The Dragon's Den

 

On the streets of Ottawa, the dragons and the spiders roam. They were not butterflies. They were not bumblebees or birds. They were monstrous creatures of tangled webs and fire. We cannot say a single thing that isn’t politically-correctly “nice,” so instead we make monsters and parade them in front of crowds. The monsters of course are us, looking at the monsters we create. 

I cannot tell you lately how many dragons I have met whose singular purpose is to break the very soul of the people they know. I have seen the carnage. They are the people of the lie. Sometimes they come in tidy well-groomed packages and other times they are simply crumpled ruins with tattoos and stained blue jeans. You can never really know. I only know there are more than we realize. More than we care to know.

I don’t know what breaks the dream in a child so much so that they will never swim to the crest of a wave or float on blue sky mirrors; that they would only surface at the foot of the wave where the light can’t reach and where the undertow takes whoever they can catch into darkness. I once was curious to know. I don’t need to know anymore. What is… just is. A soul is lost, forsaken but still walks and speaks and lives beside us, among us. I no longer believe in redemption. It is an archaic contrivance suited to a different time when people still believed in miracles. There are no miracles for monsters.

Outside on the streets I hear the car alarms. Usually one every other day or so. Maybe we humans need alarms. Don’t jab me. Don’t poke at me. Don’t mess with me. Loud horrible noises will ensue. But no. We carry on quietly amid the catastrophe that is the world right now. We keep to our own lane. We watch for encroachments. We keep the lights on. We do not invite strangers into our space because it is all we have. We are, above all, busy beyond busy. There is no ebb nor flow to life, just a constant flow of rapids where there is no time to think, to ponder, to question, to dream. It is its own form of insanity but socially acceptable of course, in the end achieving little but its own boast.

I remember days making daisy chains under a hot August sun in fields of green. I remember a different time. Even a different time full-grown when there was time to breathe and catch the drift of air from the beating of a sparrow’s wings. Was it so long ago now?