Travel article: Gone With The Wind Christmas

I live in the extraordinary world of fiction writing on a daily basis and trusting the words to take me on a journey through their crazy world. You want stories ? I usually have a truckload of them, available at the blink of an eye. But these last few days it's different, I am sort of - how should I say - overwhelmed by what I see, what I hear, what I feel. It's like all the stories around me are slowly taking over me. Only yesterday, I was looking at the Putangirua Pinnacles, in the south of the Wairarapa region... and suddenly I got lost in the 'Passage of the Deads' from The Lord of the Rings, looking for someone else's precious ring. Today, I woke up at hotel QT in Wellington and all the art work on the walls, on the tables, off the ceilings, everywhere, started talking to me, telling me stories I could not understand. Ones that were never told before. Yesterday, the burning sun was slowly going through the layers of my skin. Today, it rains and the infamous Wellington wind strikes again. It's hot and it's cold at the same time. Which is it? I am not sure anymore. Tell me please ! As I look at all those still paintings around me, people tell me Wellington is the windiest city in the world. I continue to stare at them, and the wind suddenly takes everything in its stride - the paintings, my thoughts, the world, its madness, my words, even. Everything. For the first time in my life, I feel empty. Empty but free, liberated, living on the edge of the universe like everybody else here, in windy Welly, a world where people don't wear hats or use umbrellas or sport cool hairstyles. The wind would blow them away, like everything else.