[Notes from Al Qudra​]

​

After visiting Al Qudra (Flamingo Lake) outside of urban Dubai, my mind was interrupted by ideas about the cycle of imagination and reality. If the stories are true, Flamingo Lake, a lake district of nearly 25 acres and home now to over one hundred species of birds, was once only an imaginary place in someone's head before it became a reality. And someday again, following the lives of other lost human-made wonders, the Gardens of Babylon, the original New York City Penn Station, Flamingo Lake will one day not exist again, but more than that, it will become imaginary again. People will remember it, share its story, perhaps. This had me thinking of other cycles, the cycles of life and love. Particularly, the imagination and reality cycle of love between people—this story explores both this cycle platonically and romantically. 

​

Romantically, we might imagine someone before we meet them or get to truly know them, "dream them up," and then they become reality, and when they leave our lives, especially if there is no hope for reconciliation, they became imagination again in that process of letting them go in reality. Sometimes, they shrink or expand in our imagination as the years go on. Maybe this is worse for writers? Nevertheless, I think most people have wondered if they loved "the idea of someone" more than the actual person. 

​

Between the daughter and father in this story, its clearly imaginary—a hallucination!—but it wouldn't have been possible to have this imaginary conversation without their relationship once having been a reality. I believe, not completely unlike John Locke, that we are our memories, in our brains and tissues—and probably not much else. 

 

Unlike a lot of stories I write, which are long labors, I wrote this in a fit one night. And it has not changed much since the original version—probably because I sat with my thoughts on it awhile before I put fingertips to keyboard. I enjoyed writing this—I felt energetic when writing it and I think that comes through in the story's pace and quick prose.