More Pictures from A Scrapbook of Impossible Travels

"So, Karen," said Ariel Allegra. "After all your whining last week about my not taking you to see the Beatles at the Cavern Club, I find out in your blog today that you've been much further than 1961 Liverpool. You've impersonated an alien and met a Dalek. I'm not so sure about that black hole, though. It could be a wormhole, maybe, but not a black hole per se."

"Oh, it's fake," I said. "It's all fake. The bald alien prosthetic was part of an attraction at Universal Studios over a decade ago. The Dalek belongs to a fan who was at the Gallifrey One convention in 2003. The vortex wormhole thing was a camera flash in a mirror."

"In other words, you lied," Ariel said. "You lied with pictures."

I have visited the Old West.

"Did you read the text at all?" I asked. "I didn't lie. Not exactly. The Weekend Assignment was to edit a photo into looking different and unusual. I tried to edit them into being illustrations for A Journal of Impossible Travels, or, failing that, photos in A Scrapbook of Impossible Travels. It's not a lie if you tell people you're being deceptive."

I am a Leaper - or possibly I'm immersed in the Time Vortex.

"I see you're doing more of the deceptive photo editing tonight," Ariel said. I'd already uploaded my pictures by that point, after several prior attempts ended in failure due to a Blogger glitch.

Walking on the Moon is much easier
with a force field than a space suit.

"That's right," I said. "I was up way too late last night, and I wanted more time to mess around with the topic."

"And these five pictures are the result," Ariel said. "You overused that cowgirl pose rather badly, don't you think?"

Thomas Jefferson and I relax during a three hour tour.

"Yes, I did, but it saved me a lot of time, and I don't have all that many pictures of myself to work with," I said. "What do you think otherwise?"

Walt Disney shows fourteen-year-old Karen
a maquette of an animatronic pirate.

"Oh, they're passable, I suppose," Ariel said. "But what you've done is more an exercise in wish fulfillment than in photo editing."

"It shows, huh?" I said. "But that's what I do. I can't really travel in time and space, so I invent ways to do it vicariously, with words and pictures."

"And fictional daughters of pandimensional wizards," Ariel said.

"If you like, yes," I said. "As far as this world knows, you exist only as a foil for my ideas."

"Flatterer. See if I take you to meet James Thurber after this."

"But you weren't going to do that anyway."

"Probably not."

"If I am your foil, how is that working out for you?" Ariel asked. "I turned up tonight without Kate, and now I can't help but notice you're stuck for an ending to this blog entry."

"Yes," I said. "I blame you."

"That's gratitude for you," Ariel said.

Karen (with Ariel)

Real sources:

• photo of Karen at Little Painted Desert County Park, 1986
• photo of an Old Tucson tour guide, 2005
• Little Painted Desert again, originally without Karen
• 1970 photo of Karen and her dad, with Thomas Jefferson portrait previously used in this old blog entry.
• 1971 photo of Karen by Joel R. pasted into a scene from the Disneyland 10th Anniversary‎ show.