forts and tents and childhood

I saw "Where the Wild Things Are" yesterday and loved it to pieces. It was so beautiful and wistful and sad. It really captured the essence of the book, the mood - which is something much more difficult to grasp than mere plot points. Not a movie for children, per se, but definitely a movie about childhood.

One of the things that it brought back for me was my long lost love of forts and tents. My sister and I used to make pretty elaborate ones in our bedroom on the weekends and we loved sleeping in it (it'd always have to be done before "Golden Girls" started on Saturday night. Apparently, the experience of sitting in a fort made out of your bed blankets and sheets is only made better by the banter of the elderly).

But isn't there something so magical about sleeping in your own homemade (or bedroom-made) fort? The coziness of it. The way the light comes through. How secret and safe it feels to be inside, but yet it is so vulnerable (the structure itself, yes, but also the you inside of it). As an adult, I think there is also something so incredibly romantic about it too. There are scenes in movies like "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" that really capture that romantic aspect as well as the security and desire to have an even more inside space (more private, more yours) than the inside your own home or your own room. Anyway, here are some of my favorite images of homemade tents and forts...



image via home sweet home


image via nine kinds of crazy


image via somerset


image via somerset


image via Fifikoussout


And, yes, it is a "real" tent and not homemade, but Richie Tenenbaum's tent was still perfect:
image via ready to die


image(s) via be my cupcake


Remember that scene under the covers in ""Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"? It totally counts as a fort moment:

images via this michel gondry fan site (dialogue via imbd)


Clementine: Joely?

Joel: Yeah Tangerine?

Clementine: Am I ugly?

Joel: Uh-uh.

Clementine: When I was a kid, I thought I was. I can't believe I'm crying already. Sometimes I think people don't understand how lonely it is to be a kid, like you don't matter. So, I'm eight, and I have these toys, these dolls. My favorite is this ugly girl doll who I call Clementine, and I keep yelling at her, "You can't be ugly! Be pretty!" It's weird, like if I can transform her, I would magically change, too.

Joel: [kisses Clementine] You're pretty.

Clementine: Joely, don't ever leave me.

Joel: You're pretty... you're pretty... pretty...


P.S. In my search for fort images, I discovered the Wild Things Forts' Contest! I think it's over, but I hope they put up some more images soon.
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