I Am What Lives in Your Imagination

Said the world while watching us sipping tea

Magical hour — imaigne created by @Author using Glif

The magical hour was there again: heat and restlessness, and pouring ideas as usual. It was incredibly hot, and because of the smoke from Spain, Daniele kept the windows closed, only the air filter and the fan working, not that quietly to dissipate her discomfort. She nodded to Ady, stood up from her bed, and, together, started for the kitchen.

Then she stopped. A thin line of honey-looking light was pouring from behind the door. “This is awesome,” she thought, preparing for a surprise. It was very rare when a hospede would arrive before her. That meant someone important, someone she dreamed of meeting many times.

She grinned at Ady and opened the door:

Ishmael, all half a ton of him, looking confused at his white fur, was finishing eating one of the bananas from the bowl on the table. They stared at each other expectantly, Daniele barely breathing, as if she were afraid he would disappear with a stronger exhalation.

— Why white? — said Ishmael, gesturing both to himself and to the poster on the wall.

With Giraffe Gone, Will There Be Hope For Man? — image created by @Author using Glif

— That’s a very good question with a very long answer. My brain is still sleepy, so let me make a tea first. Do you want one?

— Sure. Can I have this? — answered Ishmael, pointing at the beautifully ornate box labelled “Dragon Pearls.”

— That is green tea; it has teine, but I suppose I will not sleep anymore, so yes, Dragon Pearls for both of us.

She placed Murmur on the table. The little ocarina-bird pendant chirped a question.

— Tea, please, for two — smiled Daniele. — Dragon Pearls. Add a lot of honey for Ishmael.

— Why white, you ask… let me show you on my laptop. Look here — she said, after scrolling a bit.

[embed]Rare white giraffes killed by poachers in Kenya Rangers found the carcasses of a female and her calf in a village in north-eastern Kenya.www.bbc.com

— I cried three weeks after reading this. I am still crying from time to time when I remember it… Rare? No, they were not rare; they were unique. The world is an uglier place without them… It made me think. They were not killed for food; they were killed for a trophy. Somebody out there has a gleeful jolt whenever looking at what is left of them and knowing that HE has them… the only white giraffes in the world. Their only sin was that they were different…

Small tears rolled at the corner of her eyes, and her voice broke a little. Ishmael patted her gently on the shoulder.

She looked thoughtful at his white fur…

— I do not have full control of my kitchen’s magic. The power of the portal varies with how I feel, what I dream, the food I cook, and the music I listen to when cooking. The fresher the vegetables I use, the stronger the magic. Processed “food” — those things you can safely place in a time capsule and find unchanged after a few decades — are the worst destabilisers, so I avoid them. I do not know who will appear: family is complicated; I guess I still have unresolved things before being able to summon them. Other guests, especially the ones I dreamt about since I was a toddler, are already regulars by now. I believe the rule is that the problem keeping me awake determines who will come to help me. The particular character appearing is based on how strong my connection is with them, how dear and how long I hold them in my soul.

She went back to scrolling.

— Look here — she said, pointing to another article.

[embed]Snowflake: The White Gorilla ~ About | Nature | PBS For nearly 40 years an albino gorilla named Snowflake was adored by people around the world. In 1967, local villagers…www.pbs.org

Ishmael turned his gentle face to the screen, and she shifted uneasily.

— I am sorry; this article is about one of yours; this is rude of me.

— I am not really Ishmael; I am what lives in your imagination. If you can handle that pain, I can too — answered Ishmael, continuing to read. I see why it stayed with you. He was loved and well cared for, so he was lucky that way, but he still died alone, far away from his natural habitat.

— He had cancer. His albinism was due to inbreeding. We cut the forests, destroy the waters, then the animals left there are forced to breed between relatives. Anyway, I believe Ady mixed your image with his — isn’t that so, Ady? — said Daniele, turning to the corner where Ady was fighting Murmur for the right to bring the cups of tea to the table.

— Ady, let Murmur do her job! — scolded Daniele. — Go and bring some fresh leaves from the garden; we want to make Ishmael feel welcomed here.

Ady, in the form of a black kitten with blue eyes and black bat wings, hissed at Murmur and jumped out through the open window.

— He is that way — she said to Ishmael. Only I know how much trouble we had before becoming friends… Back to my White Giraffe poster. You left us with homework, and took it seriously. Or we took it seriously; Ady is as much involved as I am. I still believe it’s too big a task for one person, but let me show you what I came up with until now. You helped us hear the voice of Mother Culture and to see the cage we are living in. I believe I deciphered the mechanism that allows Mother Culture to fight change.

— Tell me more — said Ishmael.

— Your theory is that nothing is wrong with us; it is only the story we inhabit that made us so destructive. I believe it is a little more complicated than that. Are you familiar with the “Killer Ape” theory? I am sorry about the name…

— Yes, I am, but you do not need to apologise; it was not you who gave it its name.

— Thank you. And anyway, that theory, and all the others in the same lineage, are rejected now. Still, the point is: it is in our nature to fear the unknown. The Different. The Stranger. The Change. You see, in the beginning, before people started to live in cities, everyone lived in villages of around 150 people. We still have people living that way. Our ancestors’ brains knew every single face. A new face meant — danger? friend? Nobody knew. So the brain learned to be careful with new faces.

They had no brick walls between borders back then, so they created rules and rituals to keep the danger away. Everything, from the dialect they spoke to the clothes they wore, was useful to identify the Stranger. Sometimes the Stranger was useful — trade, and all — but first they had to be sure about that.

And then there was the Stranger between them: the ones who had too much energy, too much charisma, too many ideas, the ones who could change society too fast. They had to be isolated too. Sometimes they became leaders, but more often than not, they became the scapegoats.

Ishmael stayed quiet for a long moment, the way something ancient is quiet — not searching for an answer, but choosing which one is worth the room’s silence.

— You have found something true, and you have found it yourself, which matters more than if I had handed it to you. Go on, I’m listening.

— We weed out those Change-agents, those Challengers of Mother Culture with a simple algorithm. First, we identify them; that is the easy part; they stand out as plain as the white giraffe and her calf. Then we evaluate them: are they useful or threatening? If useful, we bribe them. If dangerous, we get destructive. We label them, isolate and silence them, and, if nothing else works, we kill them.

— Or both, said Ishmael. Look what happened with Alan Turing.

— Or both, sighed Daniele.

They sat for a while silently sipping their tea.

— There is something else — said Daniele, quieter now. — Nature has its own selection: the strong survive, the weak do not, and there is a kind of mercy in how plain that is. But we do something else. We are, I think, the only species that runs a second selection on top of the first — not for weakness, but for the opposite. We find the ones who see too clearly, who carry too much light, who could pull the whole herd somewhere better and faster than the herd is ready to go — and we cull them. Not because they are unfit. Because they are different.

Turing. Coposu. Iorga. The list does not end; it only runs out of names anyone remembers…

Ishmael nodded sadly.

— And still — she added, almost to herself — we are here. Still striving. Still hoping and reaching for the light. If this is not the proof that there is something bigger than us at work here, I do not know what it is.

They both got startled when Ady, now in the form of a flying octopus wrapped around a branch of kiwi full of ripened fruits, entered the kitchen through the window.

— I hope you will love them — said Ady, dropping the harvest on top of the table, almost hitting the laptop and the empty cups of tea while Daniele glared at him.

— I do, said Ishmael with laughing eyes, thank you. The flying octopus morphed happily into a colourful parrot and sat on Ishmael’s shoulder:

— I like you, big guy — chirped the bird.

— I like you too, said Ishmael.

— See, said Ady, making burping noises at Daniele. Everybody loves me!

— I said like, muttered Ishmael.

— This is because you are too shy to tell the truth. I bet you cannot say the L-word, answered Ady cheerfully. There was no emotional education back in your time, so you should learn from the masters. Everybody loves me! — Ady added again, just to be sure the point had landed.

— I love you soo much, laughed Daniele. But can’t you for once enter a room without becoming an event?

— I do not! Modești să fie cei ce au de ce! (Let the ones that have reason to be modest be so!) What were you talking about? Can I see? Can I help? Can I? Please?

— We talked about our White Giraffe concept, said Daniele, pointing at the poster on the wall.

— Ah, said Ady, and his plumage got darker, boomer, that’s not a subject to talk about before going back to sleep, don’t you have something lighter?

— I do, said Daniele affectionately, look here. She took a smaller poster from her art map. Do you remember that poem I told you about?

— Which one from the five hundred this year? said Ady.

— Touché, admitted Daniele. The one with the angel gently placing the world in my arm, written by Brian Andreas. Look at what I did starting from it:

In my dream— imagine created by @Author using Glif

They all stared for a while at the joyful kids reaching out to receive that glowing world from the angel’s hand.

— That’s beautiful, said Ishmael softly.

— That’s beautiful, repeated Ady, no mockery in his small voice.

— Thank you, smiled Daniele back at them. More tea?

— Yes, thank you, said Ishmael and Ady at the same time while Murmur was already handing them a tray with four cups.

They each took one cup, and Murmur set the tray down. Then expertly jumped on the edge of the fourth cup and started drinking from it.

— That poem made me dream the same way as Daniel Quinn’s book. Failure of imagination? The only thing this world does not lack, besides problems, is imagination. I have them by the dozen; they drip out of me while I am walking or dancing, and I am not the only one.

Just look at how much imagination is poured into the advertising industry! All that energy channelled into selling things we might not even need!

Yesterday I came across this article:

[embed]The Power of Imagination in Times of Defeat This quote relates to a discussion that came up in one of my adult groups this week, and it was like a moment when we…www.expressivetherapist.com

— I love the idea of an expressive therapist. After all, what is the meaning of life if we cannot express what is alive in us? And she is right. We are spending our energy “fixing what’s wrong” instead of “celebrating what’s right.” And about the fact that our culture defaults hard toward “problem-solving” over “solution-finding.”

Imagination isn’t scarce at all; it’s just chronically misdirected — poured generously into advertising, into manufactured outrage, into inventing hundred-year pine flowers, while the “failure of imagination” the angel warns about isn’t really a lack; it’s a misallocation.

And here, see?

She pointed to a sentence and started reading out loud: “the absence of a soul-infused story, written in a language unknown to the rest of the world.”

It made me want to write those soul-infused stories.

— Oh, that’s good, said Ady, frantically rubbing his wings together. I knew you’d come up with something! Let me see, let me see!

Daniele laughed and took another sheet of paper from her map.

— It is only a draft, but I have the title and the general idea of my new article, and the pictures to go with it.

They all looked intently at it, and Daniele felt herself blushing.

— There are more where this one comes from. From now on, I will only tell you that the title of the article is

**The Village That Learned to Breathe Again/**Empty houses will hum again; empty streets will fill with laughter

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow” sketch, imagine created by @Author using Glif

— That’s a lovely title, said Ishmael. I would love to read it.

— It will take one or two more days until it is ready. Let’s meet tomorrow night again to see what I will come up with. And feel free to bring more questions to the table.

— Deal, said Ishmael, and reached out to grab the kiwi branch. See you tomorrow.

— See you tomorrow, said Daniele. Abracadabra!

And with that, the kitchen was empty again; only the small pendant on the table and a shadow on the chair where Ady was already sleeping. Daniele looked at him, then at the clock on the wall. Five am, she said. Maybe I can try some Yoga Nidra before watering the garden. She turned off the small lamp on the table, took the computer and headed to the dormitory, smiling in anticipation for the next meeting.

This story isn’t behind a paywall. If a child in your life would love my pictures on their wall, print them, frame them, give them away freely. If this piece is worth a coffee to you, that would warm my heart — but if not, that’s alright too. Some things are meant to be shared as freely as they were given.

If something I am writing makes you think, dream, or see life with different eyes — follow along. There’s more where this came from.