A few nights ago, I had the most profound dream I have ever had in my life. Everything that held meaning in my being has dropped all logic; I slid down the snake, back to square one, and am once again faced with climbing my ladders. Writing helps, but only so much. Here is my dream, my fear and quite possibly the inevitable.
The longest dream I can remember. Starts at the public pool near my Calgary home. I was attending a birthday party for a little girl. Several years ago I knew this girl, today, she is not so little. The party is over, and I drive my car, affectionately named Daizy, down the lane, towards home. The traffic is stopped by a single policeman, no one is getting through. People are out of their cars, arguing to be let past. I drive up over the curb, as I continue through, my car transforms into a motorized cart. I get the feeling something is very wrong, the traffic cop is not letting out details. I become very concerned to find my sister, Eden. I am driving towards my house, and two boys are running through the streets and alleys. I get home, but the building is a department store. My cart becomes a bicycle as I pedal around asking the sales girls where my sister is. I finally see her in the staff lounge, they are watching TV or looking out the windows that make up an entire wall. I hug her and she feels my concern.
Comet fragments are blasting the back yard and through the glass as all the people inside cower. I pull Eden around the corner to take cover behind a brick wall as a blaze of fire fills the room and is gone just as quickly. Everyone is very afraid. Eden is wounded, and has an infection. She plays it off, but I know she is starting a fever. I sip fish tank water, and offer her some. She rejects it. As I spit the water out, I wonder why I just did that. We are listening to an old fashion radio, like from the 1950's, scrolling though several channels, finding news. It seems that Japan has been wiped out by one of the first comets, and the rest of the world is expecting their turn.
The next part has become a bit hazy, but the brick wall we took cover against has turned into a staircase. A boy I knew once is sitting on the second stair, looking morose. The store has become a woman's home, and she is very frazzled. She has a random scrap of paper, and is walking around accusing people. She confronts me and demands an answer, I look at the paper. It is a restaurant survey, or a golf card, or a list of coupons. Something trivial. I shrug her off and walk to the window over looking the road below. There is activity on the street. Men collecting rations, setting up road blocks, army trucks transporting emergency supplies and other men.
As I look through the slats in the blinds, the sky has become a foreign sight. The comets have destroyed our atmosphere, and I can see outer space. A few patches of blue remain where the oxygen is leaking into to the great black expanse. My Canon Elph 800, a thing I call Gustav, has a super zoom lens, and I am taking photos of the sky. I feel like I am recording history for the few people that may survive. An accepting sadness creeps over and engulfs my soul. I think of all the people I love and will never see again. My parents enter my mind, my younger brother Jordy, My best friend Ally, and the one my heart longs for on the other side of the globe. I wonder what they are doing in their last moments and if they are thinking of me, I hope it doesn't cause them to worry and waste their final breaths in frenzied gasps.
Up above, there are hundreds of thousands of comet tails filling the sky, some closer than others. I feel the world coming to an end, and I stand there taking photos on a digital camera. Once the battery dies, the electricity runs out, the photos cannot be seen. I think to myself, "I can't handle this anymore..." I wake up.
In the weeks and days following this dream, I contemplate the logic of our lives. I can't shake the feelings of loss, of sadness or the feeling that I have a chance to drastically change what I am doing right now. The networks we have built for ourselves, the grocery stores importing food from other countries, the gasoline at the fuel stations trucked in, the electricity traveling through the lines to each house. Once these inputs are interrupted, the goods run out, luxury shrivels and is forgotten. What would North America be like, if all our systems collapse? We have become so comfortable in our daily lives, how would we cope? With all our 'superior' technology, we cannot save ourselves from the nature of the universe. A few films have also explored this idea, the first coming to mind is The Day After Tomorrow. After I woke, I thought of the movie The Postman. Even though, in this story, the destruction of the world has come from war, there is a vivid sense of how people barely survive after the worst.
This dream makes me scrutinize my values. That gorgeous dress in the shop window is useless in this scenario, money is only as good as the paper it is printed on, perhaps would burn for a few minutes providing scant warmth. The greatest tool we have is knowledge, ideas and thought. Our wit would be all we had to survive once the comets stopped pelting our home. We focus so much on the material, and leave little concern for mental growth. And very few seem to understand that, very few people care. This irks me about the modernity, about North America.
The greatest lessons we learn will come from chaos and loss. I am afraid of that day, but perhaps acknowledge that the true strength of the human race will only be found when every 'thing' is lost.
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