On the first night I returned to Tokyo, I dreamed of someone I never thought I would dream of again. The last time I dreamed of her was two years ago, which I had chronicled in painstaking detail to my friend Sebastian during a melancholic rant in Valentine's Day 2008.
In my dream, she and I were both in some sort of a bare living room adorned with illogically minimalistic decoration and furnitures, bathed in ethereal white glow. Even though it had been nearly three years since I've last seen her, when she had seemingly vanished from my life with inevitable finality, and I myself never making any effort to find out where she was, meeting the dream-her again made me joyous, a joy mirrored by the smile on her face that I have seldom seen on the face of her real-life counterpart.
Together we spoke, about many things, all kinds of things, but none of them I can really remember. Perhaps we spoke about nothing, yet because we were merely speaking, nothing felt like many things, or everything, or anything. Her voice from my memories used to sound like a lilting whisper, yet the voice of the dream-her was boisterous and snappy.
All of a sudden I told her about a film project I had been preparing for, I described about it in detail, and she listened attentively, more than she ever had in our real-life interactions.
The next exchange were the only lines I remember clearly from this damnably surrealistic dream.
"Are you shooting your film on HD? I did with mine, and when I applied for this grant, I was given a hundred thousand dollars, and then I kept most of the money for myself, spending just a few hundred for the film." She said with a mischievous smile on her face unlike anything I've ever seen from her real-life counterpart.
"Damn girl, you're a genius, no wonder I had loved you for more than two years." I said, I fixed my gaze upon her, wanting to get a clear look of her face, hoping to preserve another fleeting moment of her. As if I knew that I was in a dream.
Everything was clearly a dream. She had the face of the person buried deep within my memories, but not the distinctive birthmark on the left side of her chin. The dream-her was a more cheerful and feisty version of the real her, who was never cheerful nor feisty at all. The real her was a phlegmatic soul, and she was never a filmmaker like the dream-her.
In response to my remark, her laughter rang in the air, and even though she then asked me to shut up, a tiny flower had started growing within the inhospitable barren wasteland that was my heart.
Then I woke up to the sounds of raindrops outside my room on a Thursday morning.
In my dream, she and I were both in some sort of a bare living room adorned with illogically minimalistic decoration and furnitures, bathed in ethereal white glow. Even though it had been nearly three years since I've last seen her, when she had seemingly vanished from my life with inevitable finality, and I myself never making any effort to find out where she was, meeting the dream-her again made me joyous, a joy mirrored by the smile on her face that I have seldom seen on the face of her real-life counterpart.
Together we spoke, about many things, all kinds of things, but none of them I can really remember. Perhaps we spoke about nothing, yet because we were merely speaking, nothing felt like many things, or everything, or anything. Her voice from my memories used to sound like a lilting whisper, yet the voice of the dream-her was boisterous and snappy.
All of a sudden I told her about a film project I had been preparing for, I described about it in detail, and she listened attentively, more than she ever had in our real-life interactions.
The next exchange were the only lines I remember clearly from this damnably surrealistic dream.
"Are you shooting your film on HD? I did with mine, and when I applied for this grant, I was given a hundred thousand dollars, and then I kept most of the money for myself, spending just a few hundred for the film." She said with a mischievous smile on her face unlike anything I've ever seen from her real-life counterpart.
"Damn girl, you're a genius, no wonder I had loved you for more than two years." I said, I fixed my gaze upon her, wanting to get a clear look of her face, hoping to preserve another fleeting moment of her. As if I knew that I was in a dream.
Everything was clearly a dream. She had the face of the person buried deep within my memories, but not the distinctive birthmark on the left side of her chin. The dream-her was a more cheerful and feisty version of the real her, who was never cheerful nor feisty at all. The real her was a phlegmatic soul, and she was never a filmmaker like the dream-her.
In response to my remark, her laughter rang in the air, and even though she then asked me to shut up, a tiny flower had started growing within the inhospitable barren wasteland that was my heart.
Then I woke up to the sounds of raindrops outside my room on a Thursday morning.
