Another land, without evil, without death, will be borne from the destruction of this one. This land wants it. It asks to die, asks to be born, this old and offended land. It is weary and blind from so much weeping behind closed eyelids. On the point of death it strides the days, garbage heap of time, and at night it inspires pity from the stars. Soon the First Father will hear the world’s supplications, land wanting to be another, and then the blue tiger who sleeps beneath the hammock will jump.
-Eduardo Galeano
Ariadne the threadbearer awoke alone in her house. She is American. America had become geology not reality. She thought of America and dreams as her oatmeal grew cold. America had beached itself on the chaos of the wild dreams it birthed. It was proposed long ago that market forces produced happier lives then state centered societies. That American life let everyone freely traffic in dreams. Everyone’s dreams got shared and advertised and became museum pieces, got squirrelled away by rich collectors, disappeared in dust, watered down and sold in mass, or were met with a hail of bullets. The voodoo dances of Congo Square dreamed up jazz, electrocuted elephants helped dream endless loops of men and women frozen in immortal youth and love staring at the light, people dreaming on rafts crossing shark drunk seas warm as wine, churches dreamed up apocalypses of storms of light and souls plucked into the sky, people crossing deserts singing and dreaming not fearing rape, pre-dug graves, and secret prison to slice tomatoes, take out garbage and stick together plastic junk for the dreamers, some dreamed of dignity and freedom from rat infested apartments, open air drug markets, feudal systems that said you could not drink water from this faucet, others dream of communities were they never saw a face different from their own, the sidewalks never cracked and the storefronts were always full, men with guns dreamed of false flags, black helicopters and fertilizer bombs, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews dreamed of their own gods in this nation under god as others dreamed up religions and gods new to this world, some dreamed only of money, art, or that they could capture it all in a book, reach the stars, or of men with tights that could perform miracles, or of cities placed on floodplains, rifts in the tectonics, or in a desert, of computers reordering nature, some dreamed that we had lost Eden right here on these shores, dreamed that America would give back the land it stole and removed the strip malls from the mass graves, but all these dreams meant nothing to the dominant dream. The dominant dream was one that sold, one that moved units. All the nations of the earth began to dream this dream. This dream created a library of wonders where each of us could create their own dream. With so many dreams about, no bothered much with the dreams of others anymore. The earth moved, melted, warped and groaned under the weight of the dream. Nations and memories faded, technology followed its own logic, the weather got weird, the seas angry, so now Ariadne the threadbearer thought, now here we are, forever in these moments. Moments were you awake to house stuffed with clothing and furniture of someone else, where the box you get your cereal from is not even yours. Moments where work calls wondering where you are, but your clone has died and the idea of leaving the haunt of your home is beyond thought. Moments where the cereal curdles in your gut and it is impossible to breathe.
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