The Dream

The image is seen from a great height, maybe through the lens of a god and it appears ageless and intractable. The image looks out over an abandoned city centre. The buildings still stand and inside, their offices still housing grand desks that still guard papers, but there is no familiarity here whatsoever.

A road divides our image and leads us towards an orange horizon where at its crest, stands a great shadow. Here we see mankind encircling the dawn of a new era, linked by their passion for love and existence. Under the birth of a son they breathe, they wait; they prepare to move as one. The Collective; gathered, with empty hands, light feet and unstained minds.

Suddenly a unlike image emanates from a decrepit unfriendly tower; cruel, violent, and ghastly. Mankind gasps; the night loses a breath as fear is fought with a heaving resolute groan. The Collector; carrying his penance as fashion, flaunts his imperceptible self. Hearts race and fevers peak as a storm of anxiety lashes upon a sea of sleep. The collector: His tongue, lavish with lies is venom. His face, fraught with malignance is cancer. His voice, an unnerving shrill of vile tempestuousness is pestilence. And he alone, is void. In his hands he carries his reflection and in his eyes, one will find their own. At his feet lays a bulky rucksack; its black fibres splitting at their ends and pulling apart to reveal the corners of strange objects piercing into the light. 

The collector’s lips quiver like a dancer’s feet with unwavering rhythm, poise and passion as his poetry falls silent against the pane. There shall be no song tonight.  As a city sleeps, its fears are confounded. The mass, the collective, as one, lay on their backs, their eyelids flickering, their hearts pacing, their fingers twitching and their sub conscious, learning. 

The storm subsides; the unlike image retards with The Collector retreating once again behind a veil of shadow. A wave of content now laps at the feet of eternity. The Collective; looking forward, nomadic and becoming are in focus and in their sight, once again, the orange hue of the undying horizon. Yesterday has no face, it casts no shadow.  Tomorrow bears no man no child. There never was, there never will be, there only is; present, here, in attendance, now. The Collective: creative, emotional and living. The feelings that paints this image: belonging, hopeful and out of harm’s way; a mother’s breast, a father’s fist. The image is splendorous and surreal and more importantly, shared by all.

As they slept, the people learned. For the most part, their fear girded their direction. They thought only of that orange horizon, never faulting in its purpose. They dared not think of a yesterday or cast a glimpse over their shoulder for fear of making an unfortunate acquaintance in The Collector, the face of all their fears. A metaphor in their lives for all that has been; every fact and every facet of thought that ever was. Their governance was simplified; zero and one. Zero being fear, abandonment and desolation. One being love. Fear in shades of grey, an image that is frozen, that can be touched. Love, an orange hue with reddish purple wings painted on a horizon that can never be reached.

Together they give contrast and definition. Everything can be zero or one. There is no margin for error, no cause for ambiguity. It is with colour or it is without, it is or it is not and it can help maintain love, or it must be punished. Each night as the city slept, the clarity of right and wrong, of love and fear reverberated in their sub conscious,  and when they woke, their hands would be empty and their minds would be light; as they should be; as has been determined, thus spake the Collective.

This city once had a name, but that has since long been forgotten; so too, the manual for its assembly and instructions for its use. Before the blackout, everything was illuminated. The rules were clear, the table was full and the house was very generous. This city was alien. Every inch of this now concrete obstacle pulsated with radiant energy. It was very much alive and its inhabitants kept it so. 

Their collective conscience fed the same understanding of what society meant and their place in it, and every day, they uploaded new definitions, new understandings and greater complexity to this abstract concept. The energy they burned in their thoughts could have fuelled a thousand suns as they painted and sculpted in a fashion that only a god could envisage. They made a world small, attainable and of reason. And they left it all behind.