It is not an unusual occurrence for me to dream. In fact, it happens rather frequently. Here is one that I woke from, one from barely ten minutes ago.
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We had lived in the ship forever. The ship was our homes, our life, our beautiful abode. We loved the ship, and had filled the ship with our lives, transforming it from a cold steel hull, into our den.
We lived there as family, all of us, in the ship that floated in the redwood clearing. It wasn't just my family, for there were others that lived there, too. There was the cold man, with the tip of his nose missing. There were the two girls about my age, that danced as if they had fairy-made blessings.
And then there were our friends who visited us in the ship, who would come down from the hills, and from the towns, and from their cramped homes, and who would fill our ship with love, and sound, and the smell of food, and laughter.
Those were the days. Those were the days of light, and love, and laughter.
But we were not supposed to be in the ship, according to those that made the laws. We were not supposed to have found the floating vessel, whose glimmering hull we had dulled with handfuls of sand. We were not supposed to have entered the stand of redwoods, whose branches must have held the very Sun and Moon in loving embraces. We were not supposed to have danced in those shining, burbling little rivulets, nor sang with the birds that came to nest in the cannons-made-houses. We were not supposed to have found paradise.
But then came the warning, the unintentional warning. Somehow, we got the word that the men were coming, coming to take us away from paradise. They were coming, and they were coming with guns, and fire, and pain in their cold, cold hearts. And we had six hours before they arrived.
And we looked around the ship, looked at all of our treasures there, and knew there was no way to take them all with us. We had filled the ship with the things we loved, with beauty, and with memory. We could not take it all.
We called our friends, and told them what was going on. Down, down, and down they came, from their cramped lives on the hills, from their houses where the glow of the commercial lights rendered darkness an impossibility, and an inescapable reality. Our friends filled our ship, and we stood together, even as we tried to gather what few things we knew we could carry.
When we heard the footsteps on the deck, we knew it was time. All of us, friends and ourselves, gathered in our central hall, where the warmth of winter fires had left soot on the fireplace walls. All of us waited for a moment we knew would come.
And it did. With a jackbooted foot propelling it inward, the door was shattered, the wood and steel screaming in agony as it hit the floor in countless shards. The men were there, men with guns, and with fire, and with hate, and with hearts of steel. Their faces were in shadow, but we knew they were watching us, expecting us to panic.
And so, we sang. Families and friends alike, we sang! And oh! How we sang! It rang to the rafters, rang to the trees, rang into the very heart of the heavens! As we sang, we were all crying, for we knew that we would be taken, but we sang anyway. Even as they took people away from the group, and beat them against the walls until blood flowed upon the floor, we continued singing. We sang until our song was done. They hurt until all of our friends were brutalized. And then they took us away.
They forced us to stand upon the ground as they set the ship's love on fire. The men filled our home with torches, and gasoline, and burned our love. We had nothing with us, not even what we had gathered. The men had used those gathered things to kindle the fire.
The men had us back away from the ship now, even as we cried, and prayed, and spat curses through the tears. They took out their guns, and they shot the ship to the ground. Then they kept shooting, desecrating the body until all that was left was a smoking, tortured ruin that howled as only a tortured love can, until one last man walked over, and shot the remains, one last time.
They packed us into a car, and they drove away from the field of their killing, taking us away, even as we beat upon the windows with bloodied fists, turning the glass crimson. And that was when we heard the saws, the buzzing and the whining. And then the crashing. All of us turned to look, and all of us felt our heard break again, and all of us screamed in agony.
For they were cutting down the redwoods. They were cutting down those mighty, beautiful trees that had stood for a millennium, and that would have stood until the end of the world, connecting earth and sky. "How can they do this?" asked one of the family, and his voice was made husky with the tears, and his pain. "Because they have guns, which gives them the right to kill." came my reply, spat through blood, and tears, and undying agony. And then, they drove us away forever.
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If anyone would like to know the song, it's Afternoon On A Hill, written by Eric Barnum. Here's a version of the song done by University of Washington singers, and it's beautiful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lradRFbJsQo
