teacup getaways & bookish escapes
LJ Idol week 30 (6/6): vacation
It's an understatement to say that I was a very imaginative child. I blame it on my mom, who encouraged me to go fight thorn witches in the backyard and dine on lilac sandwiches as a reward. Lilac sandwiches consisted of a sprig of flowers slapped between two fat green leaves, and were best consumed with "tea" (i.e. sugar water) in the company of hummingbirds. I have spent a good deal of my life imagining myself into places I'd rather be. I can travel the world and then some in twenty-four short hours.
In the morning, I visit Sri Lanka with a cup of tea. The tea plantations are soft emerald hills that are cut to resemble steps. The heart of the country is also the heart of tea production. With each sip, I can taste labor in the hot sun and the occasional welcome breeze. With each sip, I can feel the dirt under my feet and the leaves that I roll between brown fingers before stuffing them into the sack slung over my back. While waiting for the leaves to stretch their arms and shamelessly unfurl, I appreciate the curls of steam that dance just above the cup.
At midday, I find myself in England. I move from London to Yorkshire in a few well-chosen sentences. The narrator, Margaret Lea, and I discover the ghosts of burned-out houses and abandoned children left to grow wild. I see snowdrifts out of the corner of my eye even though it's June. The walls around me seem to swallow sound, as though they were covered in the flocked wallpaper that is in Margaret's room. I am reading myself into a country that was in my heart before I ever even set foot in it.
Every night, I disappear. My dream-worlds are varied and vast, often populated by unimaginably strange creatures who have undulating ribbon-wings and heads full of lotus blossoms. Califorrow, the kingdom of worlds in which I dream, contains Chinese garden mazes and ruined theaters and cottages inside waterfalls. There is the old factory with its' crumbling brick walls which I have only seen while running. Or the theater-school that is close to the borders of Catherynne Valente's dream-world of Palimpsest. Califorrow is a collection of lands filled with fog, abandoned buildings, and ruins of decadence.
I have the ability to take a vacation in a teacup. I nap between the pages of books, making the paper rustle when I turn over restlessly. At night, I simultaneously build and inhabit new worlds that I will write wildly about in the flush of dawn lest I forget them. In a single day, I can go from Sri Lanka to the moors of dreary old England to the mountainous stretches of Califorrow. And I don't even have to deal with the TSA.
(Author's note: the particular book I'm referring to is The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and I highly recommend it.)
♥ pacing while praying ♥ you are beautiful ♥ digging for buried crap ♥ we should all be narcissists ♥ ˌɪnkənˈsiːvəbl̩ ♥ juicy memories ♥ relax. breathe. bupkis. ♥ a gypsy heart ♥ a month of rain ♥ up is the new down ♥ your words, her silences ♥ ground rules for a hairless housemate ♥ the smell of particleboard in the morning ♥ from an aspiring spinster ♥ scarves & sweaters & shawls ♥ on emotional idiocy ♥ fairytale-maker ♥ betrayal by choice ♥ how to age gracefully ♥ San Francisco's smile ♥ not a needle but a drink ♥ Einstein I am not ♥ searching for ballon ♥ of the earth ♥ becoming Cirsea ♥ hanky panky in the redwoods ♥ something happened ♥ an act of apparition ♥ ray guns & Rocky Horror ♥ the leviathan on my couch ♥ religious remix culture ♥ why the internet is not Vegas ♥ adrenaline sans risk ♥
It's an understatement to say that I was a very imaginative child. I blame it on my mom, who encouraged me to go fight thorn witches in the backyard and dine on lilac sandwiches as a reward. Lilac sandwiches consisted of a sprig of flowers slapped between two fat green leaves, and were best consumed with "tea" (i.e. sugar water) in the company of hummingbirds. I have spent a good deal of my life imagining myself into places I'd rather be. I can travel the world and then some in twenty-four short hours.
In the morning, I visit Sri Lanka with a cup of tea. The tea plantations are soft emerald hills that are cut to resemble steps. The heart of the country is also the heart of tea production. With each sip, I can taste labor in the hot sun and the occasional welcome breeze. With each sip, I can feel the dirt under my feet and the leaves that I roll between brown fingers before stuffing them into the sack slung over my back. While waiting for the leaves to stretch their arms and shamelessly unfurl, I appreciate the curls of steam that dance just above the cup.
At midday, I find myself in England. I move from London to Yorkshire in a few well-chosen sentences. The narrator, Margaret Lea, and I discover the ghosts of burned-out houses and abandoned children left to grow wild. I see snowdrifts out of the corner of my eye even though it's June. The walls around me seem to swallow sound, as though they were covered in the flocked wallpaper that is in Margaret's room. I am reading myself into a country that was in my heart before I ever even set foot in it.
Every night, I disappear. My dream-worlds are varied and vast, often populated by unimaginably strange creatures who have undulating ribbon-wings and heads full of lotus blossoms. Califorrow, the kingdom of worlds in which I dream, contains Chinese garden mazes and ruined theaters and cottages inside waterfalls. There is the old factory with its' crumbling brick walls which I have only seen while running. Or the theater-school that is close to the borders of Catherynne Valente's dream-world of Palimpsest. Califorrow is a collection of lands filled with fog, abandoned buildings, and ruins of decadence.
I have the ability to take a vacation in a teacup. I nap between the pages of books, making the paper rustle when I turn over restlessly. At night, I simultaneously build and inhabit new worlds that I will write wildly about in the flush of dawn lest I forget them. In a single day, I can go from Sri Lanka to the moors of dreary old England to the mountainous stretches of Califorrow. And I don't even have to deal with the TSA.
(Author's note: the particular book I'm referring to is The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and I highly recommend it.)
♥ pacing while praying ♥ you are beautiful ♥ digging for buried crap ♥ we should all be narcissists ♥ ˌɪnkənˈsiːvəbl̩ ♥ juicy memories ♥ relax. breathe. bupkis. ♥ a gypsy heart ♥ a month of rain ♥ up is the new down ♥ your words, her silences ♥ ground rules for a hairless housemate ♥ the smell of particleboard in the morning ♥ from an aspiring spinster ♥ scarves & sweaters & shawls ♥ on emotional idiocy ♥ fairytale-maker ♥ betrayal by choice ♥ how to age gracefully ♥ San Francisco's smile ♥ not a needle but a drink ♥ Einstein I am not ♥ searching for ballon ♥ of the earth ♥ becoming Cirsea ♥ hanky panky in the redwoods ♥ something happened ♥ an act of apparition ♥ ray guns & Rocky Horror ♥ the leviathan on my couch ♥ religious remix culture ♥ why the internet is not Vegas ♥ adrenaline sans risk ♥