Landing

When I went into Space Mountain (THE MIND) I was gutted a couple of times by tears, I had said goodbye to my mom and sisters.  I had to walk through my crying up the long walk the ramps of Space Mountain past the dark windows with sprinkle of stars and the big windows of screens of a game no one plays, which used to be merely holograms.  Then actually the ride, my favorite, not even, any more, scary to me, but the darkness and speed and confusion and confinement that are wonderful I was in the last seat of six in the rocket with five strangers ahead the car stops a minute and a sequence of panels lights up (this is not real): prepare for launch, checking invisible oxygen shield.  My gut wanted to cry again.  Then we got to scream, instead of what was in my gut, cultural context to scream, scream.

The train goes where it goes, train, conveyer belt, roller coaster.

Yesterday I played hide and seek with my (let’s call her for simplicity although she is not exactly) niece.  She told me where to hide.  I hid there.  Then she hid there.  She had to be reminded to count.  In the closet.  In the bathtub.  Behind the drapes.  Another niece when she plays peek-a-boo instead of peek-a-boo says, “Miss me!”  I love to be called Auntie, and I remember my uncles, although I have aunties, too, they were all settled and had kids and were more like additional moms, it was my uncles who were younger and free like I am now and how they told me I was just the right height for an armrest and how much I thought they made me feel shy and also how I thought they were wonderful and had such adventures like had been to Europe and drove cars and could take you into New York without even thinking hard and never worried about anything and had lots of friends.

So I wanted to cry but I screamed and it passed.  I left there and turned into the line for the Little Mermaid which is an awful story I would never want my daughter to like, losing your voice, what a real nightmare.

There was an old man ahead of me in line.  He was wearing a sweater vest on that ninety degree day.  He made me walk slower.  Later, somehow, I was behind a man whose photo I offered to take with his daughters and he said no we come here all the time and that he he had taken his daughters out of school for the day and they were all playing hooky and I liked him.  He asked me if I was there by myself and I said my family has all left and I was about to, too.  He said, “Have a safe drive,” and I didn’t correct him about the driving, we were walking apart, me to the castle to go out and he and his daughters further back into the park.

We stepped on a  conveyer belt, and then into pink clamshells and went past the narrative components of the Little Mermaid and it must be true to fall in love you will lose your voice ideally you will find it again slightly altered.

When I was on the scariest roller coaster at Disney World (certainly not Space Mountain), woman next to me buckled in and then said, “I need to get off.  They need to let me off.”  And I said, “No, you’re fine,” always a tricky thing to say because sometimes you are right, and the person thanks you later, and sometimes you are wrong, and they hate you.  I made the right call, though.  I was very nervous, too, though I had ridden that ride about eight minutes before (we ran around the line to go again).  When should you listen to someone?

When I was a little girl, I thought I would never ride Space Mountain I knew it was for grown-ups and extremely crazy people it was very dark in there, the poster said as much.  No one ever, even, asked me to go.

A mountain of space, or a mountain in space?  Neither, actually, works.  When you exit, conveyer belt again, past some scenes of THE FUTURE (robots at home, Martian landscape), and then some cameras and a green screen so we always pretend to fly when we are together and I pretended a little to fly when I was alone, as well.