lame duck

It borders on tragedy, it does. This not writing, then making excuses for why I am not writing. Then lamely reflecting on what factors are at play in my non-ability to write. Lame lame lame.

But not as lame as I am feeling now, after spending, oh yes, the entire day, well, at least after 1 on, at the dark heart of capitalism, you guessed right... Disney World. Now, for those of you who know me, all three of you, this comes as no surprise, in fact, you might ask, why Ilana, this isn't the first time in the last several years that you have found yourself there. Why no, it isn't.

Perhaps that explains the bitterness. Ok, who am I kidding? I can't even manage to muster sufficient bitterness. My bank account is in negative numbers, I didn't pay for any of this, mind you, but it makes me cranky when I am in a hole, my entire body aches as if I had actually done something active with my day (which I didn't) and I hate people. Yes. Well, not exactly people. Maybe it isn't that at all.

What I hate about this, more than the crass commercialism, which irks me like fingernails torn from their fingers with no anesthesia, more than the bald, brazen attempts to part people with their money time and time again, shamelessly, and for nothing more than empty spectacle... More than all that, it is this mediation of our space. I don't like being herded, like some lost sheep, through places, as if the journey itself didn't matter. Now the engineers might disagree with me, they might say, no, no, we have it all planned, there are places to rest your eyes, interesting things to keep you occupied while you wait in endless lines...

There were no lines, it is cold in Florida today, but that isn't what I find most troublesome. It is this bizarre need, no, it is this international imperative to partake of some ineffable thing which is DisneyWorld. What could there possibly be that motivates people to move themselves across entire continents to see their culture in a paltry representational form? Nothing! and Everything!

Perhaps Dorfman and Mattelart were right on in their reading of Disney's comics and their imperialist teachings, but what, I wonder, can explain this willful burning of dollars, this relocation of self in order to partake in something beyond oneself, one's nation, all in the name of a stupid stuffed mouse or duck? It can't merely be the American Dream sold hook line and sinker to the international bourgeoisie, can it? I think there is something more. I think that ultimately, no matter who it is, no matter what country they come from, (and here we are speaking in generalities, not particularities), people would rather be told what it is that they should be doing, what concrete actions to take that should be considered "fun", how they can, in essence, arrive... herd mentality at its finest, and I want none of it.

So I try to suck it up and smile, not be irritated by the fact that the main attraction seems to be, in fact, buying useless products made by workers that were paid pittances to inhale fumes or sew until their fingers were bloodied, sold by workers only slightly higher up on the economic ladder who are bound by gag-ordered contracts to never speak of the "magic" to people who, often, go into debt in order to buy such soiled products of transnational flows... Ach. I need to sleep now. I hope that if and when I write here again, it will be under better circumstances.