The Reflection Pool

It has become a mind movie. One that is stuck on repeat where I can’t remove the images and the sounds. It’s all warped like an old 45. Grooved from the repetition of replay. Carousel music floats on the air. It’s joyous, circular song is distorted like a music box that has lost the strength of its toddler owner. Slower and slower, winding down. Families laughing, couples’ low voices can be heard in the echoes of the Wurlitzer 153 organ, whose utterance punctuates the muted sounds of what once was a mass of bodies. A G sharp, B flat, the discordance matches the peopleless landscape of this abandoned amusement park.

The remains of a nuclear disaster are no less bleak. Rubble strewn about like toys in a playroom during nap time. Dried leaves blow on a breeze that no one feels because there is no longer anyone strolling the lanes.No excitement getting on the ferris wheel. No stomach full of butterflies loading onto the bumper cars. There is nothing left in the decay of lost and discarded pleasures. Human emotions cannot be found amidst the steel and iron as nature resumes its former place, incorporating the trash left behind. From some hidden place, a treasure of sound rings out as time is marked off by this clock of mortality.

Ghost images of crowds pass through the line of vision, nearly taking shape as the carousel’s tune becomes recognizable. All fades quickly as the cloud of memory slips in and covers, wiping out the color of life. Leaving behind only grays. A few rides are moving but in a way that suggests people just left. The creaking of rusted joints is the steady pulse of the place.The actions of folks jumping off is left over in the indiscernible backwards motion of the rides.

Backwards.
Mutation.
Defunct.

In sepia tones and minor keys of the past, I stand amongst the joylessness of this abandoned amusement park. Me, as spun sugar on a stick.
Petrified cotton candy.

( All text is original and created by Kari Smith with full Copyright protections. Images in order of appearance: Some rights reserved by u-murrayhusted;Some rights reserved by Morgennebel; Some rights reserved by janheuninck )