by XdarksparkX
Originally written: December 27, 2010
There is a place, just beyond the horizon there, that calls to me. If you look closely, you can see a faint ray of light, twirling every so gracefully. It’s caster no doubt had begun its cycle a mere few hours after the sun has been chased away from the heavens by the impeding twilight. Can you see it? No? Well, such is to be expected of the non-believers; the doubters of that place and its true existence. Sure, they will see it when they’re close enough, when they are standing within the daunting shadow of the casting lighthouse, but I however do not need to see the source to know that the light is there. I see it every time I look up at the lonely, darkened night skies. It casts itself across the endless sea of black nothingness we call space to call to me… it calls for my return.
When I had discovered this place in all it’s true splendor, I needed it more than I ever knew back then. Back some 800 miles to the north of here, I had been judged as if I had committed despicable acts akin to first-degree murder. Paranoia beseeched me in this place I had been forced to call home for the majority of the past 21 years, and everywhere I turned I could hear the nonexistent words that came from the condescending mouths of the decadent: “He doesn’t have a job, the last college course he took was two years ago, he has to drive his mom’s car to get anywhere. The lack of his relenting hand has bred an inability to use the measurement calculations that we have imposed on this life script to define one’s self-worth at a glance. Ergo: Loser.”
Not here though.
The aforementioned lighthouse loomed above me on this warm October day. Most would gaze upon this structure and take awe in it’s size, for his presence was easily associated with pure intimidation. I however, saw it as my towering protector, it would shield me from all outside critiques and judgments. It’s light did not beckon fabled travelers to it—no, it beckoned me, and all those like me who felt the deafening criticisms surround them and violently force them into thoughts of negative self-worth as a way to say “come, you are safe here.”
The whimsical, mystical sweeps of the strings, followed by the proud and triumphant horns strung themselves from the warm Floridian air into the deepest depths of my ear cartilage. This music had an unexplainable grace and enchantment to it. I felt elated by it, emboldened to step forth into the familiar and the undiscovered equally. As such, each note seemed to puppeteer another step beyond my protector and into the heart of what they call “The Port of Entry”.
To the average park-goer, this was nothing more than another theme-park main street. To those of us who can see beyond this mere façade, it is something so much more. The text “The Adventure Begins”, which is inscribed upon a crumbling stone archway as you venture deeper into the heart of the Port, does not beckon you to mere amusement rides and attractions. No, it beckons you to a journey within yourself. The fantastical worlds you are about to explore are mere reflections of your innermost desires and fears. The attempt to recapture toddler innocence, the simplicity of childhood ‘black and white / good versus evil’ dichotomy, the empowerment of conquering coming-of-age adversity, the joys of twilight year retrospection and pratfalls, and the fears of the inevitable appearance of the specter known as death lying in wait just beyond the brush.
This journey into self begins with the colorful misshapes and abstract—almost demented architecture of a place known as Seuss Landing. Before structural feasibility infiltrated our brains, Theodore S. Geisel under the pseudonym of “Dr. Seuss” brought to us a place where all things were possible; the word “impossible” was merely a careless misspelling of “I’m possible”. A place that, while fantastical in nature, somehow drew stark reflections to a deeper, darker world that we—at the time—were all but oblivious to. Seuss Landing is the start of the journey, for it requires us to remember when life was simpler, when we could be who and what we wanted to be, when harsh and cruel judgment existed in the same way that quantum physics did: within a field far beyond our small world, peacefully oblivious to its being. It is a reminder for all of us to rediscover that innocence, even after the world around us has been tainted by the harshness of adulthood.
With each transition into the next phase of the journey (or to the simplistic, with each voyage to a different island), the experience becomes a metaphorical pendulum. Always reflecting back to it’s starting point in order to achieve momentum and progress. I fuel this concept by passing the origin point of this journey and discover my next stop to be Marvel Superhero Island. I have stepped into a world where everything is as simple as we all wish it were out there. There is good, and there is evil. Very little gray, very few waning towards both sides. To join into the fray is only to give us a peace of mind that this line of thinking isn’t completely wrong. After helping a friendly neighborhood web-crawling superhero, and climbing into a ‘Gamma Ray Accelerator’ and unleashing the pure rage within that comes from the frustrations of remembering how it felt to be “too young to have a voice worth hearing”, I can’t say I disagree. However, even though the heroes and villains painted into this life-sized canvas are easily identifiable, it may be that way because we want them to be. We want—nay, need it to be that simplistic. In a way, we’re still children. We still want things laid out like a neatly made five-star hotel bedspread. This island may gratify that need, but the fact that the villains are never truly vanquished, in that they always manage to find a way to re-appear and harass the superheroes with another overly elaborate plan to take over the city and / or world, should really crumble the very foundation of that illusion. This fact stares us dead in the eye down the alley of Yancy Street, where the terrifying Dr. Doom extracts the fear from the very marrow of your being, in the same fashion without interruption from the Fantastic Four, over and over again and again no matter how many times you board his Fear Fall Towers. In order to achieve peace, gray area must not only exist, but is required. This seems to speak to the darker truth of the island, the truth that we so hastily refuse for fear of disillusionment and thus the inevitable progression to the next Island: the battle here is futile, because the war can never end.
Swinging back once again across the Port’s shoreline, I fondly remember a time of wonderment as I pass through Geisel’s landing. Yet when I reach the northern outskirts of the landing, I am faced with the most contrasting change in the journey yet. The world gets suddenly more drab as I walk over a rustic bridge, the menacing statue of a Griffin guardian bearing a torch greeting me upon arrival on the adjacent shore. This is the Lost Continent, and while not wholly what it used to be, the change that overtook the majority of this Island is one that suits the outlook I am scribing more appropriately. This Island has become a mere buffer, the space and time in between what was left of our childhood and what lies ahead in our coming-of-age. The wonderment of exploration is the motif here, a reflection of our dire attempts to break out and discover a world unknown to us as our existence turns to teen-hood.
And then, it appears. A dark stone archway abruptly halts the wonderment of the unknown. It seems I have found teen-hood, and in hindsight I think it was better left undiscovered. Yet still I venture forth, under the archway, my heart hammering within my ears. A town covered in snow awaits beyond. The buildings seem to completely wall the external world out—an architectural hallway leading to a destination unknown. There is an unsettling air about this place though, it’s not nearly as welcoming and joyous as it would like you to believe. Perhaps a metaphor of the deceit that lay in wait in the years to come?
The first horror of this place reveals itself via monstrous, otherworldly roars. My gaze snaps to the right, and the first detour of this leg of the introspection has begun.
Twin dragons are furiously careening towards and around each other. Spiraling almost out of control, yet with a precise and calculated grace that is almost foreign to me. They beckon to be challenged; to be conquered. The stark duality, and yet striking contractility of them is an axiom in itself. Two dragons, and yet one warrior. A choice must be made. By choosing which dragon to tame, we are making the choice of who we want to become. Past the point of no return, our only choice: to freeze, or burn?
The choices are intriguing to say the least. To the left lies the Fire dragon’s cavern, which was likely to leave you as a forgettable pile of ash for daring to take such a bold choice on brazen chance. However, the Ice dragon to the right threatens to keep you standing still, never achieving what you want… lost amidst frigid waves of “could haves” and “would haves.” The latter struck a little too close to home at the present time, and so if I was already partially frozen, best to attempt to thaw yourself out than further complete the process. And so the flame-wielding dragon tossed and spun me about, only to eventually subside when it careened towards the castle it departed from and crashed unceremoniously into a crumbling stone façade.
Dismounting the beast, adrenaline is deeply rooted and coursing throughout my bloodstream. I have conquered it, and I feel as though nothing that is or was could ever hope to bring me down. I disembark from the castle ruin, only to find myself tracing my steps back towards it in order to conquer the beast’s raging twin. Here, I am free to leave no stone unturned without consequence. It is because of this, that I am able to solve the conundrum of the true nature of the beast’s duality, and the why of their existence. To best these creatures, you must to conquer both, and not favor one or the other, lest you wish for the effects of the favored dragon to curse you with its eternal consequences.
Having bested the airborne beasts, I wander deeper into this world with a newly instilled confidence. Then, as I round a corner, I feel the air seemingly drained from my very lungs (which in hindsight seems like a petty precursor for certain creatures that dwelled within the castle’s walls), the thoughts of triumph purged from my contemplative queue. The towering castle upon the jagged cliff-side manages to claim the feelings of dread, wonder, and terror all at once. Yet still, I find myself venturing towards it, and subsequently deeper into it’s depths.
When I re-emerge from the depths of the cliff face, I am unsure what exactly has transpired in there. Things once thought agreeable became terrifying, uncertainty flooding my brain and making it the only thought my neurons could relay. Logic was turned upside down, akin to viewing a magician’s illusions for the first time. Now, in retrospect, the true concept of it all was that you were to purposefully stare various Demented apparitions of death in the very eye, and come out the other side able to tell the tale. Perhaps the purpose of this Forbidden Journey in the grand scheme of this introspective excursion serves as a message that as we conquer teenage adversity, we must accept that death exists and is mere inches away from us at times, if we are to ever hope to exhaust our existence to its greatest extent. The enlightenment of the overcome adversity brings forth the tragic realization that all things must come to an inevitable end.
Once this realization has set in, we do not care to focus on it. Instead, we care to focus on the good times—the funny papers, if you will. Toon Lagoon helps us do just that.
Once you hit an age where what you remember from your childhood is seemingly lost on the newly ushered generation of today, a certain bond and appreciation seems to stem towards what your elders remembered from their childhoods. An appreciation of the fact that we all, at one point or another, existed within the very capacity that we have just realized has past us by far too quickly. The majority of the characters that reside in Toon Lagoon are well before the time I came into being, and yet this does not hinder my appreciation for this Island. Maybe I didn’t grow up watching Dudley Do-Right miraculously manage to outwit Snidely Whiplash and save Nell Fenwick; or Popeye freakishly down a can of spinach before upper-cutting Bluto into the atmosphere of the moon in honor of Olive Oyl, but damn it, I embrace these characters as if I did. The familiarity perhaps comes with the fact that these characters were lost amidst the shuffle of oncoming generations and interests, just as the characters my childhood claims have finally been lost amongst this generation.
The last stop is a fitting oxymoron: to reach the end, you must go back to before the beginning. Jurassic Park becomes the final stop, after the laugher has faded away and we know that the inevitable end is waiting just around the corner…
Before I board the boat destined to take me to world’s end, I can see the spires of that mystical castle just over the lush jungle foliage. Fitting, I suppose, for it was at that point when the realization that the reaper will come for you inevitably one day fully set in.
The boat begins its serene journey through giant wooden doors, where a naturally carved estuary feeds into a biological nature preserve of creatures thought to be extinct so many years ago. Only through miraculous engineering do they stand before me today, though the pit of my stomach can’t help but feel that marveling at this slight against the universe is an action that shall not go unpunished.
Deeper into the river, into a natural spring where herds of Stegosaurs are currently residing. Simply breathtaking creatures to behold, even though they are technically no different than a modern-day rhinoceros. Perhaps lack of familiarity and exposure makes these creatures more wondrous than they would’ve been in their heyday.
As the venture continues, a blithe Hadrosaurus gets a bit too playful. Knocked off my predestined course, I find the attempts to rear the boat back futile, and thus I slowly drift past the point of no return and towards the carnivore paddocks. Suddenly, everything has changed. I have gone from assuming my days would end peacefully in my sleep, to suddenly becoming a hospital patient going code-blue.
Passing desolate foreshadowing remains of what awaits me, my heart threatens to burst forth straight out of my chest. I manage to steer the boat towards the old Maintenance Building, where my raft catches on to the diagnostic and storage lift, and is slowly pulled upwards into the darkness.
Vicious packs of Dromaeosauridae (or “Raptors”, for those more familiar with Steven Spielberg’s terminology) have overrun this building, and surely my end will be at the hands of their feeding. Yet, when the boat manages to reach the top of the lift and turn a corner, I find a much bigger predator awaits to claim my fate.
An awe-inspiring Tyrannosaur looms before me, having apparently broken through the concrete walls and unwittingly lodged itself in place. I have no where to go, no place to hide; the lift slowly pulls me closer and closer to the awaiting maw that the Rex boasts. Yet I do not fear it, not anymore. I have accepted this, and I have prepared for the inevitable cease of my existence. It is something we all must do at one point or another.
When only a few feet from the beast, the Rex proceeds to lunge towards me, only to miss by mere cubic inches. His breath reeks of death and decay, and yet that particular fate is one I seem to have eluded. A wayward pipe, broken by his sudden presence, crashed down a second earlier, creating a haphazard waterfall which my boat could do nothing but careen down. And so I plummet down its slope, a mere puppet of the never-ender known as gravity.
Water rains down upon me as the schooner crashes into the peaceful lagoon that rests within the shadow of the building. This is the perfect signal—the sign from the heavens that my journey, my unequivocal physical existence within this place, has come to an end. The waters that shower me do nothing but cleanse and refresh. This final stroke is the crescendo of an epic musical number. My adventure, as well as I, have ceased to exist.
However, in this place there is no death—there is only rebirth. For the waters wash away the colors of the shame that they gave to me, only for me to see again… to live again. As if by some cataclysmic event, or some obscure wormhole theory, I find myself back in the place where it all began without clue or idea as to how. A familiar arch now leaves a different message for me: “The Adventure Lives On.”
I have conquered raging twin dragons, and I have saved a city from total annihilation (with the help of super-powered friends). I have relished my past, laughed at my future, and I have accepted the existence of my inevitable end by staring 65 million year-old harbingers of death in the eye. They do not care, but here, they do not matter. Here the adventure is your own—the Islands mere theoretical LEGO pieces available to construct your own free-standing sense of self. Where the adventure ends, lies with you and you alone. For me, I know the adventure, unlike life, shall live eternal.
Before I know it, I have ventured out of the Port to find myself back once again within the shadow of the lighthouse—my protector, always and forever. In this, the dead of nightfall, it’s beacon further reassures me that it will never let harm nor sorrow infiltrate me when I step beyond the wrought iron gate adjacent to it’s base. Standing here now is the only time where I am once again blatantly aware of my being, of my physical existence in the here-and-now. Everything that has transpired over the last 72 hours feels as if it were an event within the narcosis of sleep—a fantastical dream-like bliss. Yet I know for a fact that the memories have a more solid weight than that of a dream’s vacant haze. I was there, I existed, and I experienced every image that is now just out of reach.
My protector has no expression, nor does it need one. It simply need to shine its light towards the horizon, knowing that one day I will follow its ray back to my true home, and we will meet again with the unwavering smiles and “hello’s” of old-acquaintances. Until we meet again, my old friend.
I know what awaits me when I return to my northeastern abode, they will tell me that it all wasn’t real—that it was all “make-believe”. What is ‘make-believe?’ The construct of that which is not real, by definition? Then what defines ‘real?’ Something our brains register to us and us alone as ‘existing’? Then surely what a schizophrenic sees when having a psychotic episode is ‘real’, is it not? If the perception of realism comes solely from the verification of others, how can anything be christened ‘real’ when humans have the infinite capability to lie in order to feel their existence and opinion is accepted and validated by their peers?
Perhaps they tell me it’s make-believe because it is not what surrounds us daily. What surrounds us in this blue sphere that slowly circles an epic star is death, destruction, and ruin and that to them is reality. Elation and acceptance, especially the kind I feel back there, is something artificial—a way for the pathetic human to desperately balance and cope with the mass amounts of decadence that has been pumped into this world. But maybe the decadence exists is such copious quantities in order to keep the heartless machine known as society well-oiled and churning. Fear, after all, is a much better controlling agent and slave master than joy. Ah, but to find the truth to all this, the classic existentialistic question must be answered: ‘What came first, the chicken or the egg?’
Surely scribing all of these thoughts out is only going to incur them to spawn the classic “you’re looking too far into it” euphemism. Be it a theme-park, movie, story, idea, etc. I have heard that tripe one time too many for my liking. Am I really looking too hard, or are you not looking hard enough?
“You will not be judged. Not here—never here.” The spectral light speaks to me now, even though it’s caster has been enveloped by the finite vision of the horizon, “Come be how you want to, be who you were always meant to be. Here, take the chances you are so afraid to take out there, and take them without fear of the ridicule you have taken shelter from. This is the place where the cowardice within dies, and the bravery within shall arise. So come forth, and be courageous, be outrageous, be extraordinary.”
There is a place, just beyond the horizon there, that calls to me. If you look closely, you can see a faint ray of light, twirling every so gracefully. It’s caster no doubt had begun its cycle a mere few hours after the sun has been chased away from the heavens by the impeding twilight. Can you see it? No? Well, such is to be expected of the non-believers; the doubters of that place and its true existence. Sure, they will see it when they’re close enough, when they are standing within the daunting shadow of the casting lighthouse, but I however do not need to see the source to know that the light is there. I see it every time I look up at the lonely, darkened night skies. It casts itself across the endless sea of black nothingness we call space to call to me… it calls for my return.
When I had discovered this place in all it’s true splendor, I needed it more than I ever knew back then. Back some 800 miles to the north of here, I had been judged as if I had committed despicable acts akin to first-degree murder. Paranoia beseeched me in this place I had been forced to call home for the majority of the past 21 years, and everywhere I turned I could hear the nonexistent words that came from the condescending mouths of the decadent: “He doesn’t have a job, the last college course he took was two years ago, he has to drive his mom’s car to get anywhere. The lack of his relenting hand has bred an inability to use the measurement calculations that we have imposed on this life script to define one’s self-worth at a glance. Ergo: Loser.”
Not here though.
The aforementioned lighthouse loomed above me on this warm October day. Most would gaze upon this structure and take awe in it’s size, for his presence was easily associated with pure intimidation. I however, saw it as my towering protector, it would shield me from all outside critiques and judgments. It’s light did not beckon fabled travelers to it—no, it beckoned me, and all those like me who felt the deafening criticisms surround them and violently force them into thoughts of negative self-worth as a way to say “come, you are safe here.”
The whimsical, mystical sweeps of the strings, followed by the proud and triumphant horns strung themselves from the warm Floridian air into the deepest depths of my ear cartilage. This music had an unexplainable grace and enchantment to it. I felt elated by it, emboldened to step forth into the familiar and the undiscovered equally. As such, each note seemed to puppeteer another step beyond my protector and into the heart of what they call “The Port of Entry”.
To the average park-goer, this was nothing more than another theme-park main street. To those of us who can see beyond this mere façade, it is something so much more. The text “The Adventure Begins”, which is inscribed upon a crumbling stone archway as you venture deeper into the heart of the Port, does not beckon you to mere amusement rides and attractions. No, it beckons you to a journey within yourself. The fantastical worlds you are about to explore are mere reflections of your innermost desires and fears. The attempt to recapture toddler innocence, the simplicity of childhood ‘black and white / good versus evil’ dichotomy, the empowerment of conquering coming-of-age adversity, the joys of twilight year retrospection and pratfalls, and the fears of the inevitable appearance of the specter known as death lying in wait just beyond the brush.
This journey into self begins with the colorful misshapes and abstract—almost demented architecture of a place known as Seuss Landing. Before structural feasibility infiltrated our brains, Theodore S. Geisel under the pseudonym of “Dr. Seuss” brought to us a place where all things were possible; the word “impossible” was merely a careless misspelling of “I’m possible”. A place that, while fantastical in nature, somehow drew stark reflections to a deeper, darker world that we—at the time—were all but oblivious to. Seuss Landing is the start of the journey, for it requires us to remember when life was simpler, when we could be who and what we wanted to be, when harsh and cruel judgment existed in the same way that quantum physics did: within a field far beyond our small world, peacefully oblivious to its being. It is a reminder for all of us to rediscover that innocence, even after the world around us has been tainted by the harshness of adulthood.
With each transition into the next phase of the journey (or to the simplistic, with each voyage to a different island), the experience becomes a metaphorical pendulum. Always reflecting back to it’s starting point in order to achieve momentum and progress. I fuel this concept by passing the origin point of this journey and discover my next stop to be Marvel Superhero Island. I have stepped into a world where everything is as simple as we all wish it were out there. There is good, and there is evil. Very little gray, very few waning towards both sides. To join into the fray is only to give us a peace of mind that this line of thinking isn’t completely wrong. After helping a friendly neighborhood web-crawling superhero, and climbing into a ‘Gamma Ray Accelerator’ and unleashing the pure rage within that comes from the frustrations of remembering how it felt to be “too young to have a voice worth hearing”, I can’t say I disagree. However, even though the heroes and villains painted into this life-sized canvas are easily identifiable, it may be that way because we want them to be. We want—nay, need it to be that simplistic. In a way, we’re still children. We still want things laid out like a neatly made five-star hotel bedspread. This island may gratify that need, but the fact that the villains are never truly vanquished, in that they always manage to find a way to re-appear and harass the superheroes with another overly elaborate plan to take over the city and / or world, should really crumble the very foundation of that illusion. This fact stares us dead in the eye down the alley of Yancy Street, where the terrifying Dr. Doom extracts the fear from the very marrow of your being, in the same fashion without interruption from the Fantastic Four, over and over again and again no matter how many times you board his Fear Fall Towers. In order to achieve peace, gray area must not only exist, but is required. This seems to speak to the darker truth of the island, the truth that we so hastily refuse for fear of disillusionment and thus the inevitable progression to the next Island: the battle here is futile, because the war can never end.
Swinging back once again across the Port’s shoreline, I fondly remember a time of wonderment as I pass through Geisel’s landing. Yet when I reach the northern outskirts of the landing, I am faced with the most contrasting change in the journey yet. The world gets suddenly more drab as I walk over a rustic bridge, the menacing statue of a Griffin guardian bearing a torch greeting me upon arrival on the adjacent shore. This is the Lost Continent, and while not wholly what it used to be, the change that overtook the majority of this Island is one that suits the outlook I am scribing more appropriately. This Island has become a mere buffer, the space and time in between what was left of our childhood and what lies ahead in our coming-of-age. The wonderment of exploration is the motif here, a reflection of our dire attempts to break out and discover a world unknown to us as our existence turns to teen-hood.
And then, it appears. A dark stone archway abruptly halts the wonderment of the unknown. It seems I have found teen-hood, and in hindsight I think it was better left undiscovered. Yet still I venture forth, under the archway, my heart hammering within my ears. A town covered in snow awaits beyond. The buildings seem to completely wall the external world out—an architectural hallway leading to a destination unknown. There is an unsettling air about this place though, it’s not nearly as welcoming and joyous as it would like you to believe. Perhaps a metaphor of the deceit that lay in wait in the years to come?
The first horror of this place reveals itself via monstrous, otherworldly roars. My gaze snaps to the right, and the first detour of this leg of the introspection has begun.
Twin dragons are furiously careening towards and around each other. Spiraling almost out of control, yet with a precise and calculated grace that is almost foreign to me. They beckon to be challenged; to be conquered. The stark duality, and yet striking contractility of them is an axiom in itself. Two dragons, and yet one warrior. A choice must be made. By choosing which dragon to tame, we are making the choice of who we want to become. Past the point of no return, our only choice: to freeze, or burn?
The choices are intriguing to say the least. To the left lies the Fire dragon’s cavern, which was likely to leave you as a forgettable pile of ash for daring to take such a bold choice on brazen chance. However, the Ice dragon to the right threatens to keep you standing still, never achieving what you want… lost amidst frigid waves of “could haves” and “would haves.” The latter struck a little too close to home at the present time, and so if I was already partially frozen, best to attempt to thaw yourself out than further complete the process. And so the flame-wielding dragon tossed and spun me about, only to eventually subside when it careened towards the castle it departed from and crashed unceremoniously into a crumbling stone façade.
Dismounting the beast, adrenaline is deeply rooted and coursing throughout my bloodstream. I have conquered it, and I feel as though nothing that is or was could ever hope to bring me down. I disembark from the castle ruin, only to find myself tracing my steps back towards it in order to conquer the beast’s raging twin. Here, I am free to leave no stone unturned without consequence. It is because of this, that I am able to solve the conundrum of the true nature of the beast’s duality, and the why of their existence. To best these creatures, you must to conquer both, and not favor one or the other, lest you wish for the effects of the favored dragon to curse you with its eternal consequences.
Having bested the airborne beasts, I wander deeper into this world with a newly instilled confidence. Then, as I round a corner, I feel the air seemingly drained from my very lungs (which in hindsight seems like a petty precursor for certain creatures that dwelled within the castle’s walls), the thoughts of triumph purged from my contemplative queue. The towering castle upon the jagged cliff-side manages to claim the feelings of dread, wonder, and terror all at once. Yet still, I find myself venturing towards it, and subsequently deeper into it’s depths.
When I re-emerge from the depths of the cliff face, I am unsure what exactly has transpired in there. Things once thought agreeable became terrifying, uncertainty flooding my brain and making it the only thought my neurons could relay. Logic was turned upside down, akin to viewing a magician’s illusions for the first time. Now, in retrospect, the true concept of it all was that you were to purposefully stare various Demented apparitions of death in the very eye, and come out the other side able to tell the tale. Perhaps the purpose of this Forbidden Journey in the grand scheme of this introspective excursion serves as a message that as we conquer teenage adversity, we must accept that death exists and is mere inches away from us at times, if we are to ever hope to exhaust our existence to its greatest extent. The enlightenment of the overcome adversity brings forth the tragic realization that all things must come to an inevitable end.
Once this realization has set in, we do not care to focus on it. Instead, we care to focus on the good times—the funny papers, if you will. Toon Lagoon helps us do just that.
Once you hit an age where what you remember from your childhood is seemingly lost on the newly ushered generation of today, a certain bond and appreciation seems to stem towards what your elders remembered from their childhoods. An appreciation of the fact that we all, at one point or another, existed within the very capacity that we have just realized has past us by far too quickly. The majority of the characters that reside in Toon Lagoon are well before the time I came into being, and yet this does not hinder my appreciation for this Island. Maybe I didn’t grow up watching Dudley Do-Right miraculously manage to outwit Snidely Whiplash and save Nell Fenwick; or Popeye freakishly down a can of spinach before upper-cutting Bluto into the atmosphere of the moon in honor of Olive Oyl, but damn it, I embrace these characters as if I did. The familiarity perhaps comes with the fact that these characters were lost amidst the shuffle of oncoming generations and interests, just as the characters my childhood claims have finally been lost amongst this generation.
The last stop is a fitting oxymoron: to reach the end, you must go back to before the beginning. Jurassic Park becomes the final stop, after the laugher has faded away and we know that the inevitable end is waiting just around the corner…
Before I board the boat destined to take me to world’s end, I can see the spires of that mystical castle just over the lush jungle foliage. Fitting, I suppose, for it was at that point when the realization that the reaper will come for you inevitably one day fully set in.
The boat begins its serene journey through giant wooden doors, where a naturally carved estuary feeds into a biological nature preserve of creatures thought to be extinct so many years ago. Only through miraculous engineering do they stand before me today, though the pit of my stomach can’t help but feel that marveling at this slight against the universe is an action that shall not go unpunished.
Deeper into the river, into a natural spring where herds of Stegosaurs are currently residing. Simply breathtaking creatures to behold, even though they are technically no different than a modern-day rhinoceros. Perhaps lack of familiarity and exposure makes these creatures more wondrous than they would’ve been in their heyday.
As the venture continues, a blithe Hadrosaurus gets a bit too playful. Knocked off my predestined course, I find the attempts to rear the boat back futile, and thus I slowly drift past the point of no return and towards the carnivore paddocks. Suddenly, everything has changed. I have gone from assuming my days would end peacefully in my sleep, to suddenly becoming a hospital patient going code-blue.
Passing desolate foreshadowing remains of what awaits me, my heart threatens to burst forth straight out of my chest. I manage to steer the boat towards the old Maintenance Building, where my raft catches on to the diagnostic and storage lift, and is slowly pulled upwards into the darkness.
Vicious packs of Dromaeosauridae (or “Raptors”, for those more familiar with Steven Spielberg’s terminology) have overrun this building, and surely my end will be at the hands of their feeding. Yet, when the boat manages to reach the top of the lift and turn a corner, I find a much bigger predator awaits to claim my fate.
An awe-inspiring Tyrannosaur looms before me, having apparently broken through the concrete walls and unwittingly lodged itself in place. I have no where to go, no place to hide; the lift slowly pulls me closer and closer to the awaiting maw that the Rex boasts. Yet I do not fear it, not anymore. I have accepted this, and I have prepared for the inevitable cease of my existence. It is something we all must do at one point or another.
When only a few feet from the beast, the Rex proceeds to lunge towards me, only to miss by mere cubic inches. His breath reeks of death and decay, and yet that particular fate is one I seem to have eluded. A wayward pipe, broken by his sudden presence, crashed down a second earlier, creating a haphazard waterfall which my boat could do nothing but careen down. And so I plummet down its slope, a mere puppet of the never-ender known as gravity.
Water rains down upon me as the schooner crashes into the peaceful lagoon that rests within the shadow of the building. This is the perfect signal—the sign from the heavens that my journey, my unequivocal physical existence within this place, has come to an end. The waters that shower me do nothing but cleanse and refresh. This final stroke is the crescendo of an epic musical number. My adventure, as well as I, have ceased to exist.
However, in this place there is no death—there is only rebirth. For the waters wash away the colors of the shame that they gave to me, only for me to see again… to live again. As if by some cataclysmic event, or some obscure wormhole theory, I find myself back in the place where it all began without clue or idea as to how. A familiar arch now leaves a different message for me: “The Adventure Lives On.”
I have conquered raging twin dragons, and I have saved a city from total annihilation (with the help of super-powered friends). I have relished my past, laughed at my future, and I have accepted the existence of my inevitable end by staring 65 million year-old harbingers of death in the eye. They do not care, but here, they do not matter. Here the adventure is your own—the Islands mere theoretical LEGO pieces available to construct your own free-standing sense of self. Where the adventure ends, lies with you and you alone. For me, I know the adventure, unlike life, shall live eternal.
Before I know it, I have ventured out of the Port to find myself back once again within the shadow of the lighthouse—my protector, always and forever. In this, the dead of nightfall, it’s beacon further reassures me that it will never let harm nor sorrow infiltrate me when I step beyond the wrought iron gate adjacent to it’s base. Standing here now is the only time where I am once again blatantly aware of my being, of my physical existence in the here-and-now. Everything that has transpired over the last 72 hours feels as if it were an event within the narcosis of sleep—a fantastical dream-like bliss. Yet I know for a fact that the memories have a more solid weight than that of a dream’s vacant haze. I was there, I existed, and I experienced every image that is now just out of reach.
My protector has no expression, nor does it need one. It simply need to shine its light towards the horizon, knowing that one day I will follow its ray back to my true home, and we will meet again with the unwavering smiles and “hello’s” of old-acquaintances. Until we meet again, my old friend.
I know what awaits me when I return to my northeastern abode, they will tell me that it all wasn’t real—that it was all “make-believe”. What is ‘make-believe?’ The construct of that which is not real, by definition? Then what defines ‘real?’ Something our brains register to us and us alone as ‘existing’? Then surely what a schizophrenic sees when having a psychotic episode is ‘real’, is it not? If the perception of realism comes solely from the verification of others, how can anything be christened ‘real’ when humans have the infinite capability to lie in order to feel their existence and opinion is accepted and validated by their peers?
Perhaps they tell me it’s make-believe because it is not what surrounds us daily. What surrounds us in this blue sphere that slowly circles an epic star is death, destruction, and ruin and that to them is reality. Elation and acceptance, especially the kind I feel back there, is something artificial—a way for the pathetic human to desperately balance and cope with the mass amounts of decadence that has been pumped into this world. But maybe the decadence exists is such copious quantities in order to keep the heartless machine known as society well-oiled and churning. Fear, after all, is a much better controlling agent and slave master than joy. Ah, but to find the truth to all this, the classic existentialistic question must be answered: ‘What came first, the chicken or the egg?’
Surely scribing all of these thoughts out is only going to incur them to spawn the classic “you’re looking too far into it” euphemism. Be it a theme-park, movie, story, idea, etc. I have heard that tripe one time too many for my liking. Am I really looking too hard, or are you not looking hard enough?
“You will not be judged. Not here—never here.” The spectral light speaks to me now, even though it’s caster has been enveloped by the finite vision of the horizon, “Come be how you want to, be who you were always meant to be. Here, take the chances you are so afraid to take out there, and take them without fear of the ridicule you have taken shelter from. This is the place where the cowardice within dies, and the bravery within shall arise. So come forth, and be courageous, be outrageous, be extraordinary.”
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