I am; Spirited Away

It's been raining. I haven't seen cumulus clouds since our trip to Jordan in October. As a passenger of Braxton's Buick Rendezvous on the drive from Dallas to San Angelo, Texas I can watch the patches of clouds and light. Boring Texas has never been so beautiful. Reality truly is the current perspective.

I remember my first drive to San Angelo, June 30th, 1997. Compared to the rain forest-like summers in northern Wisconsin, I found this part of the country to be lacking in color and character. Who would live here? I asked myself. Bryan Douglas Fore, Jr. had not yet entered my reality. Eight hours later a twiggy Ralf Macchio look-alike in a bright yellow shirt and scuffed blue Doc Martins altered my existence forever.

Here I am again, nearly a full 12 years later, on the same road. Wind mill farms have now replaced some of the cattle ranches and pastures. I have changed as well. I spy an old wind mill in the foreground of a field of the new, slick, alien-like power producing variety. I can relate. It's my 3rd day back in Texas after leaving Kuwait "for good" and I feel that a pair of wind mills really get me.

Two wind mills. Two eras. Two realities... I've been thinking about Chihiro in Miyazaki's Spirited Away. I relate most to Chihiro. "Moving to a new place is an adventure," says her mother in the car on the way to their new home.

The adventure starts when the family takes a detour and Chihiro reluctantly follows her family into a strange city of gluttony and decadence inhabited by spirits after the lamps are lit at night. Her parents become trapped and to stay she has to get a job at the bathhouse working for Ubaba. She's awkward and in the way. The characters she encounters are odd; like the Radish Spirit who fills up the entire elevator and the stingy toads supervising the bathhouse and running the kitchen. She doesn't understand their world and misses home, but by the end of the story she's tamed the jealous rage of a lonely spirit, won the hearts of some unlikely allies, made friends, inspired change and outgrown her fears. She reunites with her family and they return to their car parked at the edge of the real world to find it covered in dust, but otherwise un-aged.

Outside of that city no one would comprehend her adventure if she were to tell them the story.

I can relate. My reality has glitch, an animated short spliced into the feature film. I was there. I saw it and it was real. It was real and now it is obsolete; like an old rusted wind mill in a field of new, slick, alien-like power producing ones.