April 1, 2007

• Compressed Kalahari

  The compressed-air cannons pooot explosively, acoustically
  linking this play-world with my real one, where, the day before, to the background
  of compressed air cleaners and humming test rigs, I fired the guy who taught me
  the ropes.  We didn't make eye contact during
  the firing, except once, fleetingly, as if by mistake..  Now, while I'm accompanying the kids
  through the Lazy River,
  the Family Flume and (when ‘wet’ gets old), the Tree Top Play and the Madagascar
  putt-putt, he's coming off a lengthy drunk and talking to a lawyer.  Although not the one we've both used daily
  for decades.  Because that one, our
  corporate counsel, was by my side at the execution. You could call it betrayal,
  but it's more complicated than that. 

  We all knew the game too well for drama.  He was largely silent.  He rolled his eyes a couple of times, when
  lines were flubbed or silly.  I half
  expected him to say: “Come on, guys.  You
  can do better than that.”  I half
  expected him to say: "Let's go over that one again before you do it for
  real, okay?"

  I need to stop wondering how he's doing and start thinking
  corporate (what is how  he's doing going
  to mean for our HR strategy?). 

  Actually, right now I need to be having a fun vacation with
  the kids.  That would have been easier if
  I hadn't made the short list for the firing squad at the last minute, and
  instead of packing and housecleaning went into work and printed the exit memo
  on letterhead while dodging the unwitting victim who, in the light of my secret
  foreknowledge, seemed to be having an extremely happy and productive day.  I know it's always like that. Watching the
  gist sink in, and the laugh go out of someone's eyes, leaving them flat-gazed.  Tired. 
  Sardonic.. 

  Knowing doesn't make it any easier.  Believing it was the right thing to do
  doesn't, either.

  Anyway, that aside for a moment - there's something beyond
  the explicitly outré about a waterpark called ‘Kalahari’ that’s made for the
  American minivan set. Whoever designed this thing didn't just toss in plastic
  lions and zebras, murals depicting glowering silverbacks, and realistic-looking
  plastic palms with broad waterproof leaves --although all that's certainly there.  No, they went to great lengths to replicate,
  in a safety-conscious, photogenically-perfect way, other more subtle and not so
  charismatic-megafauna-type aspect of the continent.  The great encompassing hotel complex,
  surrounded by smooth pavement with rushing RAV4s and Odessys and catered-to by
  smiling khaki-clad lackeys, is molded into fetchingly stucco'd rondavels, with mock cracks in the walls and scruffy browning grasses on
  laterite-tinted painted ground.

  I've been to Africa.  I lived three years in then-Zaire, and spent weeks in other countries North, East and Central.  I know what Africa
  is, and this is nothing like.  But the
  colors and the look-and-feel are true enough to give one pregnant pause indeed.

  There’s a lot of confusion in the air today.  Mine, in a pristine Western playland
  decorated incongruously with the patina of a complex and poverty-tinged land
  half a globe away.  My ex-colleague’s,
  having expected one kind of ordinary evening, facing instead a blank future
  tinged with anger and regret.

  • 11:13 am
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