a First Class poem

Creased jeans
Gleaming loafers
Open jacket
Casually confident
Disinterested air
First Class

...At least that's how it looked as I waited in the economy/cattle line to get on the plane in London.

The neatherworld (or Heathrow in the wee small hours...)

(...from a few days ago) In the netherworld of travel when you're neither here nor there and nothing exists but the plane and the airport. Every face I see searches desparately for something familiar.

We're all here together, but looking past each other. Where getting a cup of tea can feel like an overwhelming challenge - what currency do I need; how does the queue work; how do I order...

It's strange that when I'm traveling the people I've left and people I'm going to are not uppermost in my mind. It's like navigating and exising in unfamiliar situations leaves me no mind for the normal things of life - whether it's an airport in London, Hong Kong, Lima or Lisbon.

But at the end of the journey, I'll forget all this and hug my sister and have that cup of tea.

What's it all about?

While Travel Dreams Books is about books and traveling (duh), it's also about dreaming of travels to places visited and places I'd love to see. It's about the dream of owning a bookstore that encourages and feeds the desire for travel and to learn about things that are different. To help us dream beyond the limitations of our day to day experiences.

Unfortunately, the bookstore piece of it seems further away as I read of more independent bookstores closing each month. Not only small ones, but often large independents with a steady clientele that have been neighborhood fixtures for years.

But isn't that what dreams are? Imagination, desire, aspiration, hope, wish (of course, they're also considered delusion, fantasy, hallucination and fiction). Only time will tell.