A friend’s Short story. This story helped me with my thinking process of life and how I can contribute what I learned from it in some of my design projects.
I Can.
I couldn’t help but notice the perfection. It was all around, encased us in a dome of an imaginable beauty crossed with an artificial elegance in which we, the citizens, have come to accept. It was a flower in a loud sunlight, sprouting against a vast wasteland of debris and ruin. It was Lotus, the city of fate coloured in the opaque brightness of destiny. It was our Utopia, the streets blissfully clean, the weather warm with beautiful snow that danced gently to the Christmas Carols of the lamp post speakers. Citizens, not people, meandered around the city square as their innate senses told them to look around for what they were supposed to do, what their fate slips directed them to do for the day. In this instance, they were to attend the Winter solstice festival and pretty lights frosted the main stage where Red Slip performers played enthusiastically on their instruments. The sheep looked pleased. They had to, they were forced to. It was a scene that made me nauseous. What a paradise this was. It was disgusting.
In some unimaginable circumstance they called me one of the lucky ones. The black, the elite, the children, the few, call us what you like but it hardly is favourable. I’d have rather been chosen with a less strenuous card, perhaps a lovely powdered blue in which then, my responsibilities would flee so quickly. Ignorance is seldom appreciated and how I would love to taste again: its sugary sweet embrace. We were unbound by the magic and invisible force of fate that turns the city’s gears. We were Lotus’s children, hand-picked like demi-gods who turn the city’s clock and make sure our Utopia doesn’t freeze in time and that productivity is always under-going. To command it’s legions against the invading forces of non-believers. There were many, plotting to invade outside our City-dome, armed with barbarous axes and diabolical siege works. Then there were of course, the terrorists. They come in later.
I cared very little for the plight of those people. My problems were many and my solutions were few, and like the apples crisp from a tree where none of the artificial trees could ever replicate properly again, it was hard to constantly keep up: This facade of an existence. Such words are treason in most circles especially those without a slip, but those with this black slip embroidered with the Lotus mark were allowed virtually anything in this city and by that standard left us wanting none of it. Our circles were few, the classes I enjoyed were privately taught and that left us with no friends and the promise of Eminence left us in competition. Our parents were our teachers and our siblings were the books, studies, research articles and whatever practical knowledge they could fit into our heads.
The dark streets were not intimidating at all since there was no crime in this city. The only fear that came was to disobey, to follow another path and that was punished severely and so no one did it. No one could, it was essentially impossible because no one even knew how. So I asked myself in this pointless existence. Why? I‘ve walked this path a million times through the simulated slush of the chalked sidewalks lit by the busy districts of the night. The rich smells of the nearby taverns drifted towards the burlesque shows, the jazz cafes and film theatres of Lotus to maintain a false happiness. I’ve done this so many times. Why? I looked at my palm and creased lines when I flexed my palm, imagining I held Lotus between its creases and I slammed my hand into a fist. If only I could break these chains to make these days different. I wish I could make these days filled with some fulfillment of self. You need to be careful for what you wish for because as my feet trudged through the climbing snow I met her, underneath a grand marble clock tower in Central Park. At first she reminded me of someone, a valued friend that I parted with when I was eight, but her eyes were different instead of an emerald green they were mystic silver. Her name was Lisa. She was the Key.
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