Dreaming (E)scape or dreaming of Smoke

Dream (E)scape 1: Arriving the past

City/Dream(e)scape
50x50cm Julie O'Yang
oriental paper and Chinese ink on canvas

Visiting the Spring City had always given him a feeling of something imaginary. Something of lightness like white smoke from cinnabar coloured chimneys, where the past is being cremated.

            Today again, he found himself caught in the labyrinth of his own strayed brainwaves, unable to escape the city that didn’t exist and never will. Now in his thirties, he understood what’s called the past.

            The taxi came to a halt in front of his parents’ apartment block. The old people had been living here ever since the beginning of time. They were the cosmological constant, the beacon of light to guide him back home over and again.

            The past.

            A vibrating atomic unit of light, white rings of smoke. Zeros from a mysterious formula that has nothing and yet everything to do with the reality. 

             

            City and zeros – he loved them, and he hated them. He loved their familiarity and hate them for changing so rapidly, as if their fleeting beauty is what makes them last. Spring City is no longer his; the glad rags of smoke are never meant to belong to a place. But if everything can be explained with science – he knew that you should never trust colours and words by an artist, they are out there to confuse you! – then why? Why the zeros of the past hurt so much?

            Because they have to, said the soft hand, moving up and down his face caressing him. The hand that eased his pain and made fun of him. He knew it’s not his mother’s hand. And in the rhythmic, ironic strokes, he felt the train from long ago. The steely, haunting beats of wheels touched the tracks of his brainwaves. Shhhhhhh, it’s so quiet:

            IT’S A Riot –

            And she entered. The white, smoke ghost, Lady Lotus.

Contributor:  Julie O'Yang