{"id":690,"date":"2011-01-05T10:48:09","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T15:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=690"},"modified":"2011-01-05T10:49:06","modified_gmt":"2011-01-05T15:49:06","slug":"visiting-hogsmeade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/miscellaneous\/visiting-hogsmeade\/","title":{"rendered":"Visiting Hogsmeade"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter Monday, it was so full that the area had to be blocked off for a time to prevent overcrowding.\u00a0 Imagine, going all the way to Orlando, only to be barred from the place you\u2019d gone to see.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Hogsmeade Village, January 3, 2011<\/p><\/div>\n

Fortunately for us, our family arrived early enough to walk right in, and more than taking any of the rides, I liked just standing in Hogsmeade Village<\/a>, looking up at the peaked roofs of the shops with their snow and crooked chimneys, feeling like I was really in another land.\u00a0 I\u2019m a sucker for such a place. Steam came from the stack of the Hogwarts Express engine.\u00a0 Colored jars lined the windows of the candy shop, and the foam on the butterbeer stuck to my upper lip like marshmallow butterscotch. Goodwill rose within me. My family bumped into each other happily and spontaneously reached to hold hands.<\/p>\n

I relished everything about being there, and as I did, I loved to think it all derived from one woman\u2019s imagination.\u00a0 It was just so cool we all got to see and taste what she originally envisioned.\u00a0 How wonderful it must have been for Rowling, going there in her own mind the first time.\u00a0 I can\u2019t help thinking, no matter how delightful it all is for us, that Rowling had even more fun herself, writing the books.<\/p>\n

I remember three years ago going to Disney World with my then 13-year-old son, and wondering why we pay other people to tell us to dream, to wish on stars. It\u2019s sort of embarrassing to dream, actually.\u00a0 I never tell people what I\u2019m dreaming because I\u2019m pretty sure they\u2019ll laugh at me; or worse, I might jinx my luck.<\/p>\n

But Monday wasn\u2019t about dreaming.\u00a0 Hogsmeade was about imagining, which is a much more powerful thing.\u00a0 Unlike dreaming, where we wish for unearned gifts, imagining is in our own control. \u00a0The act itself is the gift.\u00a0 \u201cCome play in your own mind,\u201d those crooked chimneys said to me.\u00a0 Don\u2019t worry that such chimneys can\u2019t be built, or that they have nothing to do with real life, or that no one else will come play, too.<\/p>\n

There is something selfishly gorgeous in simply disappearing into an imagined world, whether it\u2019s Hogsmeade Village for a day or the new novel I\u2019m writing over months or Ship Breaker<\/em> which I\u2019m reading now, but I like to remember, too, that Rowling has said we should use our imaginations to imagine what it is like to be other people and to empathize with them (Harvard Commencement 2008<\/a>).\u00a0 I like to think when we\u2019re caring for characters, we\u2019re practicing caring for real people, too, and that once we leave the park, we\u2019re a little kinder and better than when we went in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter Monday, it was so full that the area had to be blocked off for a time to prevent overcrowding.\u00a0 Imagine, going all the way to Orlando, only to be barred from the place you\u2019d gone to see. Fortunately for us, our family arrived early enough to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":694,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions\/694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}