Into the White Room

So I had this dream about a week ago. The scene of it opened up like it was right out of the movie Aeon Flux. It was a city scene. Everything was white or clean, from the architecture right down to the clothes people were wearing. At first when my "eyes" opened within it, I felt like I was standing still, like a watcher, just an observer. There was movement, but nothing like I was used to seeing. There was almost a peace to the activity. It was like a rhythm, a carefully choreographed symmetry to the action. I think the word that comes to mind is order. I felt it was a contrast to the world as I know it- a chaotic world, full of hustle, rush and worry, rebounding and collision. This place was smooth.


Clean. That word comes to mind too. The air was as fresh as if I was sucking it right out of a northern pine-tree forest through a straw, each breath (definitely through the nose), feeling like a sip of glacier water. Perfect. It was almost unreal, but without feeling that way. It felt real, alive, like it was the "real" of Plato's philosophy.


As I sat in my bed, thinking that the last coffee the night before had done this, I made an observation about this place I had overlooked. There were no commercials - no billboards, newspapers, or t-shirts that were screeching at me to buy something. Brand names were not only vacant, but the furthest thing from my dreamy mind. I didn't see a single logo anywhere - not on a Tim Horten's throw-away, blowing in the wind, not on a white bus swishing by, and certainly not within view of the naked eye. I didn't see a single ad anywhere.


Have we ever realized the sort of background choir we live with everyday? Have we really seen the screaming chorus of literary voices, calling to us for brief attention, all lined up, row after row before our vision, like the little boys on the main drag of any city down in South America: Selling us something? Perhaps the money we spend responding to these ads isn't the most expensive part of the transaction. Perhaps what costs us more is the price of distraction. If you could only experience the thrill of the clean, quiet city of my dream, smell the air void of toxins and exhaust, you may also see how traffic-jammed our attention is these days.


What does that mean, that white city of my dream? How do I get there? How do I get out of this? Certainly I can't board a plane.


Then I realized I didn't have to go anywhere. I realized the city I dreamed of was this one, in which I live, but in a very different form. It was a place I would like to see become real, a place I would like to live in. Imagine that, a virgin city, that hasn't slept with anyone . . . .