About Gary Monroe

The old-world Jewish community that characterized South Beach during most of the 1970s and 80s consisted of thousands of people whose roots extend back to the Czarist pogroms and the Nazi Holocaust. Ellis Island was the point of entry and America became their home with South Beach being the place to live out their lives in accord with their religious mores. The hotels that line Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue had transformed their card rooms into makeshift shuls. Yiddish was in the air and the average age there was well beyond that of retirement. Elderly men and women lived communally throughout the small-scale neighborhood, a place of refuge and isolation, taking advantage of the tropical climate and therapeutic ocean. Facing the adversity of old age, they lived joyfully and in accord with their religious faith until the advent of the art deco craze.

I go to the festival at Plaine-du-Nord, a village near Cap Haitien where voodooists gather around a large, rectangular mud hole. Even in the unshaded summer sun, it is a dark place. People come to this fete primarily from the fields, hills and mountains of the north, more so than from the immediate locale. Their churches frown on such superstitious practices, but the region is poor; its people try to farm exhausted soil as is done throughout Haiti. Desperation changes to delight, or at least some kind of hope that the gods will be good to them during the coming year, as they are transformed in the silt – the essence of life – into clay beings. Through a remarkable degeneration/regeneration of frenzy, possession, and trance, souls draw nearer to the primordial source.

People lie in wait like premonitions, unmoving in the thick brown mud. Hundreds of spectators wait, too, and watch, with few clues to their thoughts on their faces. One Haitian poses like an insect, a praying mantis. Children encrusted with half-dried mud seem delighted; like lizards, they peer into the crowds, watching for someone to throw a coin. Mostly the worshippers stand around the basin while Trou St. Jacques (St. James in his French cloak) waits for those possessed by the god of war, Ogoun Feraille.

Some people in the basin move slowly, like alligators. Their hollow eyes roam. Movement is sensual and blurs the line between purpose and purposeless. It is so slow as to be imperceptible. Some of the possessed are in total repose like reptiles whose darting tongues might lash out suddenly at a target and retract even faster, then abruptly thrash about, overcome with the spirit. This act is contagious; others rise, as if emerging from the sea. If mounted by the loa, they roll more violently about, then return to placid peace. One may roll over the flat bank and spring wildly to life into a quickly parting crowd. Spectators may be pushed in to the muddy basin by an iguana. Others may be offered knowledge in the rubbing and stroking of muddy hands along their bodies, or in an embrace from one possessed who rises like Venus.

Those who are newly entranced run out of control, mud shooting every which way, their bodies jerking, rolling, and pulling against gravity as if they may fall over or fly away. The limbs of those entranced flail wildly; their movements dominate the space. They rush frantically through crowds until they collapse, crowds parting and people sprinting out of the way. Those divined by the mud are in touch with the loa Ogoun himself. The old soldier resides below, still wearing his Revolutionary uniform. Red is his color and he plays with fire. His lover is Erzulie Frada Dahomey, the goddess of home, purity, and love. The Haitians at Saut d'Eau appeal to her.

More (or less) than you bargained for...

As a rite of passage, a virtual pilgrimage, a baptismal plunging into a reality of make believe, the Disney World illusion of reality is carefully packaged by Disney “imagineers” to redefine good, clean fun with Orwellian machination. The financial success of Disney World’s burgeoning commercial ventures confirms that the Cloroxed world of Disney is preferable to the dirty, real world full of woes, cracks in the sidewalks, and choices among evil. The Magic Kingdom conjures a counterfeit Kingdom of God, but with a gleeful and sinister capitalistic twist.

The Disney World vacation becomes a quest for order, goodness, and happiness, all of which elude us in the actual world. Adults consume Disney World in a naive delusion of amusement, of chaos becalmed, and of choreographed goodness. The children, of course, know better. They repeatedly ask their parents, “Is that real?” looking for assurance.

Nothing is real, in fact, at Disney World except the reality of the transformation of self through myth and fantasy... a literal transformation which is less about self-awareness than a sense of belonging. What a visitor sees and does at the theme parks is only a fairy-dusted shadow of life on the outside; a simulacrum; a faint unreal likeness of how man has defined himself through modernism. Experience, brought into question in Disney’s risk-free world, becomes an idea.

The trip to Disney World burlesques a spiritual journey in another way. Getting there, going through the theme parks, and coming home again, parallels the proverbial trip to the mountain. But navigating Mt. Disney requires not a traditional map of the land, but one of the intellect. This is a post-modern mountain. The Ascent involves neither getting hurt nor lost nor dirty. But what has happened is of less consequence than how it is remembered. Forget the heat, lines, anger, and expense. The sojourner’s real meaning resides in the mind like fragmentary ruminations adrift in a fish bowl. One has arrived and one belongs. Once the credit cards are paid off, the snapshots and videos will be remembered with dear affection.

Most of all, the Disney World phenomenon is prophetic and symbolic of a seamless and totally controlled shift in our social values through media manipulation and “imagineering.” Prescribed cultural mores appeal to our quixotic selves as we yearn for meaningful lives.