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When I was young, I told my father I wanted to be a princess when I grew up.
Cliche, just like any other little girl. My father told me that being a princess wasn't a job or a career.
And that I was smart. I could be something better than that.
Some where there's a photograph of my father and I from a trip to Disney World.
I asked my mom to find it. So I could maybe add it in here.
Or here. Or maybe here.
In the photo, my dad is lifting my 4 year old stuff up to say hi to Belute from the Jungle Book.
I don't think that character shows up here anymore. His costume is probably somewhere in retirement hanging in a giant storage closet with Pocahontas and Hook.
The Disney Rejects.
I don't even know who these characters are.
I suppose I came here to find whatever I might have forgotten.
Looking for anything that might spark a light to a time when I felt the bliss of being a child.
In the photo of my father and I, I was 4 going on 17. And somewhere in between was the blurred mix of time I had with him.
I guess I came here wishing to remember.
My mom called to tell me she couldn't find the photo. A lot of photos of my dad and I are lost anyway.
I read once that that island is home to old animal cages and deserted buildings from when it was a part of Disney World.
I'm not sure if this actually is that island, but whichever one it was, it was once called Discovery Island, owned by Disney as a zoological park.
It kept the last of a particular species of sparrow.
It seems really unfair to me that Disney would be the keeper of the last of anything other than a creature of fiction, like the extinct Jungle Book character, immortalized in the last photo.
Despite all the new attractions, I felt drawn to visit Tom Sawyer's Island.
Without any visual memory of the place, some nostalgia still built up in my chest as I waited to be ferried over to the island.
My mother told me I spent hours here, playing with my father. I can't recall any of that.
I regret not knowing enough at the time to realize I would want these sort of memories in the future.
No gift shops, no mechanical rides.
Tom Sawyer's Island felt nostalgic just in its simplicity, but I was quickly reminded of its fictionalized Disney personification when I overheard a girl ask her mother who Tom Sawyer was.
I was hurried when I first read Huckleberry Finn, but I guess half the kids on this island will never read the book.
Or will, but maybe a version of the book lacking certain words that most teachers and literary scholars believe can open up avenues for discourse.
But words that some believe we should shelter children from, altering books or censoring them altogether.
That's the type of conflict I have a hard time comprehending.
Went to preserve or let go of childhood innocence. I think I've let go of mine, but still hold an empty grip on the place where it once was.
There's some story about a guy who works at Disney World and asks little girls for their autograph as if they were Cinderella.
That's the kind of stuff they show in commercials.
The kids smiling brightly because Disney made their dreams come true.
Dreams commercialized and imprinted on kids hoping to be a princess one day.
This guy let me film him packing cotton candy.
And when I asked him if he liked his job, he said this.
In a way, it's a simplistically happy statement.
Literally working as a kid in a candy store.
But he's not a kid, so I guess it's a little sad too.
He asked me my name and gave me some cotton candy on the house.
And I smiled like a little girl in one of those commercials.
Little Prince Uses reign over this fantasy land.
I look at them and hope to connect to a past I don't think I ever actually experienced.
The more I wander among them, the more alien they seem.
Glittered hair pulled back into tight buns, tiaras and tulle.
They're perfect construction.
I don't think I'm made that way.
Maybe I'm the alien.
Maybe I don't belong here.
Just before finishing this film, a photo from my mother showed up in my mailbox.
With a note that read, I'm sorry, this was the best that I could find.
Me and only half of his face.
It makes me wonder if I created his full image in my mind.
A recreated memory based upon an image.
A recreated event I will never truly remember.
But then there's her.
She looked at me with curious eyes through the lens of my camera.
I think if I maybe do remember being for Disney, Baloo, my father, when he was a father, it would be this.
I don't think I'm made that way.
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