A small dream
“Look what we’ve done!” I cry. My hands are filled with fashioned shapes and materials. Some glitter, others trap light with muted textures. Their intended purposes are forgotten. The larger systems of which they were once members are crumbled. A vast world of processes and productions and fabrications is only softly hinted by the specificity of their shapes and the intention of their composition.
“This here: this object redirected the flow of a material with minimal loss of velocity! The angle of change and ultra low friction ensured it!” I hold up a PVC elbow. It looked strangely white in the darkness of the jungle.
“And this!” I hold up a thick glass cup with ridged lines. “This was called an insulator, and the undulating shape was designed to maximize surface area and diffuse electricity from moving across it. These stood upon great shorn trees and mighty posts around the world, millions of them, and they allowed the passage of energy to homes and halls and great complexes of human ingenuity. Do you see it?”
The light is low now and flecks of orange clouds are visible through the dense canopy above me. The Golden Langur sits on the branch of a low tree. It is one of the last. Its gray eyes flash from my face to my hands and the gaze lingers on the objects. It meets my eyes then with an intensity and I feel naked. Its small nose and prominent chin make it look eerily human. Brilliant orange hair frames its narrow face.
“Why do you find me now, at the end?” it rasps. “It is over, and you come to me with refuse. It doesn’t matter. Nothing of what you made matters when the food is gone and the crickets are gone and the great beasts of the forest are gone and the forest itself is low and broken and thin. Your words do not matter. Your art does not matter. Where you have stepped and what you have seen does not matter. It is over. The great energy of this planet has moved on and it will be rocks in the sun once again.”
The objects in my hands are lit orange and I look to the sunset but it is now brilliantly orange. A great fire that converts iron to steel, organic carbons to plastic and ultimately all to ash. The great fire lights the sky and it cracks and consumes and plumes of black smoke pour out like a great volcano. And from the fire emerge an endless stream of objects of different sizes and shapes and materials. The infinite puzzle pieces of our human world. But they are just objects now and they fall into great piles outside the kiln.
“The great fire may convert and refine and shape and it has formed those mysterious things in your hands. But brother, it has burned the world to ash. You Great Magician,” it sneered, “have burned the world to nothing.”
