The Dream Factory

The Dream Factory 

There is that time of day in the bustling city of San-Francisco, just after the fiery orange summer sun has dropped below the horizon, at an indeterminate point between dusk and evening, when the city drops to into a hushed half slumber and lounges in the warm salt scented breeze and the distant sounds of chugging of the engines of the boats working down in the bay.  

The office workers having made their way home across the intricate lattice of narrow streets, up the dusty roads, into the quieter realms of the hillside, sit quietly sipping ice cold beers from tall glass pitchers behind the thick brick walls of their aging Neoclassical villas. Basking cats lying dosing on wide, paint faded wooden balconies, feeling the slow retreat of the sun's rays and the dusky shadows reaching out over pristine bottle green lawns, stretch their legs, shake themselves off and slink inside to lap from patterned saucers brimming with lukewarm milk.  

It is in the hazy time that stagnates between the vigour's of the day and the fast approaching commitments of the evening that old memories begin to gently ferment in the still of the minds of the residents of the city. 

Riding the tram down Nob Hill, with the rhythmic rocking of the carriage car and the hypnotic clickety clack sound of the steel wheels over the uneven rails my eyelids drop and my thoughts drift from the glittering waters of the bay and turn inward. Into the vapours of my mind come the nomadic image of my first true love Saffi Fairbairn and a memory from long ago floats back to me from the recesses of my mind.  

We are in a half full theatre. Saffi's glowing face basks in reflective tribute to her intense blue eyes, her thin cotton dress clings lovingly to the gentle curves of her body. As I hear the distant refrain of her long forgotten voice I feel the glow of this fond recollection flush through my body. We are waiting together, sitting in the back row in the semi darkness, whispering forbidden secrets to each other when a young man with a guitar strolls out onto the stage. He is tall and gangly with dark, swept back hair. He starts to sing a song, 'Shake Rattle & Roll' whilst a group of young girls at the front scream up at him. Surprised by this unexpected intrusion Saffi turns from me and starts laughing and singing. 

A voice steals up on me, hushed, whispered, close by, drawing me back to the present. 

'The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, 

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit 

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, 

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.' 

I jolt back into conscious. The girl next to me has arrived so quietly I had not felt her push up next to me on the seat. She is concentrating on her toes. She hangs her feet and kicks them up like a child on a swing seeing how far she can skim them across the deep waters of the pearlescent sky. Her face has a startling similarity to Saffi's, and in the instant, roused from my memories, I blurt out Saffi's name. Then realising that was forty years ago I cover up my foolishness by quickly adding. 'I'm sorry did you say something?' 

She speaks to her toes, not to me. 'Beautiful isn't it? It's Persian. A lament on the vagaries of the immutable passing of time.' Suddenly consumed by the earnestness of youth she turns to me, 'What if, what if you could capture all those great moments in time from the perspective of the people that were actually there and play them back at will. It would be almost like.... being able to travel in time.' 

'I'm sure it would be... fascinating...' I respond, searching for the right words to please her.  

'Fascinating?' Her face forms the next question in a mask of profound seriousness. 'It would be more than that surely? A pantheon of experiences to be lived and lived again, experiences to be drawn up from the view of their beholders with all their emotions at the time. Like capturing someone's recollection and dreams of the events exactly as they had lived through them.'