Celebration

For the first time in 5 years I saw my son. It was this Sunday, in the manufactured village known as Celebration, FL. For the occasion, it is aptly named. The place exists, though it probably shouldn't. The morning was beautiful, and my son is happy and healthy and still remembers his old man. I felt like a heel for having to go to work after only getting to spend an hour and a half with him, but child support doesn't pay itself. I was actually happy and in somewhat good spirits for the first time in a long while, listening to him telling me stories, not wanting to leave my side. Smiling. These are the things I should remember and should have stuck with me, and they do, but the happiness was like a new born cub, and the dark sarcastic bitterness that usually fills me snatched it up like so many hyenas. I still hold on to it, but now the thoughts on the town of Celebration that were lingering in the back of my mind the entire time surface.

If you have never been there, it is essentially a residence for the people of Disney and Electronic Arts. Not the park employees, mind you, but the higher ups and animation staff. The town skillfully crafted and beautiful, yet soulless. Sort of like someone made an architectural homage to Paris Hilton. The city streets are perfectly clean and lined with tidy small shops that I'm sure had happy proprietors who could market their wares and make a decent living. The market district had the look of a set from a Leave it to Beaver episode. I had to have a cigarette just to mire the air. It was too pristine.

We ate at the Market Street Grill. The food was good, but I couldn't help but think there was something sinister behind the smiles of the employees there. I saw it mostly in the waitress. The others hid it well, but looking back it does me good to know that in the suburb that Disney built there is still an underlying sense of desperation among the working class. Those that know that all is not fresh churned butter and fluffy pancakes, but there is the watered down coffee of the real world that they must return to at the end of the day.

Part of me envies the town. Part of me despises it. Both want to burn it to the ground. But I digress, as I feel I may have let the darker side take a hold of me too long, and I have been too long out of the light.