I Dreamt I Was an Architect

                                                                                I Dreamt I Was an Architect


   





    The architect stood alone in a heart-shaped room atop a solitary tower. All of the room’s windows, once proud portals of fine stained glass, were shattered, the fragments blown inward and lying on the floor. A terrible storm raged outside. Wind howled through jagged glass teeth, carrying rain with it, forming dark puddles on the floor.

    There were projections of ghosts following the architect as the heavens fell. They were his only company. Gone from his mind were the wise words of Hesse, mouthed through the lips of a laughing yogi. Similarly absent were the flamboyant proclamations of Nietzsche, the feral pleasure-cries of Kerouac, and the somber spiritualism of Maugham’s Larry Darrel. All these men and constructs of men, these sums of words that had provided the foundations for all of the architect’s carefully planned designs, were carried away with the first gusts of the approaching storm. He had thought them carved into the walls of the tower itself, but they proved to be only the half-hearted scribbles of a child with a stick of chalk.
 

    Watching pillars fall and monuments collapse, the architect rode out the storm, sometimes lost in its harsh wind and rain, at other times held suspended in the ominous peace of its Eye. He had thought to call upon the aid of friends and allies, but none were able to penetrate these hostile elements. They departed, unsuccessful, with apologies and words of consolation.

    There was to be no reprieve. He was alone with his projections of ghosts. They emanated from the walls themselves, and played and played, and visited the architect in distorted forms as he slept. They never let him forget the blueprints to what he had thought was to be his finest creation. A new tower. Not so long ago, he had watched the first few bricks laid bare on the earth, watched them begin to form something larger than their sum- a place where perhaps he would not be alone, where he’d have a better chance of fending off the storms that plagued him.

    In his efforts to build this new home, he had forgotten his room atop the first tower. Forgotten that some of his greatest triumphs of design, in fact, had been wrought behind its stained windows, in the comfort of its familiar solitude. It had been his for as long as he could remember. But his sights had been set on the prize of this new tower.

    It was to be a collaboration between himself and another architect whom he had met by chance, who spoke softly of humble, sturdy designs, of enduring and simple structures, and peace.

    The storms that the architect had weathered before had sometimes darkened his doorstep for months on end, and threatened never to leave, until one day a ray of sun pierced them and broke up the clouds. The light always arrived at the nick of time, when he felt that he could bear no more, and yearned more than anything to surrender. In the wake of the storms, in those first moments bathed in resurrected beams of sunlight, the architect emerged a changed man- often changed for the better. But he never forgot the cutting of the wind or the cold of the rain. The fear of it alone was enough to summon its ghost.

    It was for this reason that, when he encountered the other architect and heard her speak of such beautiful designs, he could not help but to immediately lay out the blueprints of his plan before her, and to heed her suggestions and implement her changes.

    They went to work on the new tower together with a reckless abandon, as though it was all they knew, and there had never been any other towers before it.

    Soon, the architect began to take for granted that it was being built on his land, that he had been the ultimate perpetrator of its existence- that he had drawn up the blueprints himself.

    On the day of his companion's unexpected departure, their Tower was not yet half-built, yet it was already more darling to his eyes than anything he had made before. The architect woke to the sight of it every morning- he had, in fact, taken to sleeping in a tent beside it. He opened his eyes each dawn, pushed back the flaps of the tent and looked on his creation with a smile. His companion was often already hard at work, laying down more bricks, beams, and stones- each one different, fitting into place perfectly. The architect had never been so content before. He had lost his desire to create new designs, had forgotten that he’d ever had any other ideas. None were as fulfilling as this collaboration with his partner.

    “We’ve hardly even begun,” the architect had said in response to the unexpected news of her departure. His insides had all turned to snakes. “Don’t you want to see it finished?”

    “No,” she answered. “I don’t believe I care for it anymore.”

    “How can you know? We've hardly even begun.”

    His voice broke on the last word.

    He looked from his companion to the foundation of the new tower. When had it become the center of everything? What could replace it? Would she come back? Would she realize that she had made a mistake- that this tower was to be their masterpiece? Was it really? Was it anything at all?

    Where would he find refuge now?

    “I’m sorry,” she said- unsmiling, already pulling away. “But I’m not going to stay because I feel bad.”

    The first few flashes of lightning started soon after she was gone, followed by rolling, crackling thunder, more terrible than any the architect had heard before. Desperately afraid, he fled to his old room, a room now coated in dust, neglected in favor of his companion and the passion that had seized him. As the wind screamed and a torrent of rain pounded a crazed beat against the roof, he had tried to light a fire, to make this place habitable again. But the writings on the walls were gone, the rotted wood would not catch, his old bed had grown firm and stale in his absence.

    Once this small, humble room had been enough. But like a fool he had sought everything when he already had what he needed, and for that sin he was left with nothing at all. Left with nothing, save for the projections of ghosts and their sad whisperings in the night.

    On the seventh day of the storm, the skeleton of the new tower was struck by lightning, set aflame, and burnt to the ground.

    In a span of hours what had taken years to plan and build was no more.

    After the rains extinguished the fire and the smoke cleared, the architect wept silent, bitter tears, and the whispering of the ghosts intensified, became an apocalyptic choir of crazed, paradoxical voices, echoing the same garbled messages and malevolent impossibilities. The rain fell sideways through broken windows, and the wind matched his cries with its own thoughtless shrieks, punctuated by deafening roars of thunder. The projections flickered and sang. For an eternity, it was all the architect knew. Black-gray skies and endless sound and cold and wet.

    Huddled on the floor, hugging his knees and shivering, the architect looked out of the windows of his tower, at the horizon beyond the borderline. He thought he might walk out into the elements and let them do their worst. And if he made it to the borderline, if he still lived when he crossed that threshold, then he would be free of it all. Free to move, unbound, building nothing, and never again having to witness its eventual destruction.

    The architect dreamed of this, despite the protests of the ghosts. But he knew what they did not- that he lacked the courage to leave.

      No, the architect would remain in the lands that were his home. He would wait until the skies cleared, and the ghostly projections flickered into darkness for the last time, their impossible voices finally extinguished. And though on rare occasions he may look to the horizon, he would remain here, in this only tower of his, and write new words on the walls, and draw up new designs, and, alone, he would set about building something that would endure.