Journalist

Today is bright and cold, crisp, it reminds me of Christmases at home, wind blowing cool and soft. Classes are full of headaching yearning and enduring. We all leave drained and faint, the nine of us. Nine different people but after three months here we all are learning about the world and each other. Class tells us journalists report everything because it's all news. Branding is journalism; advertising, public relations and journalists go hand in hand. We take pictures of politicians eating bananas and ice creams because it's news...

I know these things but I never expected my course director to tell it to me. At what point do I realise the fucking uselessness of it all?

I have insane mad dreams; starting independent press at home and shirking the drugs and madness with young anger and rage of a people wronged. An end to witnesses murdered on court steps and girls disappearing, contracts spouting filth and lies and starving poor people waist high in flood waters looking at television cameras that stare indifferently back.

It will be hard and bitter and full of pain and fear and I have no idea even as I say the words how much I will regret going home. But I'm going.

Dream

I dreamt a paratrooper except strapped to his back was one of those big helium balloons, you know, like the ones attached to baskets. It was tied to his back with hundreds of ribbon and he was in danger. He fell down a great dark chasm and as he fell I saw tiers of levels and dark humanoid shapes walking along them watching him, waiting for him to stop so they could snatch him up. He fell for what seemed like ages until below him he saw another chasm and light shone through it. He aimed for the chasm and fell through it, into a vast hall lit up with soft yellow light.

There was a village below there and he'd landed in their meeting hall. They all pointed and gasped up at him and a slim girl leaped up above the crowd and began cutting the ribbons that attached him to the balloon which was still stuck in the upper, darker realms. "They'll pull you up soon if I don't cut you loose," she leaped from one corner of the room to the other because the ribbons had scattered when he fell through. He felt himself being pulled up from above and she saw the movement, leaping toward him she handed him the knife. "You have to do the rest," she said.

He realised his harness attaching him to the balloon was made of ribbon too so he slashed through it and fell toward the people, colourfully dressed, wondering and reaching for him; they cheered and the ribbons vanished upward into darkness.