The Hedge

The Hedge
                                  
I have a small pair of scissors in my hand.  There is no question that they are hopelessly inadequate for the task.  The silver of them glints against my nail polish, and they glitter in the lights from the hedge.  In front of me the hedge stretches for miles.  In an odd way I only half comprehend, I know instinctively that it is longer even than this- strange twists of light conspire to make it appear as one long straight hedge, whereas in reality the fabric of the hedge is rucked and pleated in on itself, so that it is impossible to gauge its length.  I have heard whispered rumours in the convoluted chambers of my subconscious- rumours to the effect that the hedge is circular.  For my purposes, then, the hedge would be infinite, so that once I have completed a circuit I must begin again, with no transition.  This may already have happened.  This hedge has grown so much since it was last cut that I might not be able to tell.  There are many other hedges.

As to the hedge itself, it is a strange, mellifluous plant, if you can call it a plant.  I choose not to confine it to one feeble set of dimensions, even mentally, because I have learned a certain respect for it.  It is nothing so innocuous as even the most demonic of Lleylandii.  The colours appear to be ever-changing, but I have discovered that if you keep your eye on one small section- a leaf, a twig, as might be, the colour does not change.  It is like… it is like nothing I have seen to compare it to.  It is like an endless supermarket aisle stocked with multicoloured tins, as viewed from the window of an express train, perpetually roaring down it.  Partly.  There is something blurred about it; something that won’t be pinned down by mere human eyesight.

I’m aware of what the hedge is.  I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m ignorant of the purpose of my work.  I’m not some mere drudge, I’m in the know.  I was just trying to give you some idea of what it’s like- the sheer vast timeless incomprehensibleness of it.  It was all explained to me in the induction week, in the first lecture.  That was a strange, semi-somnolent time.  A time when I had not yet learned to close my mind, and when I was able to hear whispers and fleeting visions- fragments.  The hedge is dreams.

I should explain in greater detail, as was explained to me.  As far as I know, there are two people to each potentially infinite hedge.  I work the night shift.  All day I sleep, and when I wake in the late evening I am transported to the place in the hedge where I must begin. To my right, there stretches an endless expanse of freshly-cut hedge, pulsating calmly, restrained.  To my left, the hedge is bursting its boundaries, almost uncontained by shape, about to break loose.  Every hedge has a stable core of old growth.  Dreams which may be revisited- the dreams that build a character, that drive someone- the dreams that make a human being a human.  Out of these old, stable dreams, there spring new growth.  Sprawling, uncontrollable, for the most part unproductive dreams.  Inexplicable, terrifying nightmares.  This new growth must be trimmed away- trimmed almost back to the core.  But not quite. A tiny bit of the new growth is left, since the people can’t develop if their dreams don’t expand over time.

It is a thankless task.  There is little sense of fulfilment.  Every evening I am brought to the correct place- transplanted by some concrete form of dream, I expect.  Who knows what uses can be found for this vast source of power?  I cannot tell one part of the hedge from another.  There is only freshly cut, uncut, and the slow stages of growth in between.  I cannot tell how much of the hedge I have cut at the end of a night.  I am unable to gauge my performance by comparing it to my colleague on the day shift.  For all I know, the colleague may be slacking.  The bulk of the work may fall to me.  Nonetheless, I take a kind of pride in my work.  I progress assiduously- I am fast but not hasty.  I am thorough, and the line of cut hedge looks neat.  I must keep a sense of purpose, a sense of pride, else all becomes futile.  I sometimes even wonder if I am brought to the same stretch of hedge every night.

Even discounting my insider knowledge, the task is not merely grunt work.  This is not unthinking physical labour.  There is an artistry and skill in it.  I cut the hedge straight, with slightly rounded edges.  I am also careful to avoid harm to the delicate spiders dotted along the hedge, and to their webs.  The spiders who make their home here suffuse the dreams with meaning and purpose.  They weave a causal thread through a seemingly random set of visions.  Using their strong, sticky silk, they carefully repair the damage my scissors have caused the hedge, binding the raw ends with a tight dressing.  They are, in their own small way, crucial to the well-being of the hedge.

I like to work in darkness, when the only lights are the eerie, colourful emanations from the hedge itself.  It must take on a very different quality by day.  I would like to see it sometime.  I suspect the daylight would not be kind.  It would show the dreams in a harsher world, of light and shade.  It would show them for what they are- violent, confusing, passionate, terrifying, random, uncontrollable.  Not these innocuous, gently pulsing blurs shining warm through the darkness.

I often wonder about my daytime colleague, my co-worker.  I wonder if he takes as much pleasure from his work as I do (I see him as a he, envisage male fingerprints on the rusting scissors next to my smaller female ones).  I wonder if he is so assiduous.  I wonder if he wonders about me.  It would be curious to meet up some time, but that would be impossible.  Our nebulous, mysterious employer would not permit.  Sometimes I wonder if my co-worker exists at all, or if I am doing the work of two.  I wonder if it is a ruse by my employer to pay only one set of wages.

And so to the matter of wages.  I am paid, as perhaps you might have guessed, in dreams.  Safe, mundane, dreams- the sort I need after a hard night worrying at the hedge.  These dreams are all the sustenance I require.  In the day, my mind floats free.  In the night, I am recalled to myself as my summons arrives and deposits me in the correct place.  In the night, I have no recollections of my dreams of the day, except in hazy allegorical references.   But that is as it should be.  I am ready, then, to continue my work, unimpeded by psychic disturbances.

I would tell you more of my job.  Of the way the trimming clears the way for new dream shoots.  Of the way that the twigs I remove with my scissors die and wither to dust as they hit the ground.  Of the way that this dust nourishes the hedge in a never-ending cycle.  But all this is technical stuff, and I can see that you are tired.

For me, though, I hope that this hedge is infinite.  I would, in theory, be content to continue cutting it forever.  I know my dreams are contained in such a hedge.  It could be this one.  One hedge may serve many dreamers.

As the nights wear on, I begin to slow.  My stiff fingers ease the rusting blades together with greater clumsy care.  I snip at each leaf individually.  I am scared that the horizon is moving closer.  I am scared that the end of the hedge is in sight, that this work will soon be finished.  I am scared that, as I slow, my silent partner, my co-worker, speeds up.  I am scared that the hedge will end and the task will finish.  And I will wake up.

As I turn the final corner I realise that I have reached the start again.  I am given to understand, in the subliminals that pass for office memos around here, that my employment is to be terminated.  That I am to be replaced, and am to train that replacement.  I have been instructed to pass these scissors onto you.  They are rusty, but still, I think, serviceable.  I suggest you press on with the task at hand.  There is much to be accomplished.