Cleveland Dreams, Two

Last night I dreamed that Cedar Point was destroyed, and I was wandering through the ruins.

I haven't been to Cedar Point in years. I'm no longer a fan of roller coasters, and never was a fan of spending money. But in the dream I still knew exactly where everything was -- or should have been -- because of that deep-down map that gets imprinted in the imagination of every little child entering a new world of wonders. The one that makes me better at finding my way to Frontier Town than to Cleveland Heights.

There was a dust-to-dust quality about the landscape. This, an ancient voice could have whispered, is how things are meant to look. Except it wasn't quite -- the ground was still paved with concrete so that the sky, the lake, and the ground were all the same shade of grey. Like being in a children's storybook and wandering off the page into oblivion.

(Or at least an oblivion filled with steel girders and track, once painted cheerful colors and now scabbed over with rust, plummeted to the ground and mangled into shapes that would make even Frank Gehry's skin crawl.)

I approached the twisted wreckage of the Witch's Wheel, barely recognizable, with the same horror as a little kid the first time he ever sees the aftermath of a house fire. "That's not what it's supposed to be like," his mind says, in a small voice. "Mommy, what happened? Can someone fix it?" No, they can't. Or, maybe they can, but it will never be quite the same.

That's impermanence for you, son.