the gaze

one time i had a dream that i met a lady who used a crystal ball.

she would stare into the orb and eventually visions would appear. sometimes they revealed to her distant events. other times she could look into the past and discern the causes of events that were not apparent in the moment itself.

occasionally, she would look at the current hour and use the orb to understand the connections and disconnections of the present. she would be able to comprehend the meaning of relationships between the most unlikely of events such as the falling of the leaves and the size of the bubbles in the boiling waters of the tea kettle. she would trace tiny filaments of the past into the present and see the web of knotted jewels that surround us and form our minds.

my pet-fish, bubbles, asked her if she could predict the future with her crystal ball. he was thinking about his results at the pachinko parlors. she said that it was possible, but that she rarely did so.

bubbles asked "why?"

she told him that the future is always flickering and the forms were less concrete. when people payed her to know the future, they generally wanted solid answers that would retain their form. all that she could offer them was vague, unnamed, emotions, flickering pigments, and geometries of time that collapsed and reformed.

bubbles told her it didn't matter. he said that he knew one day the working class would rise up and seize the method of production. the surplus value created by labor would return to the proletariat and eventually the state would wither away. history would reach a conclusion.

bubbles said that her notions of diachrony were flawed -- as was evident in the crystal ball's inability to generate any synthesis in predicatively equivalent forms.

the crystal ball lady said this sounded very spooky and full of conjecture. 

bubbles said she should trade in her crystal ball for a sewing machine, a bicycle, a wristwatch, or a radio.

she said that she'd have to wait and see. her name was alexandra.