Orlando and Time

Cover image © Brian Michael Barbeito

Birds over a hotel lake, a childhood ride remembered, and a deer standing in the sprinkler mist.

Prose and photographs by Brian Michael Barbeito

I was back then, for a little bit anyhow. The man told the other man that a certain baseball team had never been the same after a few wrong trades. Of course, I had no idea what they were talking about. I went out of the pool where the solitary singer stood near and sang melancholic love songs to an unrequited love that went far away long before. I don’t think anybody listened. But I listened a bit. The grounds were humongous and full of flowers and trees, plus birds…

I began to remember the past. I had gone to Disneyland as a kid and liked Mickey Mouse, got a pin, and kept it a long time. The Pirates of the Caribbean ride was the best, to me, and seemed like pure magic, something enchanting, wondrous, and great even in its strangeness. You went, at that time, on a pretend type of boat on rails underneath slowly through caves and saw the old pirates and their treasures. How time changes things. Heraclitus said you can’t step in the same river twice. He also said character is fate.

Back in the present I photographed the birds and little lake. It was summer and getting incredibly hot though it would rain a bit sometimes. A flock of birds alighted on top of the grand hotel. I watched them and then they flew away like a dream, disappearing into the day. Clouds would clear fast and the area would become bright and normal again after these rains. I ordered a sandwich at one point and just ate it in the afternoon shade under a canopy.

Later, I ordered a diet soda and the waitress said there was no charge. I never did understand. I asked her why, but she wouldn’t tell me, just that it’s on the house. And that I’d see her later. But I didn’t see her again. I always remember that strange encounter. I looked up the distance and time to Jack Kerouac’s house, and it said it was twenty-eight minutes about. But Jack I figured was in heaven with the angels. I wandered around the grounds a bit. Then headed back to the room.

Later, we all went to a marketplace, and the vendors were kind. I bought a Donald Duck phone case for fun and looked at the Vans shoes. A woman wanted to sell me a vape, but I wasn’t interested. It began to rain again. I bought an ice cream and waited it out. I briefly wondered if The Pirates of the Caribbean still existed. There had been a deep unmistakable magic then,- for long moments;- just me and the world. An attunement with existence that was enlightenment or close to it or like it. Early 1980’s. But that had become a long time ago. Yet the sages say it’s always available. Interesting. The rain let up and we grabbed a ride back. At the night, a deer stopped while I was grabbing a coffee and had stepped out for some air. There it was, as the sprinkler system went just then, crafting a fine mist under the electric light. It just stared and stared and stared at me. For a long time.

Then it turned around and slowly went off to the night.