It's been years since I packed so deliberately, thinking over every item I bring, checking to make sure that I have everything I'll need and then checking again. Partly because climbing a very tall mountain and camping out in a wildlife park are activities that require special forethought and deliberation. Partly because it's a vacation, not something longer and more substantial: time I spend trying to find some necessary item that I forgot is just lost, any moment that I can't experience fully is unrepeatable.
Vaguely related: I've been reading this biography of Henry Morton Stanley, and although there is much to say about it, and I will write a short review later, I feel frequent guilty twinges because certain descriptions of his explorations in the Congo frequently remind me of...the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. At one point Tim Jeal quotes from the diary of one of Stanley's companions, and he's describing the sound of arrows whizzing by his head - how silent they are, but for a faint "pit pit pit" as they strike in the surrounding bush. I nodded my head and thought, "Yes, just like the ride!"
I'm kind of ashamed of this, as, I suppose, I ought to be.
1 comment:
so many things are like Disneyland. i feel no shame that many of my reference points are from hyperreality.
the bio sounds like fun, i'll have to track it down...
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