Mood: Ferociously hopeful, buzzing like a perfectly tuned bass string.
Translations of The Dream of Tomorrow
Begin post.
Come. Sit. Take a walk with me as I imagine the world I wish to live in.
The rhythmic, oscillating thrum of rotors shears through the humid air. The scent of hot yeast and melted cheese arrives from the sky.
I position myself on the porch. I listen to the delivery drone land. The payment is a quiet, decentralized transaction pinging in my ear. It is a currency mined by the hum of wind turbines, stripped of the heavy, scraping gears of corporate banks. And the air is thick, and the cheese is hot, and the laughter of my neighbors vibrates through the floorboards, and the sheer weight of this peace settles and soothes my bones. They are navigating the gravel path right now. I hear the heavy tread of their boots alongside the high, rapid footsteps of their newly adopted son. He survived a shattered coastline. There are no more war refugees in this world.
We trade pizza for the dense, sticky weight of a glass jar. Their friend canned this grape jelly this morning. She works at the community clinic; she gives away her labor because her own needs are already met by the neighborhood. There is no state bureaucracy crushing her spine. She heals people because a healthy community is a structurally sound community.
We do not lose ourselves in digital environments governed by algorithms designed to farm our outrage. My screen reader chimes with the crisp, direct frequency of an RSS feed that broadcasts citizen journalism, hobbyist bloggers writing about their lives, and joys, and drama, Fantastical fiction that makes me smile, and journalism that's publicly funded. The web connects us. It is a network built by human hands: no billionaires harvesting our data, no manipulative feeds demanding our constant anxiety. (My chest tightens, a sudden influx of fierce hope.) We own our digital soil. We cultivate our own connections. The RSS protocol is a load-bearing pillar in our society, transferring truth without the corrosive friction of a corporate server.
Poverty is a ghost story we tell our children. Work is voluntary. We trade our skills, and disabled bodies are no longer weighed on the scales of profit. I offer my words to keep the community informed of something to celebrate, as well as pen an obituary for a man that passed away last Monday; the mechanic fixes my roof.
The automatic rifle mounted on my friends living room wall exists with the gritty, dormant texture of a fire extinguisher. It waits for absolute emergencies. There are no cops. We handle justice in the resonant quiet of a citizen circle. Violence is met with restitution or exile.
As my neighbors settle beside me, their shoulders pressing against mine, we talk about the history we left behind. We dismantle the past. Right now, marginalized people wrap themselves in the heavy armor of their specific cultures to survive the crushing gravity of white supremacy. But armor is exhausting to wear. In this world we are building, bigotry starves to death. And without the oppressor, the armor must melt. We throw the segregated scraps of our defensive cultures into a communal furnace, forging a new, indivisible alloy of human connection. The social construct of race seeps away like salt dissolving in warm broth.
Artists create without the intangible chains of digital restrictions. We innovate because our stomachs are full. We pray for machines to automate our industries so we can finally learn how to rest.
Fear dies. The borders collapse. The atmosphere settles. A hand finds mine. In its grasp, I forever feel at peace.
People tell me this utopia is impossible. They tell me it sounds foolish. Perhaps. But how can we move forward if our dreams do not terrify the present?
If you enjoyed this dream, you might enjoy Daydream by Hannah Grace