dream: night time in the mysterious city.

it’s winter. we’re in an old house on a hill, in an old city that is being rebuilt -- whole city blocks demolished, erased, wiped clean, with new ones taking their place.

the house property backs onto an escarpment, at the bottom of which is a frozen river which runs through the city. all along the escarpment, to one side of the house, several adjacent city blocks are missing. empty, removed, and soon to be replaced. looking out from a window of the house on the hill, i can see new units being moved up to the edge of the escarpment in one of the nearby lots, slotted into place one after another like tiles, only they’re huge: entire properties, with buildings, pavements, lawns, sidewalks already assembled together on ultrawide flatbeds, pushed and pulled by purpose-built “mover” trucks that look like grossly oversized big-rig/tow-truck hybrids. they’re moving quickly; the whole block’ll be assembled by morning.

but something’s wrong; the newest piece to arrive doesn’t stop in time and smashes through the property markers near the escarpment. i look closer: there is one of those big mover trucks at either end, and something’s going wrong with them. the whole thing comes to a shuddering stop, and then the rear “pushing” mover-truck lurches back the way it came. the property/building tile-piece is coming detached from the other mover, the one near the escarpment. the truck’s grappling mechanism is going haywire, jerking up and down, barely attached to the property any more. the workers swarm around the malfunctioning movers and the piece caught between them, looking from up here like panicked ants after a kid stomps their colony. with a huge tug, the rear-facing truck pulls the property completely free of the one facing the escarpment and surges forward, running over some workers, and sending those who had been standing on the attached property flying through the air as their footing is pulled out from underneath. one worker gets thrown under the grappling mechanism of the other truck, which keeps moving up and down, crushing him repeatedly against the body of the vehicle. then the whole truck abruptly drives forward, rushing headlong over the edge and down, down, crashing through the frozen surface of the river.

in a panic, some workers leap to their smaller pickup trucks and head down a narrow, treacherous dirt path to the bottom of the escarpment. but they’re driving too fast; before it gets even halfway to the bottom, the first truck loses control, flips, flies through the air, and skids across the ice. a couple of passengers stagger out, even as a second, third, then fourth truck follow suit, each more disastrously than the last, crashing into the other trucks and the survivours who crawled out of them.

not a single sound of all the chaos and carnage enters the house. an unnervingly constant silence fills my ears throughout it all.

...the next morning, the view of the accident scene is blocked by a row of buildings; the lot next to our old house has been filled. “the helicopters must have set them down there last night,” someone says...

paper airplanes

dream 2007-07-03

on a whim, i'm in the midst of some bizarre movie-script barracks. it's basic training. we've got to go through all kinds of aptitude tests and training before we can learn first aid, but the sergeant and his buddies waste no time in getting us recruits our weapons, even bringing out the high-powered scopes and rifles for us to salivate over. i ask a couple of questions, so i am thereby marked as a troublemaker; sarge doesn't plan on giving me anything but seven kinds of hell.

i come across a scrap of a report in the washroom -- something that probably should have been shredded, as it gets my blood boiling. i confront the sarge with it: me, the angry, impotent bleeding-heart. "this is disgusting, but i bet you don't even care! i'm just some worthless wimp leftie scum to you, huh?"

"yer damn right!" he bellows.

i'm done, i'm out, waste of time. what in the hell was i doing, going into the army in the first place? that stuff stopped interesting me when i was in my teens, anyway.

so out of the barracks without a backward glance, into downtown: it's night, the streets are almost empty of cars. orange halogens spill down the sides of the old stone buildings that fill this part of town. across the street, under the shifting tree-leaf shadows, i'm into the park.

now this is more like it: people in all sorts of strange carefree getup, wandering, gathering, sitting, talking... no one imposing anything on anyone else. and of course my friends are there; gordex, armourtime, the dr, sitting on the grass, look up as i pass and greet me as if it is the most natural thing in the world for me to be there. i briefly wonder if they were waiting for me, knowing i'd bounce out of there in short order, or if they even know of my brief flirtation with the military. it doesn't really matter; there's little to fear out here compared to inside those walls. halfway across the park, i can see cheese running about, with a swishing of skirts and a bouncing of curls. just doing her thing.

here is freedom, and honest adventure, at the expense of no lives, and no mindless conformity. and we have many hours 'til morning.

north york blues

long time passing

Genius Kills Self
George Ferney, lifelong “prodigy at everything he touched,” was found dead in his Lake Erie cottage this morning. Police spokespersons said that the cause of death would not be disclosed to the public at this time due to privacy concerns, but that death had been conclusively established as self-inflicted.
Since his childhood in Buffalo, NY, George Ferney has been hailed by educators, researchers, politicians, celebrities, and some of the leading minds across the world as the greatest genius the world had seen since Mozart, or perhaps ever.
Although his rise to international fame was connected strongly with his virtuosity in all the arts, since his middle adolescence Ferney's energies had focused on the cause of the environment and the ever-increasing problem of global climate change.
There have been reports of a suicide note from sources closely connected with Ferney. Details are few but all sources have indicated that Ferney had for some time been severely depressed about what he perceived as his own incompetence. According to one neighbour, the note stated that Ferney hoped that others “more adept than I will do the work that I am unqualified to do.” When asked about them, Police spokespersons provided no comment to either confirm or deny these reports.

wow… that will definitely be a movie-of-the-week, thought Theo, flaked out on a 50-year-old couch listening to a CD -- a CD! hahah --
-- when his headphones cut out and the phone started blasting what sounded like white noise by comparison.
Andrew was yacking at him over the speakerphone. Something about green piss.