March 21, 2012 - "Travel Dreams"
When I was about 10 or 11 years old, I saw the movie "Mask"
(starring Eric Stoltz, Cher and Sam Elliott) for the first time. I immediately made two important decisions as a result...
1) When I grew up, I wanted to be just like Sam Elliott's character "Gar".
2) I wanted to travel the world, and needed a map that I could cover with push-pins, indicating all of the far-off places I planned to go.
Eventually I got the map - a rather large one that came with a subscription to National Geographic Magazine. And yes... for a time I had it covered with brightly colored push-pins. I started with Italy: Rome, Venice, Florence, Naples, Milan, Torino... then moved on to France... Great Britain... Ireland - before jumping to places like China, India, Egypt, Australia and Peru. It wasn't long before the map looked more like an abstract-painting of colored dots.
Memories of "Mask", that old map, and my old dreams all came shooting to mind today when I opened up the supply cabinet at work and saw a little tub filled with these push-pins. A few hundred possible journeys, waiting to be pinpointed and realized.
Over two dozen years have passed... and I'm still not "Gar", and I've never left the United States.
Maybe it's time for that all to change!
We'll see.
(lifeisgood!)* * *
