#iroe

Les plus belles œuvres des artisans japonais.

 Suzuribako 硯箱  - boîte à écrire en laque signée Kano Kjuhaku - période  Edo Jidai 江戸時代 (1603 - 1867).

As the show is nearing to draw out its final breath in half an hour, it is time I have finally let out my full experience of the show that I have fully grown up with.

My family use to travel alot for as long as I could recall. We would always go to Disney World and camp at Disney’s Fort Wilderness for Atleast around twice a year, ofcourse that’s my guess as how many times we visited the park. Epcot has always been my favorite park. I love the rides, I grew up with Figmwnt, I love visiting the Japan pavilion just to spend half an hour or more at that Japan shopping center and give my poor family a hard time trying to get me out of there.

Somehow I enjoyed exploring Epcot so much that I one night wandered out of my parents sight and took them Atleast five minutes to find me. I have way too much memories of Epcot. Too many stories to count. But what I have always saw as the heart of Epcot was none other then IROE.

As a baby however, I didn’t like it at first. You see, I was always sensitive to loud noises. So much so that I would always plug my ears and look away everytime the guitar would blare out in the beginning of “Tarzan Rocks” (to anyone who doesn’t know it, it’s basically a show that use to be in Animal Kingdom before Finding Nemo took its place).

So what my parents always did was that they would take me to this wine place where the nice old lady would play her piano. Despite pulgging my ears and staying close to dad, I would still look out the window. Seeing the soft colorful lights in the sky and often seeing spark of the fireworks. Even when I was terrified at the firework’s sound, I wanted to love it. I wanted to get over the fear so I can go outside and fully experience. But I had a while until that moment ever came.

The show, expecting only to last a year, extended its life greatly. I grew older, and the easily terrified little girl started to drift off, letting the part of the little girl in me let go of her ears, step out of the wine building, and fully experience it.

I fell in love with it rapidly. So everytime I go to Epcot, my main attraction would to watch that fireworks show and to this day, even when it disappears in half an hour, I will still see it as the greatest firework show of all time. With everything bad going around the world, with having to be forced to watch bad things happening. In the news, people easily getting mad at one another, or the fear on what might happen in the future, all of the thoughts and anxieties subsides when I even listen to the whole soundtrack.

It brings me into the trance that even when bad things happen in the world, there’s more beauty and goodness to it than there are to the bad side.

I was heartbroken when I heard the news one day. My heart dropped and I completely covered my mouth, having no idea how it can be possible. It was that moment when I found out about this I thought:

I HAVE to see it one more time.

It was August 2019. One month before it goes. I went with my friend early morning to take the last glimpse of it. It was raining and it felt like the world itself was mourning over it. In the afternoon, it started to clear up and the sun started shining again. And all of the sudden, when we walking around, I took a glimpse at the lagoon where the globe was now settling at the center of it.

And I saw this:

It was a rainbow. A rainbow has appeared behind the globe. And at that moment, it was as if the globe came to life for a moment as a way to thank me and everyone that has loved the show. That it has done its work and it is ready to depart, but will always be remembered. And that’s when I knew I was finally accepting the fact that it was ready to go.

I even recall when watching the show how much it aged, but remained memorable all the same. It may be gone, but the memory of it once standing on the lagoon will forever live beyond the middle of the lake.

And for that, even when a new show takes it place, we will still move on and embrace a new generation for Epcot.

For that,