The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued

Page 454

seemed to have a mind of their own and without any semblance of sociably acceptable constraints, looked elsewhere. Was there any choice? It was a storm of relentless, blinding dust which gratuitously dropped its dominant, physically “real,” and un-welcomely imposed obscurations on the desperate, unhappy groupings he sought to elude. Unlike many years prior, he now knew that he rightly belonged with them. He knew and hated that stupidly stubborn aspect of himself, in which he appeared as reticent or shy, but was a truly unwilling and unenthusiastic prognosticator and procrastinator, in fear of the horror he had seen inflicted on the openly vulnerable. There was no way to live with open eyes and simultaneously avoid it. For her and only her, he had frantically prayed to un-listening ears for a cessation of the cruel wind; each entreaty performed with less zeal than the prior failure, until it was gone. He knew that he and she were just more of the condemned, didn’t understand why it had to be this way, and yet still desired to attempt a personally judicial, righteous journey home for the others. Maybe his lost, seemingly simple, misremembered dream could be their way, if not his. Besides, he had nothing to gain by denying the others who had done him no harm.

Below him in the valley, though he found the implied idea of his lofty placement personally repugnant, yet egoistically