Rhinocrisy

Yesterday I happened to watch the above advertisement on television. It made me more enraged than I have been in a long time, so that by the end of it I was swearing loudly at the screen and flipping it the bird with both hands. Here was some marrowless, etiolated corporation, deigning to tell me what my dreams had been as a child, attempting to rewrite my memory! “That was your dream”? No. No, no. My dreams weren’t so hollow. I didn’t dream of owning your pathetic piece of plastic bric-a-brac, you vampires. My dreams were much larger. I dreamt of rocketing through endless space and of walking on the flat, black bottom of the ocean. I dreamt of moving the sun, of churning clouds into whirlpools in the sky, of opening my hand and releasing hummingbirds, of shaking gold dust from my hair, kissing rose-fingered Eos as she came up over the horizon, spreading my wings and flying. I dreamt I was Batman. I was Hanuman. I was Hercules, wrapped in the skin of the Nemean lion. I was the Buddha. I was all of Creation.

This is an evil plague, my beloved friends. This is a disgusting and savage attack on all of humanity. Stealing our dreams? What else do they take every day? My capacity to love has shriveled up - I have been taught that it should not extend beyond the clarity of my love’s skin, the luster of her hair, the mere shape of her bones. My capacity to be loved is a similar husk - my worth is decided by the scent I wear and the type of orange-infused vodka I drink. I have no aspirations. I am merely a collection of desires for material possessions. For them I bend and obey.