BLUEPRINTS FOR PARADISE
Meyer, Ernest L.
Blueprints For Paradise By ERNEST L. MEYER IT IS FUN amid the gathering gloom of the times to read the "after the war" pipedreams of our architects and construction engineers. They vision in that...
...At length we stagger out of the house to the nearest movie to weep at a picture showing granny darning socks...
...Most men can tell you with accuracy the shape of Marlene Dietrich's eyebrows and the kind of dress she wore in "Heavenly Body...
...No harsh bell, but a gentle, musical, maidenly voice saying: "Wake, sleeper, wake...
...Since the modern city home has become little more than a place to sleep, the greatest contribution to happiness would be a painless awakener...
...But they don't remember whether their own wife last night wore a gown of pink organdie or annealed battleship steel...
...So why not face the fact with realism...
...Dreams of flight into fragrant countries, of poppy-fields and porphyry, of honey-eyed damsels with dulcimers, and moons rising with cad benediction in the musk of a Persian garden...
...In one awful moment we are yanked from the clouds to the reality of work and routine, a snuffly cold, the chill clutch of the bathroom tiles, the hastily gobbled breakfast, the fiendish mauling of the subway mobs, and the cheery morning greeting of the boss: "Shake a leg, Watkins, you're 28 seconds late...
...And at the proper time a phonograph attachment will be set into operation...
...Buckle on the armor of your daily life, sweet dreamer...
...They vision in that lustrous world of tomorrow palaces even for the underprivileged, synthetic houses of demountable fabric, crammed with the latest labor-saving gadgets, and at prices so wondrously cheap that you can go shopping for dwellings with all the unconcern of a trip to the baker's for the morning buns...
...Thus in our own homes we live in the twilight of familiarity...
...We go into ecstasies seeing a lad and Lassie, his dog, in the films...
...That would be endurable...
...The alarm clock is the brutal petard that hurls us with one lunge from the couch of dreams to the thorn-patch of our waking life...
...It is merciless in its efficiency, yes, even our five-year-old Big Bang, which has been tinkered with so often that now its once fairly melodious chimes sound like a ton of dishpans careening down the slope of Mount Vesuvius...
...The greatest human agony each day comes at that blinking moment when the alarm clock has exploded and our protoplasm tries to readjust itself to the harness of daily existence...
...Our homes have fallen into decline, especially in the cities, and are little more than stepping-off places for the movie, the dance-hall, the bingo binge, and the Tavern of the Tattooed Toe...
...Come down gently from that paradise of dreams...
...Leave, oh leave for only a moment, the sloe-eyed sirens of Damascus...
...And all the alarm clocks would be sent to Hades to help the imps get up in the morning to keep their appointment shoveling white-hot coals under the writhing shanks and blistered feet of the inventor of alarm docks...
...It is hardly likely that even the visioned "dream house" of the future will root out the vagrant impulses in us...
...The engineers and technicians should set to work immediately devising an automatic gadget attached to a bedpost that will begin to rock the bed gently at getting-up time and induce a drowsy half-wakefulness...
...There is nothing much to be done about it, for we are cut from a strange and fearful pattern...
...What is needed is a painless dream absorber...
...But when we do stay home we grow fretful in half an hour, walk aimlessly hither and yawn, and throw peevish pie-tins at the cat...
...But if our own youngster should bring in a brindle pup we would bribe the janitor to spirit him away...
...To make homes more habitable is a splendid goal...
...What I mean is that the most detestable, the most savage invention ever wished upon unhappy mankind is the alarm clock...
...Whatever lies outside our walls has the tang of novelty...
...Great things await you...
...The Most Savage Invention Most people dash madly from their homes to a talkie dispensary and weep at a film showing a white-haired grandma darning socks for her grandson in the wars at Wewak...
...We're in a hurry to get out that ad copy for Viking Vitamins, the Virile Vitalizer for Victory...
...A Painless Dream Absorber That's how it is...
...And so it goes on and on, till granny passes to a sockless beyond and the cat dies of a complication of old age and pie-tins...
...Sunlight and blossoms and little birds and your delightful job at the pickle warehouse...
...Aye, they shall return anon, but now, oh dear one, there is a warrior's work to do...
...And then the venerable Big Bang goes off with the rattle of 90 cracked Liberty Bells falling off the Washington Monument...
...When we see a film like that we feel all warm and buttery inside and resolve to stay at home some Shrove Tuesday and camp withvgranny under the parlor lamp...
...Especially brutal, this, because in the moments before waking we are visited by the most seductive dreams...
...And that's how it will be even in the glamorous homes of tomorrow unless something is done about it...
...we see things a thousand times over, and so do not see them at all...
...That would be humane...
...Its achievement may induce an American family to stay at home at least 10 minutes one evening each week...
Vol. 8 • April 1944 • No. 14
