West

I went and saw Twilight this weekend and one of the things that caught my attention was the scenery. Yes, I love the story, but for me the scenery of a film is just as important as the plot.

The story is set in the town of Forks, Washington, a dewy rain-covered location that always looks misty and wet. As much as I want to be apart of a story like that, I also want to visit where that movie is filmed. It looks cozy and comforting, and full of down-home people.

But really it makes me think about some bigger ideas that I have. I have always wanted to travel. Who am I kidding, I wish I could just move. There are so many days that I wish I could just go, just disappear into thin air and travel everywhere. Leave everyone behind and never get another phone call as Heather Eubank. I could be someone else and star completely over. I could finally be Jane, finally turn into a whole new person. I could finally hide from my life and exist as a new person. Never having to return to Indiana until I was ready to.

I think that it would be wonderful to just get in my car and head west until I am tired of driving. In my fantasy trip I get all the way to the ocean and then just mill around out west. I could become a new person, maybe get a job in a diner, a bed and breakfast, or small coffee shop. I could rent an apartment in a small town that no one has ever heard of, fall in love with some boy, and keep my identity hidden forever.

I think in a former life I lived out west. I was apart of Haite-Ashbury, I rode a donkey to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and I lived in a cabin in Yellowstone. I kissed someone at the top of the space needle in Seattle, and I went hiking in the wilderness of Oregon. I have dangled my toes in Salt Lake, I have lived on a ranch in Montana seaching the horizon for my cowboy, and I've died out west. My soul is out West.

But I've never been west of the arch in St. Louis.