Dreams are dangerous—they cause instability and pain.
A landscape is not a painting. It cannot be hung on a wall or contained in a shot.
The sunset on the horizon George sees in the beginning remains still. It sits in the office. The eye sees it at first as the illusion of a whole, but its motionlessness reveals the frame containing its false entirety. Its only possible vitality found in the disorder of dreams that imbues it with the life it feigns and sometimes fools. But the constriction persists and the doctor’s robe allows only physical freedom.
This mockery of expanse, of truth, of emotion defines the training video. Touching the backs of people who don’t turn around, who don’t have faces. Cheap camera tricks posing as magic. Hollow compliments to head-down employees. Identification and care for the subject as a model, not an identity.
Eternal smiles on the tube, because we can never be happy enough. A telethon assures the viewer that he is taking a stand, dissenting, joining the fight. At a price. To be used at the collector’s will. Was your show good? So was mine.
Return to the grind. Told to be a visioneer who suffers not from dreams. Listen to the president: The Jeffers way is the way. A tunt. Listen to the test: A tunt is social, introspective, desiring a team environment to thrive in. True: It can be hard accepting your place.
But fret not, a happy face helps with the paperwork. That is until it, she, is replaced by more efficient means. Remember the fathers’ words: Give me productivity or give me death.
It’s OK. The wife cares: How was the thing? Plus, the weekend is coming up. Relax….The usual.
Some people say they have the cure. Or at least the medicine. They inquire about the wandering mind: Do you hear voices, voices telling you to stray from the path society has laid before us? Well that could be Satan. Telling you, wanting you to explode, brother.
But another brother appears. He’s come home. With a story. One day I was in my office and I fell asleep and I saw myself walking. I was asleep and I saw myself walking down a road and people were laughing at me, and when I looked down I saw that my penis was missing and in its place was the Jeffers logo. And no matter how hard I tried to get rid of it, no matter how hard I scrubbed or washed, it wouldn’t leave. It was then that I knew I had to escape. Before I blew up like all these other fools.
He says this, but he’s not very good at clearing the bar. In fact, he runs right into it.
Another tries to help. He says a man who doesn’t desire sex is a man who doesn’t believe in the world he’s living in, doesn’t believe in the future. Then he explodes shortly after.
Perhaps the Cuddle Crew will help. It’s soft and says soft things. But the Cuddle Crew doesn’t save the co-worker. He explodes.
Maybe this hat will help. It proclaims that outer space is empty of all thoughts and desires, just as life is empty and meaningless and can only be enjoyed when we realize this essential connection with the universe. But the hat doesn’t save the co-worker. He gets the inhibitor. He seems happy.
The talk show host is told happiness is being happy. She puts a gun in her mouth and pulls the trigger. They try to put the boom mic closer, but she’s still dead.
The collective on George’s property think they’re free in hedonism. His brother disagrees: They’re doing the same thing as everyone else, just using a different name. Entertaining themselves, missing it. Lying.
George tries to open up and get an answer. A brotherly kiss on the head and departure his only comfort.
The wife insults George, slaps him, breaks things, drinks beer. She thinks those people who explode are better than her and George, because they still feel something. They still dream something that hasn’t been ripped out of them by haircuts, and lattes and what kind of milk, and an ass that won’t stop growing, and a husband that can’t get his dick up. She says she’s been dead long enough. Then walks away.
George gets recognized for his restraint. His potential to aid the Jeffers fight. A fight to save our way of life.
They want a human evolved beyond emotion. A Cog. No dreams. No explosions.
The only way to do this, to be rid of pain, anger, dreams: Kill the thing you love.
When there is just thing this seems likely. Until the love.
Entire blue sky. Fluctuating, radiating. Not able to be contained. An expanse of possibilities to be imagined. To be dreamed. Open to affect. Gazing upward.
A vision: a landscape.
