Sunday is for All Things Ugly

and I went and had a great breakfast at City Central Market on Sunday morning. We thought we would catch a quick bite before going to the annual crafts festival at Lake Eola

Nothing could have prepared us for the visual onslaught that was Fall Fiesta in the Park. It started out pleasantly enough with a both selling handmade soaps, but it quickly devolved into a sea of wooden, metal, leather and plastic tchotchkes that threatened to erode my sanity and erase my belief that humanity can create beautiful things if given half the chance.

At about the half-way point I was visibly shaken. Shell shocked by what I had seen I walked with my eyes wide and staring, my mouth agape in horror. Oh… you want a brief example of the horrors to which I was witness? How about the stool covered with some NASCAR racers images with fake legs dangling off of it. Or the wind chimes made from plastic soda bottles. How about the fish made from a blank CD where the whole of the CD is the fish’s eye? There were far worse examples, but thankfully my brain has seen fit to block access to those portions of my memory.

We came home afterwords we both seemed drained from the experience. We held each other close and fell asleep on the couch… hoping against hope that slumber would somehow erase the pain of what we had seen. We woke up several hours later, our bodies still sapped of their energy.

–sam