10.05.2003

Edward Upward

"At last Frederick spoke again.

'How beautiful, how beautiful,' he said, 'but the rainbows don't belong to this Garden City. They are part of the outside world, and we are deluding ourselves if we hope to exclude that world from here. In spite of Jason Johnson's truly heroic struggle, that world with its multiplying wars and its racist exterminations and its poisoning of the air and the seas for centuries to come--that world is what you are going to wake to, Maurice. And look, already you can see straight ahead of you the railway station you left two hours ago, and the signal is at green, and you are going to catch the train which will enable you to be in time to meet the school governors who will offer you the better job you wanted. And the influence this job will give you will help you to rally resistance among the people to the reactionaries, who if unopposed would bring about the horrors I have warned you of in your dream.'

*

'Do not despise dreaming, Maurice. In the battle you must face you will be strengthened by an awake dream of a future in which the whole human world has become one United Garden City.' "
{Edward Upward, "A Better Job," The Coming Day and Other Stories, London: Enitharmon Press, 2000}

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