Another Utopian Vision

Hovering near the eve of a small, white, clean house…I see a street, and a quiet neighborhood. Green and white dominate the canvas, green more so than white, and like a photograph everything is fixed. There is motion, but it’s cyclical and unadventuring. Time runs slowly, almost impassibly, as if it did not exist at all, and everything glows with an angelic foggy aura. A woman stands in the yard with a scarf in her hair and a calm nurturing smile, and bends down in what seems like slow motion, gathering clothing up in her arms from a hamper sitting in the grass. Across the street it’s a bit of a darker shade of green, and a man in a billed hat stands slightly out of focus, clutching a hose and facing away. The angle of the scene swoops down from the eve of the house, and comes to rest in the lush grass of the small median between the neighboring houses. Bordering the white siding, taller grass grows in a thick row, and bends down to tease the vaguely kept lawn grass that runs through it like a pathway. High above, a metal T shaped pole extends thin white lines of wire farther down the median, and various unrecognized clothing sways in the wind. Higher above that, in what seems like several miles away, the dark and thoroughly out of focus leaves of the trees block out the sky. All smells of grass and linen, and all of the greenery moves with a perpetual fluidity. The visuals alone do not create the image, however. There are sensations present, many of them, laying sleepily on top of one another in a harmonious chord of eccentric pleasure. The first, and most important sensation, is that of nearly total amnesia– no memory, or knowledge, or awareness of anything beyond the immediate reach of the senses. The second sensation is a blanketed sense of peace and contentment, and a basic intrinsic knowledge of what things were. Grass. House. Clothes line. And so forth. The third sensation is a physical one, of pillowy cool grass against naked skin, coupled with an erratic and apathetic breeze that holds no particular bearing on the pleasure of the situation. And lastly there are sounds…small, thin, and sporadic. A lone bird call, a moment of windy silence, and then the sound of a little girl laughing somewhere far off and out of sight…