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I'm walking in the rubble of a nuclear apocalypse through a demolished city,
unworried about radiation.
I notice many
white horses, beautiful, unblemished, trotting
and whinnying, headed out from the center
of the city, from the epicenter, out through the smoke and partially
standing walls. At first you can only hear
them, the haze is thick. Then, they appear,
strong and free, trotting to the outlying
pastures to graze on green technicolor grass.
I turn to my guide
and ask why these horses
weren't harmed by the blast. It seems strange, since nothing else survived that
these horses should be so resilient.
"Oh, no," my guide says.
"It's not a question of surviving the bomb. These horses were actually
generated by it. It was a nuclear-genetic bomb. Something we affable fellows at the Dee Oh Dee
have been working on for some time now. Top secret."
"You don't say!" I blubber "It generated horses? Zowie!"
And, upon reflection: "Can you generate hippopotamuses?"
"Hippopotam-i. Yes. In theory. But we really need much more funding to prove it."
And I am deeply moved. "Wow! destroy 1000 years of bad architecture,
kill your enemies, and generate
horses & hippos, all in one blow! fantastic! I must lobby on your behalf for
more funding."
Where does it come from, this misanthropy, this ability to dismiss catastrophe
and be delighted by a twisted cost effectiveness,
to trivialize an entire city and
it's destruction while considering a few white horses that the
process generates to be worthwhile.
The subconscious dream world
illuminates the true self and its petty desires. Take
away the people and their urban blight, and give me whimsical white
horses
in a spooky, barren landscape
any day!
Sad. Shameful.
But look! You, too, are drawn by the imagery. You, too, fantasize
about being one of the few "left behind". You, too, have moments when you just want the rest of us to GO AWAY.
Don't be so hard on yourself. It's just a dream with a totally fictitious scenario
that your subconscious understands, and it knows
it's safe in your head and you can marvel at the horse rather
than mourn the destruction. The imagination
is a safe place.
The real world, however, is another story. And when you consider this scenario in
this world, this is what it looks like:
Link to The Horse
for Ichiro Kawamoto,
humanitarian, electrician, & survivor of Hiroshima
by Philip Levine
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