This post is being made available free of a paywall - from less than a year ago.
As it applies to what I am writing today I share it once again.
It will be linked to my post for today on civilizational collapse.
Hopefully we will keep these dreams alive and repurpose them into a civilization which will rise from the ashes of this one.
I had a Dream - a dream of future present - the dream seemed prophetic - so I share it.
This dream had an element of reality about it that I simply could not ignore - so I lived with it for a few months to let it settle in my subconscious mind.
This is the filtered result I share now with all of you.
I was walking around Los Angeles of all places - some upscale cafes in the summer.
People were behaving differently- and dressed strangely - not jeans and tattoos and tank tops and leggings and workout wear - no heavy clanking jewels - just occasional delicate sparkles.
The clothing was light and loose fitting but what was really striking were the fabric designs and color schemes.
The look was relaxed, very body conscious and diaphanous - as if the body needed to be surrounded by softness and by delicate earth centric colors.
The patterns were truly foreign to my experience and appeared to have come from the art world of diaphanous watercolors.
The fabric and the designs swirled and shifted with the movement and breathing and passing breezes - and almost shimmered with the conversation.
This was it not the LA I knew and it seemed passing strange to be in the downtown hotels and cafes with such ease and shared grace and peaceful spirit.
No one seemed at odds and there were no defensive vibes - just ease of being glowingly spectacularly human on a a hot and steamy midsummer’s day.
There was an ease and relaxed assurance and an unexpected glow of compassion and warmth and good cheer.
The clothes reminded me of the way the curtains caught the breeze in the opening scene of The Great Gatsby but the otherworldly separation of the rich - the sad toxic world of Nick Carraway - Tom and Daisy Buchanan - and Jay Gatsby - was absent.
It was as if The Great Gatsby had been rewritten without the anger - the grift and corruption and lies - without the lurking symbols of the * Valley of Ashes* - the bleak gas station - and the staring peering - decidedly creepy - eyes of
There was something missing - something that I did not for the world - miss.
There was a feeling of ease - and freedom of thought and expression and movement which was new to me - and which surprised me at first.
But like stepping into a world of fresh air and of welcome new opportunities.
And then it hit me what was gone - the old society of defensiveness - of having to prove oneself in some inauthentic form - to become some influencer - some made up combination of influence peddling - personified by social media forums such as used to exist.
The old - now thoroughly defunct worlds of Linked In and Twitter or “X” - and of Facebook and Instagram - and other now antique and defunct “also rans”.
This world had disappeared seemingly in some of puff of smoke - seemingly without a trace along with the wreckage of the great cities they had laid to waste.
The wasteland cities - like Los Angeles and San Francisco - were already being reimagined and built out of the waste and debris of the old.
The architecture was different - open to the natural world and with large amounts of glass - and other diaphanous materials - allowing the light to pour in.
There was an effort to make the night sky a feature instead of something to be shut out.
And to welcome both night and day - summer and winter - storm and sunshine - fearlessly - into the protected but still riotous atmosphere of the indoors.
Stone and wood and water and reflective materials were used with artistic expression to capture and reflect the wonders of both night and day - and of the seasons.
Architecture which respected natural cycles of healing and cooling and air flow gradually replaced the old dusty and toxic filled artificial heating and cooling systems.
The old style housing was slowly being replaced with small and elegant natural designs which integrated the outdoor and indoor spaces.
The old city of darkness and corruption and greed and artlessness - had almost disappeared as if it had never been.
And the light filled diaphanous grace - once isolated among the desperate super rich - now belonged to everyone.
The need for the posturing of a Tom and Daisy - or Gatsby - for the influence peddling world of elaborate fakery - was gone.
As the world which resulted from the 1930’s with that green light at the end of the dock representing the horrors of the 20th century and the unimaginable horrors of the early 21st century - the new world was transformed from the small trembling heart of a Goldfinch.
A willingness to be fragile - and to find strength in the sense of purpose and in the trembling mutability present in the transitory and ephemeral brilliance of a human life.
We had to become lost in order to be found - to be defeated in order to be saved.
Destroyed - in order to be recreated.
The joy and the exuberance of being human lies in the character and process of the transformative and is found in the miraculous experience of metamorphosis.
Nothing ever dies - but is born - nothing ever born - that does not die.
Life and the universe are not static things but transformative processes of vibration and energy exchanges in a dance of constant change.
In the same way that we are partially made of minerals forged in the interior of stars - we are also solid and of the Earth - but also diaphanous - and fluid - and laced with internal rivers and seas - and washed by great tides of atmosphere.
Humans - children of the stars - of the rivers and tides - and of the winds which wrap the planet.
Creatures of poetry and dance and spirit - and of the perpetual transformative metamorphosis we indeed are.
