I have never, not once longed to go hold hands with Mickey Mouse or be whisked away by Cinderella.

In all honesty, Cinderella's castle is not all that exciting. I have been to the real castle Neuschwanstein and it is a site to behold, especially when it is surrounded by the mist that is ever present in the Alps. Real people lived there. They birthed babies there and died there and I swear if you listen you can hear the whisper of time. (trust me the real Neuschwanstein is almost never surrounded by such a clear sky as it is in this picture. I have gone three times and all three times it was misty... I have no good photos becasue it is always gray and raining and yet the castle is a site to behold. I literally catch my breath each time.)

A friend was giving me a hard time about this. I had stated that the bastion of contrived capitalism (Disney) holds no allure for me. My friend poked at me and said, "But you will go to NYC?"

The difference for me is NYC is pure capitalism and with the exception of Wall Street - it is honest capitalism. I have no quibble with capitalism. It is the packaged and homogenized contrived capitalism which is Disney that I have intellectual issues with.

NYC has history and a heart beat and a richness to it, that is not cellulose. NYC is the place of imaginations and not a place out of someone's imagination. There is a realness a depth and a pulse that is there. Now I have not actually been to Disney, so perhaps I am quick to judge.

NYC is the complete package, twinkly lights and a darkness. For a world of only twinkly lights is not real. Realness is the dark and the light, the beautiful and the ugly. For the soul - the soul resides somewhere in between bright twinkly lights and a dark underbelly. Life is not the battle of good verses evil, but rather the acceptance of the gray area in between.

The soul speaks to me. For without pain there is no pleasure and without truth there can be no convincing fiction.

A tiger is beautiful in its ability to lazily lop around the jungle and bask in the sunlight and it is awesome in its ability to take down prey in an unrestrained show of power and dominance.

Realness attracts me and holds my attention. It fuels my writers soul and it fills me with energy. While I might spend much of my life lost in my head, the stories there do not have to have a happy ever after - they have a balance and a purpose and are truly powerful.