No Words

Dream: Town of Abstract Reality

I dreamed that I read a blog left by Heather Chen, explaining how she was tired of her mundane, boring life and that she was going to move away from it all. It was an extremely long blog/letter, most of which I cannot remember, given the nature of dreams ( I express surprise I was able to read words at all within a dream ) but a single phrase within the dream stood out to me: "And please, don't follow me. Don't use an event you care nothing for as an excuse to get a hotel room for 2 days just so you can invite me over. If you have nothing to say, then goodbye."

And then she moved to a town by the ocean where the ocean moved into the town. Half the town was over water, and the water moved through canals and under tunnels, clean and pure and full of life. The rest of the town sat on a sloping hill, moving down to the water. The architecture was as artistic and unusual as possible, designed primarily for curiosity and unusual sensations, with long staircases going out over the street, restaurants four floors up for no reason, the roads paved of beige cobble, the smell in the air of a clean, unpolluted town.

Well of course I followed her, leaving all behind. She was making her way through life hard but fair, being paid to sit in shops and locales. Her beauty and slight sadness, a wistfulness, and her tendecy to do poetic things, added a tremendous value of artsy aesthetic to where she went, and she was apparently paid just to visit and stay for a while in restaurants and nice locales. There was a restaurant she visited every day, just across the border in the half of town atop the ocean. It sat atop dozens of staircases you walked up, pillars and transportation. She would sit by the window, look out to the ocean, and gaze wistfully.

I took up a spot as a beggar across the street, on the other "half" of the town, panhandling. Struck by inspiration, I declared myself a "fixer of rhymes" and suddenly found myself busy all day with customers desiring proper rhymes. I made so much money that day that I had enough to buy myself a proper shack with a little bed to protect myself from the rain, for it always rained at dusk, at dawn, and in the three hours of midnight. Sometimes it just rained because it had to rain, and because someone needed it to rain.

Within a week I had made enough money to buy the corner property upon which I panhandled, and declared myself a wordsmithy. I had a small shop, like you'd find an old town, with two floors, the second a balcony to the first. I had machines, purchased or commissioned, like scanners, but with a more artistic feel. You could slide the paper in, handcrank it, and a copy would be made within the machine that could be editted. I had a machine that worked only as long as someone was either looking at it without movement (motion detectors), or talking into it about how much they loved whatever it is they were writing about, run on "will or love". I was a rhyme fixer, an editor, a wordsmither. For months I ran my business.

I was respected, loved, an elite. The rich had me in their company just for my favor, the powerful privately asked for my advice.

One day I was working in the store and suddenly she walked in. I didn't notice til she was almost in front of me. She noticed me, recognized me, and I recognized her. We stood apart from each other, gazing at each other. I tried to speak, but could not think of a thing to say. I didn't know what to say. All at once dust began to bunch up in the corners of the shop. The machines slowed, stopped. The air grew cold, the lights dimmed. The customers shuddered and stood in awe, the level headed ones pulling those encaptured to leave, understanding the shop was now closed. I stood there like a statue and she sadly turned away, and left.

The shop was closed, forever. The wordsmith had had no words. It would just remain there, another artsy part of the town, an empty wordshop, where a silent man with nothing to say lived.