THE DREAMER

                                                by Max Reif

               
                                                
                          

There was a man who could do nothing but write. He had to be led in a

city like someone who was blind. Otherwise, he stood on corners and gazed

as though oblivious to his surroundings.

       If his helper led him to a table and chair, the man would sit, but he could

still do nothing. But if his helper gave him a notebook and pen, he would begin

to make pleasant-sounding noises in his throat. Then, if anyone asked, "What

can you do?", the man would say, "I....can....dream!"

      It so happened that his dreaming could be connected to his pen, so as to

record image, thought, and emotion, as accurately as an EEG machine

records brain waves. The man was now a maker, a maker of dreams.

 

     Now in the city where he lived, men and women had forgotten how to

dream. They began to hear of the dreamer in their midst, and found—at first a

few, then hundreds, and finally thousands of them—the house with the table

and chair where his helper had led him.

      Outside the building, the people would gather, awaiting the news of the

dreams. The helper would come out from time to time and hang the freshly-

recorded dreams for all to see. And the people would read, and be amazed,

and go away refreshed and fulfilled.

      "He dreams of a new world! " they would say, in awe. "He dreams of a

new world—right here!"

      And the dreams would record where people should put things—gardens

and monuments and wonderful new buildings, marvellous to the eye, where

the citizens could meet. And the dreams would tell of the wonderful new

things they would do when they met: of the cities they would design, and how

they would live in these cities, as in a world beyond dreams.   

                                             continued on page 2

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