What is the last book you have read?

The travel agency couldn't guarantee where I would emerge, they couldn't guarantee my safety, and they couldn't guarantee I'd be able to return.  I didn't care.

Most people who traveled via InterPlane Agency were thrill seekers.  Adventurers.  Wealthy beyond imagining and bored with living their pampered lives.  I was none of these.  I sought comfort.  I was a chicken.  I had to sell everything I had to afford the trip, and I even had to lie on a loan application.  Banks don't like it when their loans are used to send the person owing money to a world from which they can't send payments.  I had never had a pampered life, and I was too scared and stressed and depressed to be bored.

The last book I read was Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin, an excellent book of short stories all revolving around the ability to take vacations into alternative dimensions.  As she does in much of her writing, Le Guin explores alien ways of thinking and, in doing so, highlights humankind's faults and difficulty with empathy.

Pageant Question: Tell me a story about your family.

There was nothing more that could be done other than screaming the word "TOURIST!" to make the family of four look more like tourists in the big city.  Saving money by parking outside the city, the two adult and the preteen daughter and son had to ride a subway into the heart of New York while carrying their overstuffed, frame backpacks.  Dad trying to keep his cool.  Mom consulting a map.  Daughter ogling everyone in the car.  Son playing it tough even though he clutched his pack whenever the lights flickered.

Upon reaching the surface, the family made an unfortunate turn left seeing as their hotel was to the right.  Like ducklings crossing a freeway, they followed Dad at a brisk pace while Mom made a weak effort to point the other way.  The street began looking worse and worse, and the family felt like children in a fairy tale wandering too deeply into the forbidden woods.  Their packs became even heavier with the stares of native New Yorkers.  TOURIST!  TOURIST!  TOURIST!

The kids knew better than to say anything when their father and mother abruptly turned back and marched them the other way.  By now, the family of four had condensed, parents' hands guiding, eyes darting.  The daughter would always remember seeing a man walking towards them, his coat open enough to see glittering necklaces.  As he neared, she could hear his accented voice repeating in a drone, "Gold chains, gold chains for sale.  Gold chains, gold chains for sale."

229

While you love vacation and hating having to leave, it is a relieved return to your heart when you come home again.  As you get closer and closer to home, you note all the small changes that happened while you were away.  The doughnut shop got their new sign.  There's a new convenience store that opened.  The grass in the fields is so long.  It is late in June, getting on towards evening with the sun still setting, red and orange painting the western sky, the air still warm and the crickets and peepers playing out the day when the thrum of the engine finally cuts once you're safely parked in your garage again.  The hard part is unloading the packed-to-the-gills van after being so tired from the trip, but emptying is faster than packing.  The wood floors creak and pop, not having been stepped on in so long.  It smells warm and dusty and like home.  Finally home.

100

They say that because cruise ships are so big you never feel the motion of them on the sea. They are apparently not sensitive enough to that motion. The ships, no matter how large, roll slowly back and forth, up and down. They pull forward. They lag back. The motion never ceases, not even in port. This motion is the clearest when you are in your cabin's bed, tossing because you're rolling. The next clearest is when you try to walk normally down a straight hallway. You can't just step; you must place your steps, and even then you will drift back and forth. The worst, however, will come when you are back on land and you're still rolling. You lie down in your hotel bed, trying to get some sleep before your early morning flight back to the ice and the dark, but you are too dizzy from the rocking, rocking, rocking of the perfectly still bed.