Last night, I was out grabbing sushi and tall Asahis with a brilliant Los Angeles friend of mine. He's one of the world's one of a kinds and every time we get together, I'm better because of it.
So we sit down and he's heavy and hurting, and I find out he just issued a breakup. It's November and getting cold and I feel like these things are happening everywhere. That or just random bouts of sting - I've been seeing it a lot.
We talk, just trying to move through his stuff, trying to push it around to a place where it's not weighing, maybe for a night, this Monday night. And I tell him that I feel for him, and he knows I was in it not too long ago with my last girl - knowing my distance and perspective. And he knows that I know how raw it can get when I'm telling him things he already knows, that it was the right decision, that the badness isn't going to go away. It's going to take it's time and stick around until it decides not to, which could be a distant and unwelcome commitment. And as I'm saying all this, I had no idea...chemicals were aligning in my mind, setting up my coming night...
I was watching a clip from Danny Boyle's The Beach on HBO before I left to go out, so that's what the setting of my dream became. I was on this beach with friends, and it was beautiful and peaceful and we were spending the day hanging out, laying out in the sun and swimming and all of a sudden, some guy comes running up to me, out of breath, face flushed, scared. It was one of my best friends from high school and still. We called him "Scare." He told me she was coming. I said who. He said a name which I can not repeat, but it was my ex-girlfriend...my ex-girlfriend who I adored and still have nothing but love for but for whatever reasons, we are no longer speaking and I think she hates (prob not, but allow it here for operational purposes) me. Word on the island was that she was hunting me, that people had seen her carrying a Katana sword - that she was planning on dispatching me with it. Of course I looked to Scare, scared out of my mind because I knew how proficient she would be with said sword and said something like, well fuck Scare, get me a Katana sword.
I spent the next couple days watching over my back, feeling like I was on the run, feeling like I was being hunted. Somewhere in the stretch of days, I wandered onto this blindingly white sand beach and knew I had walked right into the setup of my mind's dramatic conclusion. Dream like mine for 27 years and you learn to pick out the tags. She appeared like a mist on the far side of the beach and began her supernatural approach. There was a Katana sword on her belt and I realized I was fucked...
That's when Scare came charging from the jungle with object in hand. When he got closer, I could see the glimmering steel in his hand. He had actually fetched me a Katana sword. I remember exactly grabbing hold of his head and kissing his cheek before proclaiming, "My squire!" Then he ran off and left me to die.
She was standing before me when she pulled her sword. And I looked at her, this girl I haven't seen in real life since late August. I remember thinking are we really going to do this...all I wanted to do was take her in, just to see her, just to say hello. Her eyes were so cold, just anger and I remember trying to smile to soften her, to get her to cave and tell me that everything, all of this had been a terrible misunderstanding, in life and in dreams. But she offered nothing. Quickly, I realized that I had no skill with a sword, so I decided to fake it by dishing a display of attempted wizardry. You know, where you just kind of thrash and twirl the thing around in the air and around your body with speed and grace but actual seizure. I thought at least it might lighten the mood.
Instead, she pulled her sword and came at me. I defended with speed and ignorance, I thought, but something immediately occurred. I was good, actually, instantly good. And then I realized that I wasn't just going to be able to defend myself, but that I was either going to kill or be killed.
Then I drew first blood, stabbing her in the shoulder...
The shit thing about dreams is that they're not real. There's nothing concrete by which we can grab hold, nothing to take with us back to the real world. But the feelings that happen, they stay. They remain so when we wake, we wake with everything that came in the night. Today, I woke with acid, fucking acid and so here I am...
I stabbed her again, somewhere close to her heart and by then, she was bleeding out onto the sand and I was crying because all I wanted was peace. I wanted to sit on the beach and watch the sun and have words and laugh about this Katana duel, but that was a dream within a dream. I felt like I was rotting inside when she smiled, revealed her toying with me - just giving me hope of survival, maybe...or a gift of satisfaction, allowing my hurting her, knowing it would in turn, turn me inside out.
That's when she took me apart. She got through my defenses, stabbed me through my shoulder, my shoulder, my leg, hip, stomach, arm. She sliced my cheek, my hands, my forearms. I was finished, fell to my knees and she stood there, over me, having conquered me.
We looked to each other and I wanted to speak but couldn't. In the next blinding stroke of her sword, she twirled the blade in her hand and in the same instant, instead of finishing me off, she both cut off her own head and turned into a small wooden doll.
The tide crept up and tried to sweep what was left of her out to sea. I grabbed her head and body. Scare came running again from the woods, looked at me...carved and bloody. I looked to him and handed him the wooden doll and said something like I probably shouldn't keep this and then ran into the ocean. And I felt the salt water rushing in and through me, and under the water I opened my eyes and watched as my wounds closed and healed.
When I came up for air, I couldn't help but admire the landscape, the world painted before me and the thought of it without people who at certain times in our world mean the world to us. I turned over onto my back and closed my eyes and floated, let the tide carry me away.
