Tuesday, July 21, 2009

But not a dream

The drone of the bus engine under me, the low ceiling of shredded white cloud , the dour expressions in the faces of the people around. Yes. this is London.

She had smiled and aid we'd meet again, but I knew better. I would wake up and find myself in rhis world of white sky and grim faces. It's only for a while, she said. Isn't everything, I said. I could already see the corner of light getting through the curtain that I've never managed to fit properly, the world of real getting through and poisoning my dream with news of war, suffering, our brief and impossible stance in this vast and unknowable world.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

silvery and shiny against the blue sky

I looked up to where they were pointing : there was this massive structure in the sky, over Mariperez or Barrio Ajuro. I couldn’t tell what its means of staying afloat and propulsion were, there were all sorts of shiny metallic bits protruding from the structure of the ship. “They’re just the rich having a bit of fun. It could go very wrong for them if they landed there in Barrio Ajuro. Or if their machine failed”. At that point the ship started to glide in our direction, shiny and gleaming in the sun. “The bloody rich”, said my companion, “has the world got better for them, what about the rest”. I shrugged my shoulders and went in.

The concert was about to begin, it was a bit embarrassing as I had to walk across the front of the stage to get to my seat. Were they starting or was this a sort of dry run or sound check? Some string players were playing but I couldn’t hear their instruments; on a podium a little child of about two or three was reciting something in a language I didn’t understand. Can’t be reading, surely; too young. How can a little one like that memorise such a long speech, or poem, or whatever it is? A bald man with glasses and a middle aged woman were busy with the other children who were waiting for their turn to go up and say their speech of poem, one little girl was filling a page with yellow blobs.

That’s when I heard the noise and turned around. Outside, something was coming out of the ground nearby with a roar: a missile of some sort, again silver and shining reflecting the sun, breaking out in what seemed from there to be the middle of the neighbourhood, making the earth shake... I wasn’t sure whether it was that that was making the earth shake, the whole building was rattling, one of the arches was collapsing and there was glass and masonry flying everywhere. I threw myself to the floor by a large column that seemed to be withstanding. The sound I was hearing was no longer the rocket launching so near, it clearly was explosions. I tried to make myself very small, to make myself wake up. Out of the corner of my eye, in the blue, blue sky I could see more missiles coming out of the ground into the air..