pt 13: and now the end by Omar Najam

In which guests leave the park, and start to head home, saying goodbye to the world behind them and hello to one familiar individual.

Hello all, 

This year I’ll be, over the span of the next thirteen days, describing a Halloween-themed amusement park that I got to develop with Surena Marie, for fun, specifically for 13 Days.

As a big old imagineering nerd, this is a dream project and I’m so excited to share it with you all. Please excuse the shoddy sketches that accompany the overly written descriptions.

Enjoy.

Image by M from Pixabay

Returning is just like arriving. The world one “returns” to is not familiar, because the returnee is not the same. Therefore the familiar is different. You’re experiencing it from a new angle. As a new person. With new eyes and ears and a renewed heart. 

The tram will pick up guests near the Orchard and take them back through the veil, back past the stretched bricks, back past the facade of the manor wall. 

And as the tram stops at the dry grasses of the grounds, the land that one Madeline Gossamer had purchased to protect, it will become apparent that no protection is needed. 

Just respect. 

Feeling enmeshed in the fabric of all things. 

If, on their way out, guests are keeping a close eye, as the sun sets and the grey sky grows darker, and the pale moon rises into the air casting its cold pure light upon the grounds, they will notice something glinting in the grass. Some polished thing. 

Not a plaque. But an embellished gravestone. 

One dedicated to Madeline Gossamer, wherever she may be. 

And it’s a funny thing. A thing we wont linger on for too long, because at the end of all of this, that’s the takeaway, right? To not let linger. 

To let things last as they last, and to take with us the parts that haunt us in good ways, and to let things that haunt us in a bad way heal and disappear back into the world from where it came from. 

But it’s a funny thing. A gravestone of someone who is not there. Who is in another world, a world of wonder and illumination, of nightmares and dreams, one that we can visit and that can visit us. 

Some things vanish. 

Some things remain. 

And in the middle, there is us. 

Between worlds. 

Traversing and keeping in our hearts the beauty we care to share. 

Thank you for visiting. 

We’ll see you next time.