Disney devours my dreams

Awoke to what must be a classic walker’s anxiety dream, if there can be such a thing.

In the dream, troubling but not quite nightmarish, I’m trying to make my way along a familiar but still-somehow-alien lane, going who knows where, with some urgency but no clear purpose. My legs are leaden, my body in a sluggish semi-comatose state, I can’t summon any power, can’t stride right. I keep remembering things I forgot to pack for the trip, a feeling of desperate foreboding grows and grows. Gotta get outta here! But I can barely move. Beginning to panic…

Good morning.

What? I was just getting interested.

But I think I know what that was all about. We’re heading shortly, the whole crew, to Orlando. The girls want  to do Disneyworld and Universal, for old time’s sake and for Harry Potter’s. I’m resisting, subliminally.

Unlike surprisingly many adults of my acquaintance, I’ve never enjoyed the theme park experience. S told me last night to psych myself for the lines and the crowd and the heat. (And the hurricane?) That dream may have been my response.

Everybody loves Mickey and Goofy and Pluto. Nobody (in my family circle anyway) gives much thought to its net impact on Florida’s environment and global culture. Professor Roeder had us read The Disney Version at Mizzou, maybe that’s the ultimate source of my unpleasant dream. If so, I should be grateful.

Well, I’m going to psych myself alright. I’m going to read me some Carl Hiaasen. Ready or not, Team Rodent, here we come. “Resistance is called for,” Carl says. It may be futile. But it’s active in my dreams.

Tags: Carl Hiaasen, Disney