Monday, September 28, 2009
What's the Difference?
A writer and a reader. A creator and regurgitater. How can I enhance the creativity of a passive reader? I want to know.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Adventures in Disneyland with Recovering Addicts
Here it is, the new, improved, completed Disneyland experience.
†In the holy year of our Lord 2007, I took a trip to the holiest of holy sites, Disneyland, in Anaheim, California, home of the Mighty Ducks, Angels, and everything Disney or on social security, with a group of addicted associates from the prestigious Morningside Recovery. Our original purpose of spreading the message of sobriety to middle-class families on vacation was lost in favor of experiencing everything Disneyland had to offer. The ones who need the message the most are the ones who won't listen, according to A.A., but who needs them anyway?†
I knew things were going south on the ride over when I told everyone, like my uncle had told me years before, that we would be close as soon as we saw the famed Matterhorn Mountain eminently displaying its snowy plastic peak. The smallest mountain in the world can be seen for miles and miles in Orange County, vaguely suggesting to those nearby that Disneyland could really be anywhere, and that to live next to Disneyland is like winning the lottery because it could be anyone, maybe even you. Before I even realized it, we were upon the outskirts of Disneyland, but what I had promised had disappeared: there was no mountainous indicator. As my eyes were forced to evolve from a mountain fixation to watching street signs and parking lots with Disney characters distinguishing each identical section, I realized that in this world of crowd management and maximizing profit it was efficiency that was king. Walt Disney's aesthetic dreams had been dissolved in a sea of overweight adults and their children, who waddled across the parking lot like giant packs of penguins, waiting for their next churro, not noticing that the one thing that exemplified Disneyland was out of sight. I should have realized right then that this return to Disneyland would be no such re-experience of my youth: it would be filled with an abundance of nostalgic symbols that lacked substance. Constantly nagging me to take part is their purpose, but they know not what they do.
Instead of asking "are we there yet?" over and over like little children, addicts say, "I need a fucking cigarette so fucking badly!" Therefore, upon parking, the entire van emptied and then proceeded to light up, cursing and smoking and wondering what was in store for the day. Going down the line of parked cars, one could see that everyone who was not us was a family with small children. Mini-van, Hybrid, Suburban, 15-seat Dodge van with tinted windows, Suburban, Hybrid, Mini-van. Someone had an astrological lighter which happened to be my sign, and since there is always an abundance of lighters, I got my own personalized Cancer lighter from the Time Being or, rather, for the time being.
"Everyone remember where we parked!" says the jolly-faced overweight counselor who blasted the Rolling Stones all the way to the park. One time I found her birth control pills lying indiscriminately in her car and asked her if I could have some of her gum, which got a laugh out of the girls.
"Oh, I never forget those things, Grace," I said, hoping that the sincerity in my voice would relieve her of having to remember that this was Timon's parking lot, judging by the horribly dusty signs that were a result of the recent fires. It was true: wherever my family goes, I am always responsible for knowing where we parked. In this case, the recovering addicts probably needed someone to remember for them, but none of them would necessarily trust me because my skills had not been demonstrated yet. Who wants to wander around aimlessly trying to find the car at the end of the day? Not me, especially not me! Everyone wants to leave Disneyland when its time to leave. Lord knows one day at Disneyland is enough for a lifetime!
Trying to plan your trip to Disneyland can be a disaster because everyone's wants change so quickly that insistence on an efficient and effective plan can make you seem like a power-mongering tour guide. No matter how well you plan, nothing can prepare you for the rapture that one experiences at Disneyland. It is a lot like being high when you get there, with so much going on that not even Jesus could look inwards. To make matters worse for us addicts, planning is not our forte. I knew before we even left the parking lot that there would be certain attractions that so engulfed one of my colleague's attention that we could never get done what we wanted to get done. To be honest, I was really wishing at that point that I could have gone my own way and experienced Disneyland alone, but once we got inside I realized that being alone in Disneyland means certain death of the self and rebirth into a cartoon fantasy of endless consumption.
Upon entering the park there are shops galore, with Disney characters walking around and allowing kids to take pictures with them. Even long ago, there were never any illusions that these characters were real in my young mind, and I always hated to think that the person under the suit was some guy working for minimum wage. If I had had the chance of ripping off his fake head and exposing it to everyone I probably would have, and then ended up regretting it because there would've been some kid who really thought the characters were real. They can't kick you out for that, can they? Do they reserve the right to refuse service to anyone? I probably would have ripped his head off and started running, and if someone had tried to stop me, I would have put the head on myself to see if he knew the difference.
In this world of Disneyland 2007 it was a small world after all. Everything had shrunk since the last time I had been there. As I watched a clueless young father try to comfort his crying baby I knew that there was something disturbing about this place even to the smallest people. I was thinking about the children, I was thinking about the park, but mostly I was thinking about how lucky I was to share something with that child. This something was the fundamental disturbance of having people everywhere and nowhere at once. It was a constant movement of hot bodies always looking towards the next attraction without actually stopped to take anything in. This crying baby could not understand the gravity that is at work on all of these people, and it therefore cannot understand the movements of large masses of people. The nature of the herd in Disneyland is just like any other mass transportation system: everyone is using the same roads or streets or highways but no one is going to the same place (except maybe Disneyland). This child only understood the place where she was, and couldn't see what could drive someone to want to go somewhere else. I sympathized with this near-sentient being because, for the life of me, I couldn't accept Disneyland for what it was, which inevitably requires accepting the experience of being constantly pushed here and there by signs and images. At the heart of Disneyland there was an escape, but rather than being an escape away from normal life, it was an escape towards a supersaturated existence of constant stimulation.
Not many people know this, but Saint Peter actually became a Saint through his security work with Noah on his Ark. His first order of business was to contract Santa Claus to make the list of all the animals who would go on the Ark. In front of Space Mountain they have the same thing set up, except St. Peter is a paid grunt employee of Disneyland who lets people in the fast pass line provided they have a ticket. Santa Claus was quickly fired because if you're even in the park you're a paying customer, so there is no need for any sort of businesslike list when you're dealing with an entire herd of pack animals like ourselves. Noah, upon building his Ark, quit because no one steers an Ark that is aimlessly floating around simply waiting for the flood to go away, or, for that matter, a computerized roller coaster which runs on a track. Besides, he has other Arks and roller coasters to build. Still, the people waiting in line are actually animals, that much is true, and most of them waddle like penguins, that much is very true.
When you've been around me for a long enough time, you learn to let me alone when I start random, digressive conversations with random people. In this case, when I had the extreme pleasure of asking Saint Peter about the background score for this wonderful attraction, my addicted associates knew what I was doing immediately. As soon as I walked up to him, they quickly ran in line so the wait would not be thirty seconds longer.
"I heard that the Red Hot Chili Peppers did the score for this attraction?"
"Oh, that was last year. We went back to the original Space Mountain theme music." I wanted to ask him who made that decision, but I knew that would only expose his sense of powerlessness to himself.
People walk much slower than usual when they know they're about to wait in line for an hour, and that is when you can see their most animal nature. Penguins are really the only way to describe it: shifting their weight left and right rhythmically in what is called waddling in the animal kingdom.
"There's someone behind you," says the person who has turned around to talk to his group face-to-face.
"Hi, thank you," I say, appreciative not of the fact that they're letting me ahead, but of the fact that they're not explaining why I have a right to such things.
After about a half an hour of waiting, we enter the control room and on the main screen is a camera shot spinning in space with stars becoming more dizzying than clear. The mood is actually not that of a space station anymore, it is distinctly the space mountain control room, but my associates have not seen such things before and are looking at me very expectantly. I say, "if you take really tiny baby steps, the line will seem to go faster because you will always be moving forward," and instead of taking my lead, I have to demonstrate for them. When it becomes clear that the line is moving really fast for short periods of time and then stopping, my associates start talking.
"Alex, you're holding up the line!"
"Oh, Blair, it really only appears that way! These people will have to wait all the same."
"The people behind you don't complain to you only because they don't know you."
"Oh, Blair, how can we know that? Think about how happy the people in the back of the line will be when for no apparent reason the line jumps significantly as soon as I get on the rocket."
This "rocket," a name I had found out only due to dreadful circumstances, had a safety bar which clamped down in intervals, and I happened to be of the body width which fell directly in the middle of the intervals. I chose the looser option. As we left the docking bay, the ride stopped. The controller sitting at her computer turned on the microphone and announced over the loudspeaker that was a problem with the ride. The entire time we were stuck I was watching a party slowly develop in the control room.
The party, composed of firemen (the generic emergency response team), line mediators, and the people who say "Thank you for riding Space Mountain. Enjoy the rest of your day," has filled the room to the brim, and must make room for more, or so it seems. Their being behind a pane of glass doesn't keep me from noticing that there are very serious glances being shared between the operators. They must have encountered this before, but at the same time look like they are doing their best. When you are in charge, trying to look like you're doing your best can cause panic among a populace. The king should always save his best option for last, when hopes and expectations are at a minimum and he can look like a real hero for solving an unsolvable problem.
The feelings surrounding this malfunction were all quite negative. Hearing that the ride stopped will probably make readers sorry for the fact that I wasn't able to ride the best ride in the whole park. However, being in the rocket gives one an entirely different experience. Unless you created the ride yourself, the nature of the ride is entirely unknown. What I once thought to be completely infallible suddenly became fallible. But what I couldn't get out of my mind was how similar this was to using drugs. You get high expecting to be taken on a wild African safari, with the drug as your tour guide. What you never know, or no one ever tells you, is that the tour guide is only there for your entertainment: he knows nothing of first-aid or the places he is taking you. The guide in this case is the entire experience, but it is the experience that has no regard for your desires. I realized that even though I cared so much for the drugs I was taking they failed to reciprocate. All they could be is what they are, and that was no longer good enough for me. I thought about whether all this mindless entertainment from Disneyland and drug use was worth it after all. I decided that I would not return to Disneyland, but that to avoid being a downer to everyone I was hanging out with at the time I would put up with everything and continue on each of the rides. Disneyland was supposed to be the time we all forgot about the message of addiction, so I reserved my opinions for this story. How ironic was it that the place that was supposed to be the most fun in rehab was what really got the message through to me? They say that one of the hardest things for addicts to do is to resist the temptation to replace their addiction with another addiction. But for me, I realized how horrible addiction was as soon as I started replacing it with Disneyland. It made me realize the essence of addiction, no matter the object of the addict's affection. Addicts want nothing more than to have their lives be effortless and easy. For them, the biggest problem in their lives is the thing that they wanted to believe was their solution to everything. Life as an addict seems to deny the most fundamental aspects of existence; it is a world where Free Will is ignored and the ultimate fantasy is to repetitively live out the same high, over and over again.
After we tried out the new California Adventure Park, the nightly Disney parade was starting, so Blair and I knew it was time to meet up with the rest of the group. As we tried to cross the parade route, we got split up. I decided to go to Tomorrow Land, driven by some unknown force. When I think about all the different places I could have gone instead, I was reminded of the idea that in order for this exact moment in life to be what it truly is, all the casual factors surrounding the moment must be the same. LIfe is constantly changing in the most subtle ways. Economists call this "all things being equal," in which they assume that all the factors surrounding the value of a good are constant so they can focus on the good itself. If anything regarding the events at Disneyland had changed, I might have chosen to go to a different Land. As it so happens, I was lucky to meet up with some of my fellow addicts in Tomorrow Land. What were the chances? If the rest of my group were randomly strewn across the park, would I have run into them sooner or later? How many people had I crossed paths with more than once earlier in the day but had simply ignored because they were strangers? As I contemplated these questions, Blair suddenly came walking toward me. His cell phone was off, but still he had wandered in the exact same direction as I had. What a relief! As they say, "It's a small world after all."
†In the holy year of our Lord 2007, I took a trip to the holiest of holy sites, Disneyland, in Anaheim, California, home of the Mighty Ducks, Angels, and everything Disney or on social security, with a group of addicted associates from the prestigious Morningside Recovery. Our original purpose of spreading the message of sobriety to middle-class families on vacation was lost in favor of experiencing everything Disneyland had to offer. The ones who need the message the most are the ones who won't listen, according to A.A., but who needs them anyway?†
I knew things were going south on the ride over when I told everyone, like my uncle had told me years before, that we would be close as soon as we saw the famed Matterhorn Mountain eminently displaying its snowy plastic peak. The smallest mountain in the world can be seen for miles and miles in Orange County, vaguely suggesting to those nearby that Disneyland could really be anywhere, and that to live next to Disneyland is like winning the lottery because it could be anyone, maybe even you. Before I even realized it, we were upon the outskirts of Disneyland, but what I had promised had disappeared: there was no mountainous indicator. As my eyes were forced to evolve from a mountain fixation to watching street signs and parking lots with Disney characters distinguishing each identical section, I realized that in this world of crowd management and maximizing profit it was efficiency that was king. Walt Disney's aesthetic dreams had been dissolved in a sea of overweight adults and their children, who waddled across the parking lot like giant packs of penguins, waiting for their next churro, not noticing that the one thing that exemplified Disneyland was out of sight. I should have realized right then that this return to Disneyland would be no such re-experience of my youth: it would be filled with an abundance of nostalgic symbols that lacked substance. Constantly nagging me to take part is their purpose, but they know not what they do.
Instead of asking "are we there yet?" over and over like little children, addicts say, "I need a fucking cigarette so fucking badly!" Therefore, upon parking, the entire van emptied and then proceeded to light up, cursing and smoking and wondering what was in store for the day. Going down the line of parked cars, one could see that everyone who was not us was a family with small children. Mini-van, Hybrid, Suburban, 15-seat Dodge van with tinted windows, Suburban, Hybrid, Mini-van. Someone had an astrological lighter which happened to be my sign, and since there is always an abundance of lighters, I got my own personalized Cancer lighter from the Time Being or, rather, for the time being.
"Everyone remember where we parked!" says the jolly-faced overweight counselor who blasted the Rolling Stones all the way to the park. One time I found her birth control pills lying indiscriminately in her car and asked her if I could have some of her gum, which got a laugh out of the girls.
"Oh, I never forget those things, Grace," I said, hoping that the sincerity in my voice would relieve her of having to remember that this was Timon's parking lot, judging by the horribly dusty signs that were a result of the recent fires. It was true: wherever my family goes, I am always responsible for knowing where we parked. In this case, the recovering addicts probably needed someone to remember for them, but none of them would necessarily trust me because my skills had not been demonstrated yet. Who wants to wander around aimlessly trying to find the car at the end of the day? Not me, especially not me! Everyone wants to leave Disneyland when its time to leave. Lord knows one day at Disneyland is enough for a lifetime!
Trying to plan your trip to Disneyland can be a disaster because everyone's wants change so quickly that insistence on an efficient and effective plan can make you seem like a power-mongering tour guide. No matter how well you plan, nothing can prepare you for the rapture that one experiences at Disneyland. It is a lot like being high when you get there, with so much going on that not even Jesus could look inwards. To make matters worse for us addicts, planning is not our forte. I knew before we even left the parking lot that there would be certain attractions that so engulfed one of my colleague's attention that we could never get done what we wanted to get done. To be honest, I was really wishing at that point that I could have gone my own way and experienced Disneyland alone, but once we got inside I realized that being alone in Disneyland means certain death of the self and rebirth into a cartoon fantasy of endless consumption.
Upon entering the park there are shops galore, with Disney characters walking around and allowing kids to take pictures with them. Even long ago, there were never any illusions that these characters were real in my young mind, and I always hated to think that the person under the suit was some guy working for minimum wage. If I had had the chance of ripping off his fake head and exposing it to everyone I probably would have, and then ended up regretting it because there would've been some kid who really thought the characters were real. They can't kick you out for that, can they? Do they reserve the right to refuse service to anyone? I probably would have ripped his head off and started running, and if someone had tried to stop me, I would have put the head on myself to see if he knew the difference.
In this world of Disneyland 2007 it was a small world after all. Everything had shrunk since the last time I had been there. As I watched a clueless young father try to comfort his crying baby I knew that there was something disturbing about this place even to the smallest people. I was thinking about the children, I was thinking about the park, but mostly I was thinking about how lucky I was to share something with that child. This something was the fundamental disturbance of having people everywhere and nowhere at once. It was a constant movement of hot bodies always looking towards the next attraction without actually stopped to take anything in. This crying baby could not understand the gravity that is at work on all of these people, and it therefore cannot understand the movements of large masses of people. The nature of the herd in Disneyland is just like any other mass transportation system: everyone is using the same roads or streets or highways but no one is going to the same place (except maybe Disneyland). This child only understood the place where she was, and couldn't see what could drive someone to want to go somewhere else. I sympathized with this near-sentient being because, for the life of me, I couldn't accept Disneyland for what it was, which inevitably requires accepting the experience of being constantly pushed here and there by signs and images. At the heart of Disneyland there was an escape, but rather than being an escape away from normal life, it was an escape towards a supersaturated existence of constant stimulation.
Not many people know this, but Saint Peter actually became a Saint through his security work with Noah on his Ark. His first order of business was to contract Santa Claus to make the list of all the animals who would go on the Ark. In front of Space Mountain they have the same thing set up, except St. Peter is a paid grunt employee of Disneyland who lets people in the fast pass line provided they have a ticket. Santa Claus was quickly fired because if you're even in the park you're a paying customer, so there is no need for any sort of businesslike list when you're dealing with an entire herd of pack animals like ourselves. Noah, upon building his Ark, quit because no one steers an Ark that is aimlessly floating around simply waiting for the flood to go away, or, for that matter, a computerized roller coaster which runs on a track. Besides, he has other Arks and roller coasters to build. Still, the people waiting in line are actually animals, that much is true, and most of them waddle like penguins, that much is very true.
When you've been around me for a long enough time, you learn to let me alone when I start random, digressive conversations with random people. In this case, when I had the extreme pleasure of asking Saint Peter about the background score for this wonderful attraction, my addicted associates knew what I was doing immediately. As soon as I walked up to him, they quickly ran in line so the wait would not be thirty seconds longer.
"I heard that the Red Hot Chili Peppers did the score for this attraction?"
"Oh, that was last year. We went back to the original Space Mountain theme music." I wanted to ask him who made that decision, but I knew that would only expose his sense of powerlessness to himself.
People walk much slower than usual when they know they're about to wait in line for an hour, and that is when you can see their most animal nature. Penguins are really the only way to describe it: shifting their weight left and right rhythmically in what is called waddling in the animal kingdom.
"There's someone behind you," says the person who has turned around to talk to his group face-to-face.
"Hi, thank you," I say, appreciative not of the fact that they're letting me ahead, but of the fact that they're not explaining why I have a right to such things.
After about a half an hour of waiting, we enter the control room and on the main screen is a camera shot spinning in space with stars becoming more dizzying than clear. The mood is actually not that of a space station anymore, it is distinctly the space mountain control room, but my associates have not seen such things before and are looking at me very expectantly. I say, "if you take really tiny baby steps, the line will seem to go faster because you will always be moving forward," and instead of taking my lead, I have to demonstrate for them. When it becomes clear that the line is moving really fast for short periods of time and then stopping, my associates start talking.
"Alex, you're holding up the line!"
"Oh, Blair, it really only appears that way! These people will have to wait all the same."
"The people behind you don't complain to you only because they don't know you."
"Oh, Blair, how can we know that? Think about how happy the people in the back of the line will be when for no apparent reason the line jumps significantly as soon as I get on the rocket."
This "rocket," a name I had found out only due to dreadful circumstances, had a safety bar which clamped down in intervals, and I happened to be of the body width which fell directly in the middle of the intervals. I chose the looser option. As we left the docking bay, the ride stopped. The controller sitting at her computer turned on the microphone and announced over the loudspeaker that was a problem with the ride. The entire time we were stuck I was watching a party slowly develop in the control room.
The party, composed of firemen (the generic emergency response team), line mediators, and the people who say "Thank you for riding Space Mountain. Enjoy the rest of your day," has filled the room to the brim, and must make room for more, or so it seems. Their being behind a pane of glass doesn't keep me from noticing that there are very serious glances being shared between the operators. They must have encountered this before, but at the same time look like they are doing their best. When you are in charge, trying to look like you're doing your best can cause panic among a populace. The king should always save his best option for last, when hopes and expectations are at a minimum and he can look like a real hero for solving an unsolvable problem.
The feelings surrounding this malfunction were all quite negative. Hearing that the ride stopped will probably make readers sorry for the fact that I wasn't able to ride the best ride in the whole park. However, being in the rocket gives one an entirely different experience. Unless you created the ride yourself, the nature of the ride is entirely unknown. What I once thought to be completely infallible suddenly became fallible. But what I couldn't get out of my mind was how similar this was to using drugs. You get high expecting to be taken on a wild African safari, with the drug as your tour guide. What you never know, or no one ever tells you, is that the tour guide is only there for your entertainment: he knows nothing of first-aid or the places he is taking you. The guide in this case is the entire experience, but it is the experience that has no regard for your desires. I realized that even though I cared so much for the drugs I was taking they failed to reciprocate. All they could be is what they are, and that was no longer good enough for me. I thought about whether all this mindless entertainment from Disneyland and drug use was worth it after all. I decided that I would not return to Disneyland, but that to avoid being a downer to everyone I was hanging out with at the time I would put up with everything and continue on each of the rides. Disneyland was supposed to be the time we all forgot about the message of addiction, so I reserved my opinions for this story. How ironic was it that the place that was supposed to be the most fun in rehab was what really got the message through to me? They say that one of the hardest things for addicts to do is to resist the temptation to replace their addiction with another addiction. But for me, I realized how horrible addiction was as soon as I started replacing it with Disneyland. It made me realize the essence of addiction, no matter the object of the addict's affection. Addicts want nothing more than to have their lives be effortless and easy. For them, the biggest problem in their lives is the thing that they wanted to believe was their solution to everything. Life as an addict seems to deny the most fundamental aspects of existence; it is a world where Free Will is ignored and the ultimate fantasy is to repetitively live out the same high, over and over again.
After we tried out the new California Adventure Park, the nightly Disney parade was starting, so Blair and I knew it was time to meet up with the rest of the group. As we tried to cross the parade route, we got split up. I decided to go to Tomorrow Land, driven by some unknown force. When I think about all the different places I could have gone instead, I was reminded of the idea that in order for this exact moment in life to be what it truly is, all the casual factors surrounding the moment must be the same. LIfe is constantly changing in the most subtle ways. Economists call this "all things being equal," in which they assume that all the factors surrounding the value of a good are constant so they can focus on the good itself. If anything regarding the events at Disneyland had changed, I might have chosen to go to a different Land. As it so happens, I was lucky to meet up with some of my fellow addicts in Tomorrow Land. What were the chances? If the rest of my group were randomly strewn across the park, would I have run into them sooner or later? How many people had I crossed paths with more than once earlier in the day but had simply ignored because they were strangers? As I contemplated these questions, Blair suddenly came walking toward me. His cell phone was off, but still he had wandered in the exact same direction as I had. What a relief! As they say, "It's a small world after all."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)