Superimposing One Place On Another

Please humor me for a little while as I go off in a small flight of fancy. I was sitting out in my back yard the other day and wondering whether or not I could fit a theme park ride in it. Not a roller coaster: they take up way too much space. No, I was thinking more along the lines of something like Zamperla Corporation’s spectacular Power Surge, which is my hands-down favorite of all the theme park rides (including roller coasters).

Power Surge, when going full tilt, resembles something like a demented, fast moving Ferris wheel that has come unglued from reality. Riders are hurled in just about every direction conceivable while traveling around the “wheel”. From the ground, this ride looks terrifying. And from the air, a rapid succession of random images of ground, air, buildings, and other passengers at various angles (including complete inversion) can likewise impart a sense of peril and intense disturbance. It is one ride that I have never quite gotten used to. And that’s why I like it so.

I wonder whether I could fit Power Surge in my back yard. Not that I could afford it or would get the city’s permission for it. But I can still imagine what the view would be as the ride begins and progresses, with it all happening over my home and neighborhood instead of the theme park.

This sort of musing can be taken a step further. Wherever I am, I can “pretend” to be in a roller coaster seat and then imagine where the ride would take me if it were superimposed on where I was. If seated within a building, I could “see” the tracks rising until they passed through the ceiling and out in the open air above the building. And then curl back and dip back into the building’s interior, crossing through rooms and walls at various stages in the ride.

Maybe all of this is a sign of boredom. But I think it’s a little more than that. When I am in different places doing different things, I impose different standards of distance about my environment. Sometimes I would like to reconcile them all into a consistent, coherent sense of distance and space. So I take places like my home, neighborhood, grocer, workplace, or shopping mall. And then (mentally) impose other places (like theme parks, the beach, or anywhere else I’ve been) on them to get a feel for the distances involved. It’s a good mental exercise that can enhance my abilities to visualize and remember. As well as being a mildly fun diversion. I wonder if this was the sort of thing John Lennon did when he was “just sitting here doing time”, “watching the wheels”!