In Dreams
The trees.
The children call them the trees. The first time you come upon them that’s exactly what they look like.
Trees.
The bodies are stacked outward like leaves on limbs while the trunk carries all the basic nutritional and technological needs to sustain life. Taller than the last recorded skyscrapers of the twentieth century the trees stands in rows and rows out in the middle of nowhere. The portions of farmland in central California look more like a mechanical garden of death than home to life sustaining produce.
Between fields of golden and the grazing cows in pasture the machinery towers above the landscape. Blue skies are filled with the release of steam emanating from the rust covered black trees with their glowing limbs. The limbs resemble snow white’s glass coffin for inside each tube lies a body unconscious but very much alive.
The first time I took my son Alfred to see the trees he was nine. My son had always been more articulate than others of his age. But there were no words to accompany the sight of his face. It was more startling than the sight of death when he looked up at a sleeping beauty not much older than he.
Alfred wanted to know if the young girl would wake. I couldn’t help telling him that she would not. Slowly absorbing the reality he curiously pressed further about the girl. I told him she made the choice to lay there, without life and without death deep asleep within a permanent dream. As once written in the Bible, the young Eve lying above the earth in the glass box took a bit of an apple and gained an eternal knowledge. Unlike Eve this child mere years older than my own chose to expel herself from Eden and life. While we talked Alfred looked up at the heavens that day, I wondered if he thought there might be answers that lie in the beauty of the sky beyond the shadow of the trees.
WAKE UP!
Decades upon decades ago advancements in the research of the human psyche were made in the scope of dreaming. Groundwork laid for the next jump in the creation of a tool to heal the mind from its deep seeded psychological traumas. Scientists could allow a patient to enter a dream state while recording the patterns of their thoughts. Advanced testing went so far as to program the ideal dream state for the patient. Research proved that this tool could assist in the reconditioning of the brain and cure mental disease with no more effort than drugs and minimal equipment.
Not long after the technology was introduced it became the norm when inducing a comatose state for patients. People enjoyed the idea of removing themselves from the equation when the idea of pain was involved. Essentially a man could go in for a few hours of REM sleep and wake up a new person remembering nothing more than a visit to the beach or an afternoon spent with loved ones. Alluring was the appeal of undergoing non-invasive mental surgery while spending the time in a relaxed state with someone you care for.
Within a small number of years the technology was being repurposed for recreational use. Many saw fit to take mental holidays from the humdrum of living.
CATCH UP ON YOUR REST WITH A DREAM!
The banner ads streamed throughout the public view. The idea of placing a small mechanized tool into the ear canal while your breathing slowed and you sleep seemed painless enough it could produce the idealized dream. The mental picture of perfection for any person. An unfulfilled man in his career could be the hero of the people by simply dropping out of life for mere hours or weeks of vacation. A terminal child could live out his life in a matter of years. The lovelorn could now find the love of their dreams NOW. Propaganda for the lonely hearts spread faster than any other purpose.
TRUE LOVE NOW! No need to live alone. Never force yourself to accept the flaws of others. Why settle for imperfect. When all you have to do is simple… DREAM up perfection.
Alongside the propaganda ran the pictures of perfect couples. Happy. Blissful. Lies. Why wait for a real person to almost come close enough when you could program your mind into believing a lie? But people loved the idea of it and the pure lust in their eyes for the perversity of the machine. The idea of imaginary love and sex without consequences tapped into their basic need for affection and falsely imitating the feelings of chaos that live in the heart. And it was like candy rotting their brains. Addicted and they couldn’t get enough. For many people days became weeks and eventually years spent under the guise.
AWAKE!
The first signs of mental breakdown disappeared with the dreams. Anyone incapable of sustaining life was prescribed a Dream. Spend a little time in dreams, you’ll feel right as rain in the morning. The only thing was morning wouldn’t come until six months later. Then most of the time the patient was demanding to go back under. And sooner than later they won that fight.
The ides of March thirteen years ago it happened. A court ruling granted a man permanent stasis in his dreams. The man mourning his dead wife walked into oncoming traffic causing a twelve car pile-up. No deaths and multiples injuries led to a city suit against the man’s mental capacity. After months spent in sentenced stasis the man demanded to return to his wife and children in the dream. His plea to the court encompassed his failures in this world. But in the Dream world he was a hero a man who never left his wife that day when she was killed by the drunk driver. And the Dream gave them children they hadn’t be able to have. The court inexplicably ruled in his favor without question opening the door for more people to follow. Within five years the forests of trees spread across the landscape in California, Arizona, Italy, and France. Developing technology meant the trees would continue to grow and spread elsewhere.
A handful of years after the ruling, it so happened that I had found myself in a unique position. At the time I’d been working in a warehouse by day, using it as a classroom by night. A couple of my students wanted to discuss a man they’d just heard of, Freud. A young woman and a man not much younger than myself at the time. Both, new pupils had spent a couple years of their childhood locked away in dreams while their parents chose the same fate. Their interpretation of Freud’s discussion on sexuality and dreams was astounding. Not only did they completely pervert his school of thought, but they went further to identify their time spent in dreams as normal early adolescent and teenage experiences. The education they received was programmed yet they firmly believed it. And their grasp of human connection and love was limited to the scope of what they had experienced in their mind. Instead of seeking out love both were quite restrained with affection. One had continued to return to the machines time and time again. While the other chose to abstain entirely. Without much thought I decided to ask both what they sought to gain from my teachings. I asked calmly “what wisdom I can impart that the dream machine did not?” The pair looked at each other and back at me. Without much thought they told me what I knew already, “There was no man named Sigmund Freud in the books in the dream.”
Quietly the trees that never move or sway in the wind remain. But they hum with the smallest sounds of electricity. When I see them standing I think of walking down the streets filled with life and I wonder what they see in the dreams. Is it more or less beautiful than the every day dream that I live? Are the people perfect or simply their idealized form of perfection?
The dream can’t possibly compare to the reality. Those aren’t really trees. And every child has to grow up. You can’t do it for them.
“It’s perfect isn’t it? No wonder they chose that over living,” he tells me as we walk home slowly. My own son wiser than his years sees the ease of their choice. “Dad, if it’s just the same to you. I think I’d prefer to keep living. I want to see what happens. And it’s ok if it’s not perfect.”
AWAKE. As promised. Another I’ve been carrying for a month. Tangents. I know. The writing has taught me to [mentally] compartmentalize or…. The spinning table will make you very dizzy if you look too closely. I have a handful of projects on my table, all are writing based right now. All involve artists as well. Collaborative. In this case, all close friends and it will be amazing to see the final outcome. One has been two years in the dreaming. Sometimes all it takes is the right project and the right timing to work with someone. Exciting! Kisses!
Life only makes sense when you look backwards my loves. Keep living forward though. The past can’t compare to what happens now. Living in dreams? Like the past you can’t do it. Life is not perfect. Why would we want it to be? There are different ways of seeing things and we are all entitled to our own perspective without need for disagreement. Still contemplating the dream world over the real one? Chew on this thought… the best dreams are the ones that you make come to life. Anyhow… letters will come. But first a few other things. I’m a little behind. Forgive me my loves. Enjoy being awake! kisses. m.
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