“Let’s take a walk,” she suggests. “How about the little park?” I say. I mean the flower-filled park behind the international housing building where she lives. I have wanted to go to the park ever since I walked into the building behind her earlier this afternoon.
She is locked out of her dorm room so we sit in the lounge on the first floor. There is a French window where I can see the whole view of the little garden. A laminated sign tells me that I’m not allowed to open the window. I am too lazy to ask for a reason. She sits opposite me, turns around her head to the window. “Look at that! Everyone is enjoying the Spring!” I set my eyes on the garden where she is looking. The sunshine reflects on my face through the casement. I see entangled layers outside of the glass. Two grown men are filming each other. They look so small from where we sit. Here I am, spending time with an old friend on a Sunday afternoon to talk about life. What more could I ask for? Oh, Taxes, of course! One of those human things that you can’t avoid in a democratic society. “Let’s get out of here,” she says. “Please,” I respond. I follow her up the empty stairwells to the park that leads us to another realm. I am lost again. She tells me the building was built a hundred years ago for people from all around the world. Real international housing, I thought, what a beautiful little society! Then we step into some kind of oasis amid the screeching Manhattan streets, a utopia where that is a distant memory. “What does your dream life look like?” She asks, making a little spin to take it all in. “Maybe this is it,” I say. We decide to walk to the river. I haven't been to the West side of the river for a couple of years and I wonder if it still looks the same to my eyes. We talk about existence and the concept of morality as we walk to the river. How lucky I am to have another awakened soul in this collective dream that I am living right now. How lucky I am to have this very soul to remind me what reality truly is. Sometimes, even the most awakened being would be lost in this common dream that humans share, not to mention me, just another person who tries so hard to stay awake. “Light isn’t an eternity, somehow the ending of darkness still is darkness.” She says it with a casual tone. She tells me that somehow everyone finds a way to protect themselves to travel through this endless darkness. It’s the label that we put on ourselves which both protects us and also imprisons us. She tells me that the whole world sees her as a girl who doesn’t talk very much, sometimes even believes in this stereotype herself. But who she truly is still remains in darkness. I tell her that I decide to use the label of the artist to protect myself from this collective consciousness. In order to truly be a child and dedicate my whole life to finding the truth and living in art, I have to use the name of the artist to protect myself in this human world. Darkness isn’t scary to my eyes, it is the truth of the universe. What truly scares me is that I lose the ability to dream my own dream and lose the ability to live inside of my dream. To dream requires one to believe there’s something more than the formation of society. People who live inside of the city are too busy to dream. They are busy finding a partner, a job, and preparing dinner for a family. They are busy loving, hating and being angry. They are busy dwelling on their feelings. Feelings become reality and if you tell them that there’s another realm of reality, they will call you a madman. Every morning I wake up from my dream and open my eyes to a new dream. Every morning, I hope I can live in my dream without any regret, because I know once today is gone, the story of today will only remain in memory. This is going to be one of the other long gone memories that I have had inside of my brain. Next moment, we are by the river. I sense the presence of the Spring by its wind, and I sense the presence of wind by water waves from the Hudson River. We are just standing there, experiencing the power of life. Today is a beautiful dream. I’m going to continue to live my dream. The whole dream is just another lucid reality, and I have to trust.
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