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Bundesrepublik
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Bundesrepublik |
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Allysa 
since 1999-11-09
Posts 1952In an upside-down garden 
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It’s all relative. She has a box of coins hidden in the bottom of her closet, behind the rows of sweaters and piles of old tennis shoes. Wheat pennies, old arcade tokens, coins from the Bundesrepublik, from Canada, from France, all of these buried deep within her bedroom. A collection of currency from places that she has never been, places she has already decided she’ll never go. Sometimes, she’ll take the box out, lay it on the bed, remove the cardboard lid and slowly finger each coin, thinking about how it belonged to someone else once. American pennies from 1945. Canadian pennies from 1959, as old as her mother, nickels from 1963, quarters from 1953. One euro from 1999 and a small collection of coins from the fifties, from some place called the Bundesrepublik. She is older than the euro, but everything else predates her, going back to a time and a place that were never formed in her memory. Someone visited those places once, collected those coins and brought them back for her, a token of things she’s never seen, stuff she doesn’t understand. She’s never seen the Eiffel Tower, or Buckingham Palace, or the Mona Lisa. She’s never walked the streets of London, sat in a pub in Dublin, never had to transfer American currency for euros or pesos. She doesn’t even have a passport. All the time, she sits and listens to people recall their vacations to Australia, the school trips to France, that time they went to China, or England, or Germany, or somewhere other than where she’s sitting. They tell her how the food is, show her pictures of the buildings, the landscape, and then, the places that she’s never been, they’re etched into her mind. She dreams about the eight hour, fourteen hour, sixteen hour plane rides to wherever, falling asleep, waking up, wondering how enormous the airplane must be. Thinks about what customs would be like, about getting a stamp in her passport, claiming her luggage. Checking into some luxurious hotel, with a claw foot bathtub and chocolates on her pillow every night. Only rich people go on vacation, he said to her once, they go out to dinner at a different fancy restaurant each night, fly on airplanes, stay in a fancy hotel. And I hate them for it. She has to admit that she just doesn’t know, she’s out of the loop and she can’t tell you a thing about anything. The difference between Missouri and Utah, she can’t locate half of the places that she has actually been to on a map. She doesn’t know the quickest route from here to California or Oregon or Florida, which highways will take you from one state to the next, which airports will take you from one county to the next. She listens to them talk, telling her about how, in France, you can have a glass of wine with dinner even if you’re only sixteen, how in China, the food is sometimes very strange and it stares at you. There is an island halfway between England and Ireland, and pub food is supposedly an interesting experience, and Ireland is just one large Guinness-fest. She’s quiet when they speak, embarrassed because there is nothing for her to contribute to the conversation, she’s never been anywhere, she doesn’t understand that there are cows on the roads in India. Where would you like to go? This is a question she cannot answer, she has no idea where she would like to go. What is there to see in Munich, what is there to do in Italy? Everywhere has historic landmarks, a past, a collaboration of the people who used to dwell there and the people who currently live there. Are the trees pretty in China, is there really a magnetic train in Japan? She has questions that she won’t admit, and they have the answers, but she won’t seek them. Where would you like to go, if you could? And she’s honestly never thought about it, really. She’s never seriously considered that she would be able to get out of here, that somehow, someday, she would be able to go anywhere that she wanted. It was all relative anyway, it was all just something she never did consider. |
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| © Copyright 2006 Allysa - All Rights Reserved | |||
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Poet deVine
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-26
Posts 22612Hurricane Alley |
Ah..I used to think this way until I scraped and saved and took a two week vacation to England! I really enjoyed this - it was different and that's a GOOD thing!  |
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fractal007 Senior Member
since 2000-06-01
Posts 1958 |
Hm.. I like a travel narrative where the protagonist goes nowhere. It's a nice irony. Any idiot can see that the result is true. |
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latearrival Member Ascendant
since 2003-03-21
Posts 5499Florida |
Well, well, Somehow I missed this one. And it needs to be up at the top. I understand this so well. I was thirty eight before I went on airplane. And at sixty three I went on a high school jaunt to Europe. The cost was just within reach. So I saved for two years and joined the kids. I had a ball. And if you have not done it as yet, you will I am sure, make the trip in the future. You will bring back so much more to write about in your own remarkable way. best to you, martyjo |
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jo_kritickisto Junior Member
since 2006-08-17
Posts 15 |
The title is funny in that the protagonist doesn't realize the coin is from Germany. The protagonist is not quite as cynical as some could be. For example, there is no mention here of the landmarks and the historical sites being used as tourist destinations. Instead, the story is somewhat reminiscent of Gulliver's travels even though, as that fractal guy says, the protagonist never goes anywhere physically. |
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Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354Listening to every heart |
She’s quiet when they speak, ~*~ I remember you. You were me in a different time and place, and I remember those strange words, and the talk of customs, and differences. And how what we fed our strange neighbors, how they likened it to things that I could only think to spell, that I might feel some connection. This is a wonderful write, Allysa. It brought back so many different memories, a lot of dreams, and the knowledge that some of those very dreams have come true. This was very good! Thank you! |
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