day 26: fictional places i wish existed
i’ve had my head in the clouds lately. actually, scratch that. clouds imply airy, fluffy, feet not touching the ground, la la la trailing along.
no. my head has not been in the clouds lately. it has been a tornado, a hurricane, a tsunami. my head feels like a natural disaster. a constant little hum of angst. life is very busy and i am buzzing along with it and everything that i should be taking time for has fallen to the wayside.
as humans, i think we forget that we are, in essence, animals. vertebrates of the class mammalia of the order of primate. a-nim-als. and i do believe that our natural instinct wants to follow the rhythms of nature. but in an age when people can reach you any time of day (and night) and with the pressures of ‘i need this on my desk yesterday‘, my inner compass has spun itself out of control and is stuck on north. i’ve lost my bearings.
the winds have been fierce lately. joe and i watch the clouds in the morning and even they seem to be moving faster than usual. everything around me is quite literally swirling and falling and changing. for all its beauty, autumn is a time of flux and little deaths. if i follow my earlier rationale, i suppose it’s normal that i would feel… deconstructed too. my instinct wants to prepare for the long hibernation ahead. my reality is 10,000 times faster than the slumber of hibernation.
sigh.
all i know for certain is that this pace doesn’t feel right but i haven’t quite figured out what to do about it. so for now, i am simply going to escape to fantasy land, where it rains glitter and houses are made of lollipops and trees of popcorn and blue birds really do sing.
i’m going to escape to fictional places i wish existed:
- wonderland
- oz
- narnia
- the valley of the truffula trees (the lorax)
- smurfland (mushroom houses in an enchanted forest? hello!)
- the shire
- amélie poulain’s apartment
- any set from any of wes anderson’s movies
- gingerbread houses (human size)
- the little mermaid’s underwater kingdom
- willy wonka’s chocolate factory
- pippi longstocking’s house, horse on the porch and all
- neverland
- diagon alley (harry potter)
- one-eyed willie’s pirate ship (the goonies)
- the labyrinth in labyrinth
- the forest and cottage in legend
where would you escape to?
wonderingsandwanderings.com 
“i’ve lost my bearings.” Oh, so have I, so have I.
Can I meet you at the Weasly’s kitchen table? I would like Mrs. Weasly to be there and I would love it if she knitted me a sweater to greet me upon arrival. Or we could meet at Hogwarts itself, but in the enchanted dining room, where we could have whatever we wished for and owls would fly over-head. Or, we could meet at Diagon Alley, and visit all the other places after enjoying a butterbeer and some window shopping.
Of course, We could also just rent a beach house and a maid, but that isn’t as enchanting now, is it?
Oh goodness, I loved this list and this post. I hope escaping somewhere for awhile makes a difference for you, even if it’s only in your head…or maybe BECAUSE it’s only in your head. I would add Pern, Earthsea, the Hundred-Acre Wood, Avalon, Atlantis, the island of the Wild Things, Edoris & Attolia, the Boxcar Children’s boxcar, the little house on the prairie, and several more whose names are escaping me at the moment.
that was me, lizardek
I’ll take a trip to Rivendell please. To chill with the elves for a while. Mmm.
i’m currently reading the chronicles of narnia, for the first time and it’s pretty great. i realized yesterday that my entire year has been spent reading fantasy fiction…
Oh, I love this list. I needed a reminder of all those wonderful worlds. I, too, need an escape. I think I’ll head to Diagon Alley first.
Perhaps I would like to enter one of Bert’s chalk drawings in Mary Poppins. Maybe the one with the boat going down the Thames.
I lost my bearings with each child I gave birth to and it takes years to come back to center and just when you do they spin you out again. I always want nature….whether its real or imagined. I want to be in Green Gables or the Shire. Sherwood forest. Narnia. The Secret Garden. But I would take anywhere on the west coast of Scotland or the Hebrides, or the Maine coast. Any place where I can stand still and stare out at the vast water, with wild rocks and wind at my back.