A Place…

A teacher holding class in a room that could have passed for an inner-city high school classroom, save the gray walls and no windows appearance.  He eyes his ragtag group of troubled lives.  He takes a deep breath.

“Today, we’re going to explore a ‘somewhere’ a few of you may have visited at one time or another, while most of you will find this place unfamiliar.    

It’s a place we’d all like to be.   Call it utopian.  Call it ethereal.  Call it…”

He lifts his chin.  “Anyone?

How about, Imagination?”
 

Several in the class laugh, others shake their heads.

Why must so many fear taking a chance… reaching out… venturing out of the box?  Most slide right into the comfort of their reality, that preordained ‘right place to be, as a societal mass would have you.  Some would deem it suffocation by mainstream ideological control.

So, c’mon…

Tell me about the real. Is that what dogma pounded into our heads is supposed to represent?

What if the “real” is void of imagination?  Oh, so many cringe in their boots, feel as though a wedgie is strangling their potency their manhood.  Just to think about something that might be pure, unadulterated imagination is too far ‘out there,’ the quintessential buy-in, some kind of copout?

Copout?

Consider where we would be as a species without the full thrust of imagination, more often than not,
making far more sense than reality?”

The teacher sits on the corner of his desk and waits.

“Well… such is the plight of the artist.  He or she has to live in a world of imposed factuality as others see life, knowing there’s more for the mind and heart to massage, reform, consider as a step forward in discovery, a rung on the ladder to greater self-realization for both artist and the patron.  After all… If you truly want reality, the kind that truly means something, you must accept there’s nothing real about ignoring one’s own inner truth, that undeniable fact of self that if disciplined, has no time for the frivolous pandering to what others say is the true ‘reality.’ Quite a ride this…”

He stands up now and walks to the whiteboard and picks up a marker.  “Rising above the fray, considering the ethos of self, the rewards of accepting faults along with the excellence of being who one is.

Laughter in the group now.

“Yes, some might attest such an attitude too highbrow, too elitist. For many of us, however, such a position is just the beginning, the move into the landscape of sentience, void of hesitation, a naked stance before creation, finding there’s nothing to hide, nothing to make excuses for, nothing to convince and lure one back to…

Anyone?

Well, that place is called ‘mere existence’.  A place where stones of all sizes call home.  Many disguised as humans.

So…”. He picks up a handful of markers of various colors.  “Who would like to express reality vs imagination on the whiteboard?   Anyone?

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Harvey Klitchard sat back in his chair and took another sip of his martini.  He smiled and looked at his audience of two ladies and said, “You’re dying to know the outcome, aren’t you.  Such a story has to have an ending, but… it turned out to be a beginning.  Those thieves, murderers, rapists, and other reprobates of cell block 43 had sunk so deep into their hopeless identity that I knew what I was throwing out there was a crap shoot, but… it worked as a starter.  When I showed up the next day, the whiteboard had become a mishmash of colors trying to find their way into what looked like a Jackson Pollock nightmare. Two days later, some started leaving sketches on my desk, poems, one even left me a sheet of music he’d composed on his guitar.   One… oh, my…  a guy you would have never thought could have such talent.  He left me a rock he’d inked into a mouse.  His note said: “I know this looks a little childish, but I found myself back in that child I used to be and couldn’t help but remember the only friend I had at the time.  Jerald, I call him.  He’d peer out from his corner of the floor.  I’d watch from my cot.  We got to know each other… really know each other.  Getting naked has a lot a meaning, doesn’t it? Like a lone stone, a mouse, yeah. A safe place to be naked.”