3rd.3.2014 - The Infinite City

Picture a city.

You're up high above it, in a tower or some other monolithic structure that gives you a panoramic view of it all around.  And the city stretches out in all directions, all the way past the horizon. If you were to go out past that horizon, you'd still see the city stretching out past the horizon again.  It is infinite.




Don't get yourself bogged down in the logistics of how a city that huge could possibly function. It does because it's more than just a city. It's a representation of the collective unconscious. To you, the city would look one way, filtered as it is through your perceptions and biases.  Someone from another part of the world might picture a city that's completely different.  All of these perceptions are true, and none of them are true.

Like I said, don't worry about it too much.

The city is filled with people. Most of them are just that: people, going about their lives. As with the city, they are representations of the individuals in the collective unconscious. Other people in the city are different.

These different people are sometimes ones who have become aware of the city around them. They have the potential to do amazing things within the city, if they can further become aware of the unreality of the city. Not unlike The Matrix, perhaps, where opening one's mind allows one to pull off impossible feats.

Other people one might meet in the city are archetypes. Personifications of a thing. The Trickster.  The Sink-or-Swim Mentor. The Merchant with Wares of Dubious Legality. And so on.

All very Jungian, right?

Getting back to you, up in that high place, looking out over the city in nighttime.  Every light in every building is an individual, even if they aren't there. It's just how the city works.  A multitude of earthbound stars, beneath an equally brilliant starscape. Because light pollution doesn't exist in this place.

But then you notice something, way out on the horizon.  It takes you a moment to be able to see it, but then you perceive it.

The lights in the city are slowly going out.