The Undreampt Dream
I take my first step into surreality and sense that the world has changed. Despite my intuition, I cannot decide what has been altered. I continue my walk only to see my friend Mehri waving from across the street. She yells “I love you,” and her words escape from her mouth. I am able to see the orange hue of love and the letters are in a script of pure fancy. I return the message of love and create my own stream of words for the world to see. Unlike Mehri’s, my words have a little more yellow than her deep hues. Despite my astonishment, Mehri continues on her way without hesitation. Her world is already full of wonder and Athens is her personal Disney World: full of fantastical creatures and complete merriment. Perhaps that’s where she got her name…
I continue on my path and come across the infamous Preacher Jed. The Preacher is rattling off damnations to all of the Brothers and Sisters of life’s congregation. His words, supposedly those of God, begin to rise as expected, but then they hover as if on the plateau of purgatory. When Jed says “God” the word seems full of jags and is the scorching color of death. It glows with a fiery intensity that does not befit the word “God”… at least a God of peace. It becomes evident to me that Brother Jed’s God is the same one that would lead His children into the desert to wage a Holy war in His name. I realize religion in the wrong hands holds the same evil as death itself…
Hecklers surround Jed and they shout torrents of equally vile words in his direction. “Fag,” “fucker,” “right-wing nut-job,” some rise and some fall. Some are the color of charred dreams and hopes, while others appear the putrid color of stadium mustard coalesced with twice-eaten pea soup. These words have no intent other than hate and they rise up and detonate like the exploding missiles that FOX News refuses to show. Fearing for my safety I seek shelter from the storm of hatred. The onslaught brings to mind the old childhood rhyme: “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” How wrong we all were.
I flee in fear and see words all up and down Court St. “Welcome,” rises up in the comforting blue of a spring morning’s sky and rejoins its family. “Flowers for sale” seems to be written purely out of hope and it floats in a vibrant flurry of greens and yellows (for we all know that hope floats). Everywhere greetings and friends… Athens.
My ecstasy is derailed as I see a lone child in tears. He tells me that several of his classmates had called him “retarded” as he left school that afternoon. As he says “retarded” the word slowly emerges from his mouth in the form of a black cloud that spells out “R-E-T-A-R-D-E-D” like a sky-writer gone terribly wrong. The cloud does not rise to the sky, nor does it diminish. The words have made a permanent impact and stay with the world just as they stay with the child; infinitely.
Words have power, and although I may have never experienced the weight of the world, I am all too familiar with the weight of the word. I took this realization as an opportunity to experiment. “Cunt”—the word comes out a peach color- - a peach that has gone rotten. It falls slowly to the ground. “Peace” – the word comes out blue with red tints on the perimeter. The blue is a calming effect that is accentuated by the urgency of red that surrounds the ideal. This word chaotically swims up to the sky as if it were sperm trying to impregnate a world that is in need of rebirth. “Fuck”— gaudy neon lights emanate from my mouth and ascend with the haste of children running for recess. Apparently ‘fuck’ isn’t a bad thing after all (who would have thought?). Finally, “Nigger”—the word falls from my mouth and crashes through the sidewalk that I had been standing upon with the velocity of Wyle E. Coyote’s heftiest Acme anvil. For the first time I can smell words and I begin to sense the unbearable fusion of sulfur, a veal farm and the putrid stench of Auschwitz several days after one of its showers. The word looks similar to the tears of Christ or the lost innocence of a child seeing his mother commit the second half of a murder suicide. It has its own sound, three hundred years of oppression and hatred released simultaneously in one condensed blood-curdling banshee shriek that has no comparable equivalent. Pure pain; pure hate; pure evil. A single word contains a greater power than any weapon the human race has ever constructed. There has never been a weapon of mass destruction that carries that absolute power to incite panic, destroy nations or create exponential causalities that equals the intense and extensive authority that words maintain. Nor will there ever be...ever.
Damn, I need to stop falling asleep while watching The Yellow Submarine.
I continue on my path and come across the infamous Preacher Jed. The Preacher is rattling off damnations to all of the Brothers and Sisters of life’s congregation. His words, supposedly those of God, begin to rise as expected, but then they hover as if on the plateau of purgatory. When Jed says “God” the word seems full of jags and is the scorching color of death. It glows with a fiery intensity that does not befit the word “God”… at least a God of peace. It becomes evident to me that Brother Jed’s God is the same one that would lead His children into the desert to wage a Holy war in His name. I realize religion in the wrong hands holds the same evil as death itself…
Hecklers surround Jed and they shout torrents of equally vile words in his direction. “Fag,” “fucker,” “right-wing nut-job,” some rise and some fall. Some are the color of charred dreams and hopes, while others appear the putrid color of stadium mustard coalesced with twice-eaten pea soup. These words have no intent other than hate and they rise up and detonate like the exploding missiles that FOX News refuses to show. Fearing for my safety I seek shelter from the storm of hatred. The onslaught brings to mind the old childhood rhyme: “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” How wrong we all were.
I flee in fear and see words all up and down Court St. “Welcome,” rises up in the comforting blue of a spring morning’s sky and rejoins its family. “Flowers for sale” seems to be written purely out of hope and it floats in a vibrant flurry of greens and yellows (for we all know that hope floats). Everywhere greetings and friends… Athens.
My ecstasy is derailed as I see a lone child in tears. He tells me that several of his classmates had called him “retarded” as he left school that afternoon. As he says “retarded” the word slowly emerges from his mouth in the form of a black cloud that spells out “R-E-T-A-R-D-E-D” like a sky-writer gone terribly wrong. The cloud does not rise to the sky, nor does it diminish. The words have made a permanent impact and stay with the world just as they stay with the child; infinitely.
Words have power, and although I may have never experienced the weight of the world, I am all too familiar with the weight of the word. I took this realization as an opportunity to experiment. “Cunt”—the word comes out a peach color- - a peach that has gone rotten. It falls slowly to the ground. “Peace” – the word comes out blue with red tints on the perimeter. The blue is a calming effect that is accentuated by the urgency of red that surrounds the ideal. This word chaotically swims up to the sky as if it were sperm trying to impregnate a world that is in need of rebirth. “Fuck”— gaudy neon lights emanate from my mouth and ascend with the haste of children running for recess. Apparently ‘fuck’ isn’t a bad thing after all (who would have thought?). Finally, “Nigger”—the word falls from my mouth and crashes through the sidewalk that I had been standing upon with the velocity of Wyle E. Coyote’s heftiest Acme anvil. For the first time I can smell words and I begin to sense the unbearable fusion of sulfur, a veal farm and the putrid stench of Auschwitz several days after one of its showers. The word looks similar to the tears of Christ or the lost innocence of a child seeing his mother commit the second half of a murder suicide. It has its own sound, three hundred years of oppression and hatred released simultaneously in one condensed blood-curdling banshee shriek that has no comparable equivalent. Pure pain; pure hate; pure evil. A single word contains a greater power than any weapon the human race has ever constructed. There has never been a weapon of mass destruction that carries that absolute power to incite panic, destroy nations or create exponential causalities that equals the intense and extensive authority that words maintain. Nor will there ever be...ever.
Damn, I need to stop falling asleep while watching The Yellow Submarine.
posted by Adam | 5:45 AM
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