spent a few days in Disneyland last week, staying at the Disney Hotel and going to the park on a two-day pass. difficult to summarize the sensations it provoked. I'd been to Disneyworld 2 times as a kid and to Disneyland many times as a man in my early 20s. Here, as a parent this time, I felt the strange and luminous intersection of past/present, child/parent. I felt some parts of myself surrender seeing it all through new sets of eyes. I felt the ephemeral hum that marketing sometimes calls happiness or magic. Let's instead call it a light, shining forward and backward, illuminating all the good parts (okay, mostly the good parts. there are still lines, there are still un-wonderful people), the best parts. Floating in the pool with my son, looking at the blue sky; riding Splash Mountain with him, a split-second decision; the caves on Tom Sawyer Island, etc were tiny unlockings, tiny steel doors rising in mostly rocky corridors.
This is not exactly a newsflash, but the Disney operation really has their act together, sustaining the illusion on myriad fronts, buy-in from all parties big and little. I did not want to leave. I ached as the bus pulled away and took us.
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| in the cave, photo by MM |
I left wanting to cling to those small moments, protect them and keep them close and readily accessible. There is something instructive and uniformly true inside them but I am unable to fully articulate it at present. But I can feel it.
