Ned Wakes Up

Ned neatly folded his cardigan sweater and placed it on the chair next to his bed, then he slid in between the fresh sheets. Before he turned off the light, he looked around the room where he had been unpacking and arranging for the last couple of days. His bedroom, with plain gray walls, a small bookcase, a dresser, and little else, was pretty much done. He would put of a couple of pictures and set out some knickknacks, and then it would be done. Except for a couple of boxes in the corner, everything was put away and the room looked neat and calm. He was happy. It definitely was not fancy, but it was all his. Ned was a very plain-looking man of 40, and had just bought his first home – a small townhouse not far from where he worked as a low-level accountant for a huge company in a recovering part of town. He was very proud of himself for finally achieving some financial success and stability, and he looked around the room like a king looks at a new stretch of conquered land. With a confident smile, he switched off the light and laid his head into the soft pillow.

As the old grandfather clock he inherited from his grandfather chimed midnight in the living room, his thoughts drifted and he began to slip off to sleep. But almost immediately he was roused by voices. They were coming from the other side of the wall and seemed to be getting closer. He suddenly realized that he might have bought a place with noisy neighbors, or maybe the walls were just thin. But the voices got closer and louder, and suddenly Ned could see a faint glow coming from the wall. He sat up. The glow got bigger and brighter and the voices grew louder, sounding like laughter. Suddenly, the wall split open revealing a tunnel, and out came a monkey wearing a blue silk jacket and a small cap. He was immediately followed by a man and a woman dressed in fantastical, brightly colored outfits, and they were laughing and joking with each other. Upon entering the room, they stopped laughing and looked around, a little surprised.

“Oops,” the woman said.  “Looks like we took a wrong turn somewhere!”  

“Ha ha, yeah, this isn’t right at all,” replied the man, who had a silly beard and a pointy purple hat. 

Noticing Ned, the woman, with peacock feathers in her hair, a short sparkly magenta dress, fishnet stockings, and high-heels, came over to the bed. “Look what we have here,” she said. The monkey hopped up onto the bed and sat at the end looking at Ned. 

“I’m Ned,” Ned said. 

“Sure you are,” she said.  “And I’m Cleopatra!” She grinned sarcastically and winked at the man.

“Yeah, and I’m Captain Hook! Ha ha!”  he crowed. The man and woman had a good laugh. Even the monkey seemed amused. Then she leaned over and patted Ned on the head. 

“Well Mr. Ned, we’ll leave you to . . .” she looked around the room. “. . . to whatever this is.” Laughing, she stood up and the three of them, the woman, the man, and the monkey, took their colorful, sparkling splendor to the opposite wall, which lit with a mighty glow, opened into another tunnel, and the whole circus disappeared. The walls sealed back up, the glow went away, and the room fell dark and silent once again. 

Needless to say, Ned didn’t sleep very well that night.  But he eventually did sleep, and when he woke up in the morning, he wasn’t sure with complete, unencumbered certainty, that it had not just been a vivid dream.  Buying the townhouse, and then moving, had been a pretty stressful process, and maybe his mind was just playing tricks on him. In the morning light he examined the gray walls. They were as solid as ever, and everything seemed normal.  

What magical sights and sounds the mind can conjure. Such whimsy and fancifulness lay in the corners, waiting. When our guard is down, when our resistance is low, our hearts can summon an infinite feast, a colorful cornucopia parading through our imagination. Some of us can see it, some can peer through the veil, and some can ride the effervescence, giving meaning to to the mundane, righteousness to the routine, and clues to the ultimate biting questions hiding in there too.

Others among us never look. Or look, but never see.

Ned looked at his watch, then grabbed his jacket and went off to work. Happily, work was only a few blocks away and it was an easy walk. He walked through this neighborhood that he loved; that he had scrimped and saved and borrowed and clawed his way into with all his might. 

Not long ago, the neighborhood had been run down and dangerous, but now a bit of a revival had started. New shops had sprung up in the empty storefronts, old buildings were being restored, and new ones built. This was a famous neighborhood and people – people like Ned – wanted to be here. Even still, the new was just a repainting of the old. Fresh paint on the buildings, fresh people living in them, but still the same neighborhood, now with bruises and scars. Once, a long time ago, it had been the thriving heart of a culture, and a diverse swath of humanity converged here every day. It was a neighborhood filled with excitement and energy, and the people who lived and worked there were a special breed of forward-thinkers. There were many bookshops and cafes, and the streets were filled with people chasing their dreams, and everyone seemed to be feeding off of each other’s dreams. It had been one of those golden places that appear once in a while in human existence, where just the right combination of forces converge in just the right way, with just the right people, that the neighborhood produced some of the most celebrated writers, painters, musicians, actors, and intellectuals the world had ever seen. A grand culture was created there.  People flocked to the neighborhood hoping some of the magic would rub off on them, too. The excitement was palpable, and the people at the time had the feeling they were changing the world – and they were. It was a whirlwind of frenetic energy and drew people in. There had even been a permanent circus near the site of Ned’s new townhouse.

Years passed and the neighborhood fell into the toxic slime of urban decay, crime, and poverty that lasted for decades. Buildings were abandoned and left to rot. Some of them collapsed out of neglect. 

But now, the neighborhood was starting to come back. And that’s why Ned moved here. He was enamored with the past, and what the neighborhood used to be. As he walked, he tried to imagine the scene a hundred years ago. He conjured the fantastic colors, the smells of the street food, the sidewalks and streets filled with pedestrians, and cafes jammed with people living their best lives. In his mind, the whole place came to life, and he walked through it like a prodigal son returning. 

Even more than memory, imagination can stir the heart. Things can sometimes be more alive in the retelling, than in the original living. And sometimes the story of a thing, is the actual thing itself.  So Ned walked along the sidewalk in a world that was alive.

When he got to work, he could feel intimately the sights and sounds and smells of the old garment factory where his gray cubicle now sat, clustered into a small sea of identical cubicles. He assembled numbers all day as an accountant, but he might as well have been assembling jackets and trousers in a small sea of machines. 

On his way home from work, he stopped at a bookstore, which had always been a bookstore, even in the darkest of times, and ended up buying a couple of large brightly-colored posters depicting the neighborhood in its former glory. He put one up in his living room and the other in his bedroom, inviting the past to come live with him in the now.  This was, after all, why he had turned his life upside down and moved all the way across town – so he could be here, in this place, where the magic had so brilliantly shown a century ago. He wanted to see what those people had seen, and feel their lives as his own.  

Unfortunately, Ned had absolutely no creative talent of any sort. He couldn’t write, or draw, or sing, or dance, but it didn’t matter. Ned would have happily carried elephant shit at the circus or cleaned the bathrooms at a second-rate theater just to be among his heroes, and in the place that had spawned some of humanity’s most treasured works. 

Ned was a misfit, and had always been a loner, mostly because he was the only one he knew who thought of these kinds of things. He didn’t know anyone else who read classic literature, or listened to early jazz recordings, or knew every painter and sculptor and poet from the turn of the twentieth century, or who would actually sit and read philosophy and history books. So Ned was used to spending a lot of time by himself, pursuing things that nobody else really cared about. 

But now he had moved into the exact neighborhood where it all once happened. And other people had moved into the neighborhood for the same reason – to feel the magic of a time and place where humanity had bloomed, and where the thoughts and actions of a few brilliant people set the course of western culture for a 100 years. 

Even among the like-minded people who loved this neighborhood, and all that it represented, Ned was more absorbed than most. He sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the poster he had just put up. It was a fictional scene with a view looking down the main street, lined with cafes and shops. In the foreground there were depictions of some of some of the most famous people, and in the distance were the tops of the circus tents. 

He thought it all looked so fantastic. So it was no real surprise that, later that night, when the walls lit and opened into a tunnel for two young lovers who had taken a wrong turn inside a long-forgotten building, they would find themselves with a stowaway, as Ned followed them into the tunnel, never to be seen again.  

But it was at that precise moment when a new character appeared in the poster. Off to the side was Ned, dressed in a silly costume and carrying huge buckets of elephant shit. He had a huge smile on his face. Ned was living his best life.