Okay…he said he wasn’t a monster, not that he wasn’t crazy. But I like this take on it better.

There’s a story you seem to like telling me. It’s about the psych class you attended and the professor who said that the most important thing to remember is to not let “them” know that you’re crazy because then they’ll take away your freedom. You’ve told me that one so often I have come to expect hearing it from you at least once per encounter. Last time you told it to me you stood up and said it right in my face.

I’m not sure what the point is you’re trying to get across here…whether it’s a personal life lesson you’ve taken to heart, because let’s face it the gang of friends we hung out with back in the day were all a little odd bunch of outcasts…or it’s you think I’m crazy and you’re just warning me to keep it toned down.

Look…I’m an artist. All these years and it still feels pretentious to say so, but you saw my art room. I’m an artist. I don’t have a lot of works to show for it but I’ve lived almost my entire life under a lot of stress and that’s cost me focus. We tend to present as a bit odd, crazy even. I wear my heart on my sleeve. It’s what we do. I admit some of it can be a tad disturbing. But if I kept it bottled up inside of me it would damage me even more. And besides, there is also this quote of Shaw’s I think is good to bring up from time to time whenever this comes up:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable man persists in adapting the world to himself, therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Go against the flow and you will get called crazy. Among other things. Until the world catches up with you. Then you’re a visionary. I’m not crazy, I’m just ahead of the curve.

Anyway. If you think you might be crazy don’t worry about it. I worked for a time as a stock clerk in a private psychiatric hospital and I’ve seen crazy. You don’t qualify.

If it’s Me you think is crazy, you should know that I prefer the term neurodivergent. 

This came across my Facebook stream just now…

Why I have cameras. Why I have pens and charcoal and brushes and canvases and paint. Thank goodness I found my language early on, or I’d have gone mad long ago from the pressure of feelings I had no words for.

Why I know myself to be an artist, as pretentious as that sounds. I’m not doing any of it for the recognition…I’m actually lousy at getting recognition. If nobody ever saw a single new piece I did, I would still do them, because I have to get it out of me, in this particular way. I have a bunch of stuff nobody’s ever seen, and probably never will. But I got it out and that’s all that mattered.

A friend passed this news article along to me on Facebook, knowing what a fan of Walt Disney World I am…

Disney increases number of planned layoffs to 32,000 employees

A classmate, my high school crush, works (“worked” I suppose now) at Epcot Germany, in the Biergarten restaurant. That is why I started going. Back in 2008. And rediscovered my inner Mouseketeer. 

Last September when I went there I saw the severe measures they were taking to limit guest exposure in the parks. Most of the indoor restaurants were closed. Biergarten was an exception and I wondered how they were managing it, since their thing is Oktoberfest seating. This was why I loved Biergarten, even more so than that he was working there and we could chat after hours for a bit. When you are a solitary traveler, you tend to sit at the bar most places because that’s where you get to talk to the others there. But always sitting at the bar means you are drinking more. Biergarten’s Oktoberfest seating meant I could chat with the others at my table. Plus, I had a ready break the ice start to it. Where are you from? Is this your first time at Disney World?  He even said to me once that I was good at getting a table talking with each other…a thing certain other gay “friends” would be surprised to hear, since they’ve pegged me as too shy to talk to anyone which is why I never get any dates. But all I ever needed was something to break the ice. After that I’m a chatterbox. But a listener too. I love a good conversation. I have had lots of fun and interesting times talking with the other guests. 

So I was wondering how they managed keeping things going in Biergarten during the plague. Also, I was hoping to at least know that he was okay and still working. Well they managed it by seating nobody with anyone else but the party they came with. And since I was a party of one I got one of their tables, which seat eight, all to myself. And they brought the buffet food out to me…none of this standing in a line at the buffet.

It was…a bit scary. None of the regular German staff were there. The “cast members” all wear name tags with their place of origin on them. Nobody that day at Biergarten had a name tag with a German city on them. They were, I suspect, all pulled from other parts of the park. I’m guessing the guest German workers…kids from the various Epcot World Showcase Lagoon countries brought in to work for a year or two, were sent back to their homes. But my classmate, who says he’s been working there since a few months after it opened and has his green card, was not there. He’s old enough now he could do early social security, but I’ve no idea what’s happening with him anymore. We’re not speaking now. It’s okay. See my previous post.

You have to actually do the backstage tour to see what a massive operation Walt Disney World is. It never stops…it’s a 24 hour thing. When the guests clear out there is a massive maintenance operation that kicks in. The parks themselves are like the tip of an iceberg area wise. There’s a ton of…stuff…supporting the park operations that’s out of sight. It simply cannot be sustained without the usual attendance numbers. And Disney is keeping the numbers down. They closed three of the four big parking lots at Disney Springs to keep the numbers down there. Half of the Boardwalk hotel was closed while I was there. It’s not just the people you see, it’s the massive support system you don’t, and all the people that work it. Yeah…it was going to hurt down there. It had to. Badly.

I’m hoping my classmate is doing okay. He still has his German citizenship. I asked him once why he didn’t just get his US citizenship after all this time, since he’s been paying our taxes so he might as well have a say in how it’s all spent. But no. He’s fine with just having a green card. He’s never expressed the slightest interest in going back to Germany. Or Brazil, where he was born. But Florida so I’m told is a special kind of shithole for the unemployed.

But I’ll probably never know. It’s okay.