Out of the Blue
Thursday, June 3rd, 2004Yesterday evening, I looked out the window and fell into a dream.
In this wonderful dream, the skies over Hangzhou were miraculously clear. The air was crisp and clean, and the setting sun bathed the clouded sky in a beautiful glow.
This afternoon, the dream continued on.
I shook off my particulate matter-induced stupor and sensed that, somehow, the world had been set right. I wandered outside, blinded by the vibrant colours painting the sky. I realized that, once upon at time, clouds existed, and they were white. Once upon a time, in some strange dimension, the horizon wasn’t a few hundred metres away.
Memories of a past life rushed me. A canoe on a serene lake in absolute wilderness. A spectacular sunset over forested mountains. Brilliantly coloured maple trees on a crisp autumn day. The great Pacific crashing into a shoreline of towering pines. A childhood spent playing in pure white snow. Swimming in crystal clear water. Drinking straight from the tap.
In my blissful dream state, I thought “wow, the powers that be have really screwed up. It’s a dangerous game to give people a glimpse, however fleeting, of what they are missing.”
Earlier this evening I woke up, and thankfully things were back to normal. A disaster had been averted. The air once again smelled like a brew of noxious chemicals, and the street lights were back to being fog lamps. I felt comforted upon noticing that, once again, my world faded away in a dull haze at the end of my street.
As I think about my experience, I’m a bit uneasy: we all know the sky is white, and to propose anything different is mere folly. We all know that to improve life, we have to destroy what makes it possible.
But what a strange dream I had.