Dali landscape

Sven tells Mario of a dream he had.

Sven: It could have been a computer game, or a horror movie, maybe even a scene set in Second Life. I’m walking across a treeless African plain, and there are a few people here and there, some squatting, mostly single figures, and then in the distance a sort of fuzzy cloud appears. It comes closer, a group of figures is following this cloud. A humming noise comes from the cloud, it’s a swarm of bees, swirling back and forth. Then I see why. The group of figures, masked, veiled, are throwing things at the swarm. People are running away desperately, this way and that, as the swarm changes direction. Now the throwers are really close. I can see what it is they are throwing. It’s chunks of broken hive. The bees swarm about chasing the pieces of their broken home. There’s an angry buzzing from the swarm. I run to the side behind a rock. There is a woman sheltering in a shallow pit, with branches pulled over the top. She crawls out, trying to escape, she cannot walk, her legs are broken, there is a cut on her face, she grips a leash attached to a dog. How does the story end? That’s why it reminds me of Second Life which has a similar dream-like quality. You’re in a scene, it could be a room, it could be outdoors, and a threat appears. In a dream you wake up. In Second Life, you leave. Resolution through escape.

Mario: Where did the bees go, do you think? What happened to the woman?

Sven: I’d like to think they turned on the veiled attackers and got their hive together again. I’d like to think that some bush doctor passing by applied poultices to the woman’s injuries. But I woke up so I’ll never know.

Mario: What do you think it meant? Why did you have this dream?

Sven: The symbolism you mean? The treeless African plain? Deforestation maybe? The bees? Something to do with their disappearing from habitats because of human intervention like GM crops or cell phone microwaves, who knows? Maybe a symbol of nature under attack from humans. And the injured woman with the dog? A by-product of violence in society but grasping at some protection?

Mario: A reworking of a Dali theme? No melted watches?

Sven: No watches, no clocks. Just the veiled hive-breakers, the buzzing bees, the injured woman, on a treeless plain.

Mario: Sounds more like a painting than a story.

Sven: Maybe. And yet, many paintings suggest a narrative. I’d just been reading Kundera’s Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Perhaps I was recasting its themes in images.

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