Sylvia Wynter's Dream

The heaviness of the solid block of glass felt fragile, cradled in my palm, when I gingerly plucked it from its black dais. My damp finger smudges barely discernible to the naked eye as I clumsily maneuvered the weight closer for inspection. A glass paperweight is a thing to marvel at, beauty elevated! No longer just an aesthetical furnishing but functional. I thumb the ornate plastic platform until I find its purpose; to enhance the glass cuboid dimensions. Gentle press of a well-hidden button produces a neon lightshow inside the box that illuminates the cityscape suspended within a crystalline cage from below. Chicago is revealed as the text in bold, underneath the city floating inside the glass, twinkling as the colours shift from red to gold to blue to purple and back. The paperweight became a trinket then, that felt too flashy and distracting for such a structured work environment, too big for a such a small, cluttered desk where an errant elbow or hip might dislodge it.

Years later, I scoop it (the glass and the lightbox) from my bookshelf where it has been reduced to mere furnishing after the thrall of flashing lights and shiny glass lost its lustre. I open a pack of double-A batteries to induce the nostalgia and child-like thrill once more, shifting the weight carefully to balance the glass on it’s now three-legged stand. It lights up still, but I look at Chicago and now think Chi-Raq and then I see my city but Downtown, Kingston isn’t town anymore it’s coming alive again, like someone poked around and pushed a button so that at night it looks like this paperweight, lit up neon bright bright, all shiny glass and new. I take the glass up to my eye and slowly turn it, wondering how they stitched or imprinted the image of this city and encased it, when the prismatic light from the stand hit the edge of the glass and shone brilliantly through the city, like police lights through glass windows.

This city was made up of tiny dots arranged in the shape of skyscrapers that look like people if you squint hard with one eye shut. Are they trapped or safely guarded in their sparkling towers? Is that where Kingston will be in a few years? A safe, carefully engineered utopia with a million twinkling dots ensconced in glass castles, beautiful architecture that progressed from mere ornament to exacting functionality and purpose. Maybe, like the eventual boredom that descends on a child enthralled by flashing lights, so will the neon towers revert to props that collapse in on themselves.