Here is a Story I wrote for the upcoming Mobile Village of Resilience

There was a place where people mostly dreamed in nightmares. Every day the people woke up to a world that was looking more and more like those nightmares. They would step near the street and witness all these fast machines that rarely slowed down. When they did, one could see that there were people inside of them. Those people looked trapped, but the machines never slowed down long enough to reveal what the people inside were really feeling. It was hard to tell what anyone was really feeling. It was hard to be awake in this place, so a lot of folks tried to sleep as much as possible without dreaming. Others just wanted to stop breathing altogether, for the air itself felt so foul, especially near the fast machines, which were everywhere. Looking up to the sky, some wondered if the air was better up there, but their view was often blocked by smokestacks and the pretty white plumes of puffiness that they produced. The puff was hypnotic, but if you stared long enough, something in your lungs began to understand why the air felt felt so sinister. Suddenly, the plumes stopped looking so pretty. Some folks wondered if it might help in some way to talk to others about how they were feeling, but the 4 wheeled machines were so loud, and they tended to create separation rather than closeness. It was easier just to seek answers from books. People would look up words in the dictionary. Despair. Nightmare. It wasn’t really necessary to read the definitions. Other words has a nice feel to them. Vision. Imagination. But it was hard to tell exactly what they meant. One guy said that those words meant that not all dreams had to be nightmares, but no one really believed him. Nevertheless, a few people closed their eyes, just in case. It was impossible to tell whether they were asleep or awake, but inside of them, there were images of something different. Some folks saw all these plants where there should have been just one plant, grass. People were tending the plants and removing pieces of them and sticking them in their mouths, chewing and swallowing. It was taking some effort to digest these images that felt both strange and exciting. In some dreams, there were men of many different colors walking down the street, and they wearing colors other than just grey. Ruby reds. Topaz. Even Lavendar. Other dreamers saw lots of women exercising. Exercising their bodies. Exercising power. Exercising leadership. They kept dreaming, and some things started to happen in all the dreams. The air felt better, like something you would want to breath. The dreamers noticed that the roads were filled with a different type of machine, something that had just two wheels. It moved slower than the fast machines, but it was easier to tell how the riders were feeling. They had some kind of expression on their face that one of the dreamers remembered reading about in the dictionary. “They’re smiling,” she exclaimed. Everyone snapped their eyes open. The dream was gone, and their faces felt funny. Looking around and touching their cheeks, they all realized that they were smiling too. People started talking more about their dreams, their yearnings, their desires. They wanted to see if others in the community shared their visions. It felt good to speak and it felt good to listen to what was going on in the brains of others. Some people made plans. They decided to ride on their 2 wheeled machines to the city that made all the fast 4-wheeled machines. They heard that there would be other people there who also believed that dreams could be more than nightmares. The journey was big and breathtaking. They met lots of smiling, hardworking people in the city that was in many ways still a nightmare, but also different, because there were sweeter dreams growing up within the bitter, decaying shell. Now the cycling dreamers had a new desire, to take action that would craft a better world. But what sort of action would be right? What would bring another world into being? They sought answers from those who looked smart, possibly even wise. The answer they got was to appreciate the new world they had already brought into being, simply by riding to the big city in one determined mobile village of solidarity. The task now was to simply keep it going and keep it growing.

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