Saturday, April 26, 2003
Funny coincidence how we both decided to resume posting in the Blog today! :) Probably 'cause it's Saturday... LOL ;)
Kim... *grin right back at ya* ...your guess is well-made. Yes, having a girlfriend does find me out of my house more often than in front of my computer, BUT the reason why I have been away is... simply... I have Bloggers' Block. To say the truth, I've always had Bloggers' Block! That's why I post my dreams :) 'cause I have no idea what else to write about LOL And lately, dream-posting just hasn't been attractive to me... :(
When I look back at my earliest posts, I remember I wrote about my day... And I guess I could do that now too, but... What to write about?!
Um, yeah so, uh, I'll get back to you on that one...
:)
Roob'n
Kim... *grin right back at ya* ...your guess is well-made. Yes, having a girlfriend does find me out of my house more often than in front of my computer, BUT the reason why I have been away is... simply... I have Bloggers' Block. To say the truth, I've always had Bloggers' Block! That's why I post my dreams :) 'cause I have no idea what else to write about LOL And lately, dream-posting just hasn't been attractive to me... :(
When I look back at my earliest posts, I remember I wrote about my day... And I guess I could do that now too, but... What to write about?!
Um, yeah so, uh, I'll get back to you on that one...
:)
Roob'n
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Days ago... I had this very emotional dream...
Without easy access to the internet from uni, and having typed it out at work (uni), it is with such tardiness that I post this.
Cinema Dream-adiso
I finally had a very lucid dream (after days of dreaming garbage). And the dream turned into a movie; so much so, in fact, that I would not be surprised if I saw it on ‘widescreen’ ;)
The one about terminal illness and love:
I dreamt I had challenged my brother to a boxing match, at the front yard of my folks’ home. So I take off my shirt, ball up my fists, raise my arms in front of my face, and stand ready on the sidewalk...
But my brother is not there. There are people sitting on the grass; people I know, but can’t remember who they were. And they were cheering the fight on. And I felt really angry, like I really wanted to whoop some a$$! LOL The people watching the fight began to ‘boo’, ‘cause I wasn’t fighting. But there was no one to fight! But I swung anyway... and the people cheered! So I started to fight the air, and surprisingly, it exhausted me; as if I was actually fighting someone! And I even got hit once or twice, too! I lost my balance at some points, and the crowd went wild, but I got up again and kept fighting the air.
Suddenly I sensed the fight had stopped, and the crowd began to congratulate me with their cheers. I had defeated my opponent. Whoever it was.
Next, I find myself in a hospital, sitting up on the hospital bed, getting my wounds treated. I have a black eye, bruises on my head, and a cut across the bridge of my nose.
This is where the dream turned into a movie:
There’s a lady nurse that places a small machine (that looks like a calculator) on my bed. Then she plugs some extensions of the machine to my chest. And she turns a dial in the little machine and some numbers appear on it –235, 265- and I feel a little tickle all over my body, but the tickle is very discomforting. It doesn’t quite hurt, but I complain anyway. And the nurse turns the dial again and the numbers go down –25, 27- and I don’t feel anything anymore. But the nurse notices this, and claims that the machine is not doing its job, so she turns the dial again –245, 275- and I feel discomfort again. And I complain again. And so it happens back and forth; the nurse plays with the dial, up and down.
And I catch the eye of a young nurse nearby, and I plead with her, “Come help me! I’m receiving electric shocks! And this woman doesn’t know what she’s doing!”
The young nurse makes a disgruntled face, and comes over to scold the mean nurse. “What do you think you’re doing? That’s not how you treat patients!” Up close, I see that she’s very beautiful; because in fact, she’s played by actress Claire Forlani! ;) LOL :p
The original nurse ignores the young nurse, and continues her aggravating shock treatment. Then the young nurse gets angry and rips the machine from the older nurse’s hands; and finally, I receive the proper massaging shock treatment.
The young nurse and I get to talking, and we find out each other’s names. Claire’s Miriam and I play Jake. And we find out things about each other. She’s a nurse practitioner, and I’m a pre-teen with a terminal illness.
She takes blood samples and administers other tests and medications. And I feel time passing on, as I live my life (even go to school) inside the hospital, with Miriam as my nurse and best friend. I paint watercolor images for her, and make her greeting cards every day. She likes putting me to bed and talking soothingly to me before I fall asleep to nap. We become famous in the ward for being inseparable, and our joy becomes contagious, and the other kids begin to show good signs of health because of the fun and happiness.
But kids still die inside the ward. We all have the terminal illness, and we know our time will come, no matter how happy our lives may be currently. One of our favorite friends, Joaquin, dies. And we mourn him greatly. And miss him bad.
While coloring in a book about parks, I ask Miriam while I color a scene about kites, “Where will I go when I die?”
“Somewhere nice”, she tells me, “Somewhere beautiful.”
“Will YOU be there?”
“Maybe. I may not arrive at your same time. But when I do, rest assured I will find you, and we will be together.”
“Can we go now? We’re together now. Let’s go, and we can be with Joaquin. We can just fly to the heavens. Together. Like kites!”
“We can’t right now, sweetheart. We’re not ready for that yet. It’s not our time. Right now, our time is here. We need to take advantage of our time here.”
“I like spending time with you, here. Maybe we can go outside sometime and fly kites...”
“Maybe...”
And she gives me the warmest smile.
Time still passes. One day, I paint and do my math homework without Miriam. I miss her a lot, but I’m okay with it. As if it was something ordinary for her to be absent in my life. As if I had gotten used to it. But then I find a homemade greeting card with my school things, and it’s addressed to me. It has different-colored construction paper kites glued onto it, and the message says: ”Never forget, we will fly kites together one day. Until then, I will never forget you. I love you very much. Miriam.”
I cry. But then I stop, because I get suspicious, and a little angry. The message was dated: 1989!
I run to one of the nurses (played by one of my co-workers at Educational Services), who I felt I could trust (and seemed to have been working there for long years now), and I ask her, “She was fired wasn’t she?! That day!! She didn’t retire! She was fired! Because of me! Right? Is that why I get this now!? Who got this to me?!”
“She’s here, Jake”, the nurse replied, “She’s waiting for you, outside, in the back parking lot.”
“You know I can’t leave the ward...”
“You may be excused just this once, Jake”, the nurse smiled, “For this.”
And she led me to the back door (marked ‘Emergency Exit’), and I stepped out of the ward building; out onto the back parking lot. The sun was too bright for me, and I had to shield my eyes, but I could see a lone dark-blue van parked nearby. I slowed towards it, in my hospital gown, limping my way forward.
When I got close enough, I saw two old men sitting in the front of the van, who smiled when they saw me. And then I saw (through the windows) an older Claire Forlani in the backseat; and when she saw me, she turned her face and buried it into the chest of a man next to her.
So I decided to greet the old men first. They were very happy to see me, shaking my hand with utmost glee, and introduced themselves as Miriam’s dad and Miriam’s uncle. Then they allowed me to step into the back of the family van, and I saw the man that held the crying Claire. “That’s Miriam’s husband”, one of the old men said. “I am Jake. Very nice to meet you, sir”, I said to the husband, and extended my hand to greet him. He did not shake my hand. He simply smiled unhappily.
And then Miriam turned from her husband’s chest, and looked at me with her tear-filled eyes. Our eyes remained at a silent meeting for a few seconds, before she smiled and sniffled. She was about to say something, but I threw myself at her, longing for her hug. And we cried together in a firm embrace.
Next thing I know, we’re releasing each other from the hug, sitting on a couch, at her home. Her husband was there (he didn’t look too pleased), and so were the two old men. I understood that I was there for a visit, and I would be back at the hospital later.
I noticed a few things. Jake was no longer a boy; I was a young man. Miriam’s husband was played by Ralph Fiennes. And a little girl was playing in front of us, on the carpet of the living room floor. The little girl was my niece Taylor. But in the movie, she was Miriam’s daughter. We watched her play with building blocks, and it was explained to me that she suffered from the same illness I did. And, like me, was surviving well; longer than expected. She was showing a lot of progress, and they were even going to try to insert her into the social life soon.
I tell Miriam that I’m very happy for her; that I think everything is wonderful. And we smile at each other, and I reassure her that everything is fine with me. Suddenly, Miriam is showing me her dissertation. She was a doctor now.
Her dissertation was a photo-album-looking book. It was a study of hundreds of cases, hundreds of kids, with my disease. As I looked at it, and the pictures of the different kids, Miriam began to cry, “I wanted to see you. I tried to see you so many times! When I was working with these kids, I told them about you. I think sometimes it helped. They were so scared!”
I held her in my arms, and she cried on my shoulder. “I’m not scared anymore, Miriam”, I told her, “I understand the strength you’ve given me. And I’m ready for it to take me anywhere. As long as my heart is filled with the joy of you, I’m strong enough for anything.”
“I love you, Jake…”
“I love you, Miriam.”
And we hugged again. After the hug, Miriam cleared her eyes and wiped her nose, and got up to look on dinner or something. At some point, the old men had left the room, so that left me with her husband. “I’m very glad to get this opportunity”, I tell him, “To see your lives; how happy you are.”
“All she ever did was talk about you. All she ever thought of were the kids”, he seemed a little angry, “And then our own daughter is born with the disease. It rules our lives, and it comes before me. It always has.”
“Well I’m glad you stuck by her”, I replied, “She needed you, you must know that. She loves you and your daughter very much. The disease never came first, sir. Love did. She’s so full of love, and you’re a part of it. You’re a great man, to have remained with her, and to have loved her back.” I smile warmly at him.
The man gets teary-eyed, “If this makes her happy, that’s fine with me. But I can never understand it.” And with that, he got up and left.
I’m still smiling when the little girl moves up to join me on the couch. She smiles back at me. I move my hand over to touch her; caress her hair. But I never reach her. I lose the smile and pause my hand in mid-air, as I receive a great jolt of pain in my stomach; and then the pain travels throughout the rest of my body.
I manage to smile again. “Thank you, Miriam”, I say, “Thank you for giving me so much strength. Thank you for giving me so much love. Thank you, Miriam.” And I drop my arm, and freeze. I still have my eyes open (and I can see everything) and I’m still smiling, but I can’t move at all.
“My name’s not Miriam”, the little girl says, “Mommy!!”
Miriam comes running in, and halts in front of me. She releases a tiny gasp and a sniffle, but smiles back at me. She reaches over to my face to close my eyes, and whispers, “It’s nice and beautiful, isn’t it Jake? I will meet you. I will meet you there, Jake.”
Everything is blacked-out for a bit; then I find myself under a lamppost, at a foggy street, in front of a house. I’m with two other guys who are wearing leather jackets, with some kind of insignia over the hearts. They hand me a pair of the same leather jackets. I wear one; the other, I carry in my hand. “If you need anything…”, one of them tells me. “I’ll be alright”, I reply. And I walk over to the house.
I enter the house, without knocking, with the jacket in my hand. I’m in a kitchen, where an old lady is chopping vegetables. When she looks up at me, I see it’s an old version of Claire Forlani.
“I knew you’d come for me”, she says.
“Aren’t we meant to do this together?”, I reply, “From here, I join you, and we don’t have to be apart ever again.”
“I don’t believe you’re here”, she makes like she’s about to cry, “I cannot believe that you can be here…”
“I am with you. I always have been. Believe that.”, my eyes water.
“But I wasn’t there with you!”, Miriam breaks down, crying, “I didn’t try hard enough! I should have been there for you! I shouldn’t have left you alone! If I hadn’t come to see you that day, then you would have-”
“I would have gone with you in my heart, as where you had always been! I only lived because of you! I’m a miracle! I’m your miracle! Miriam, you’re the reason for those years of my life, and you’re the reason why I’m here now… Because you mean so much to me… Because you’ve done so much…”
“I’m scared…”, she shivers.
“Don’t be.”, I comfort her, while I wrap the leather jacket around her shoulders, “You were right. It’s nice and beautiful where we’re going.”
“And you’ll stay with me?”
“I’ll never leave your side.”
And we floated up, out of the kitchen, through a foggy nothingness… swaying in a warm breeze, towards a bright sky.
Like kites.
And that was the end of my dream.
Roob’n
Without easy access to the internet from uni, and having typed it out at work (uni), it is with such tardiness that I post this.
Cinema Dream-adiso
I finally had a very lucid dream (after days of dreaming garbage). And the dream turned into a movie; so much so, in fact, that I would not be surprised if I saw it on ‘widescreen’ ;)
The one about terminal illness and love:
I dreamt I had challenged my brother to a boxing match, at the front yard of my folks’ home. So I take off my shirt, ball up my fists, raise my arms in front of my face, and stand ready on the sidewalk...
But my brother is not there. There are people sitting on the grass; people I know, but can’t remember who they were. And they were cheering the fight on. And I felt really angry, like I really wanted to whoop some a$$! LOL The people watching the fight began to ‘boo’, ‘cause I wasn’t fighting. But there was no one to fight! But I swung anyway... and the people cheered! So I started to fight the air, and surprisingly, it exhausted me; as if I was actually fighting someone! And I even got hit once or twice, too! I lost my balance at some points, and the crowd went wild, but I got up again and kept fighting the air.
Suddenly I sensed the fight had stopped, and the crowd began to congratulate me with their cheers. I had defeated my opponent. Whoever it was.
Next, I find myself in a hospital, sitting up on the hospital bed, getting my wounds treated. I have a black eye, bruises on my head, and a cut across the bridge of my nose.
This is where the dream turned into a movie:
There’s a lady nurse that places a small machine (that looks like a calculator) on my bed. Then she plugs some extensions of the machine to my chest. And she turns a dial in the little machine and some numbers appear on it –235, 265- and I feel a little tickle all over my body, but the tickle is very discomforting. It doesn’t quite hurt, but I complain anyway. And the nurse turns the dial again and the numbers go down –25, 27- and I don’t feel anything anymore. But the nurse notices this, and claims that the machine is not doing its job, so she turns the dial again –245, 275- and I feel discomfort again. And I complain again. And so it happens back and forth; the nurse plays with the dial, up and down.
And I catch the eye of a young nurse nearby, and I plead with her, “Come help me! I’m receiving electric shocks! And this woman doesn’t know what she’s doing!”
The young nurse makes a disgruntled face, and comes over to scold the mean nurse. “What do you think you’re doing? That’s not how you treat patients!” Up close, I see that she’s very beautiful; because in fact, she’s played by actress Claire Forlani! ;) LOL :p
The original nurse ignores the young nurse, and continues her aggravating shock treatment. Then the young nurse gets angry and rips the machine from the older nurse’s hands; and finally, I receive the proper massaging shock treatment.
The young nurse and I get to talking, and we find out each other’s names. Claire’s Miriam and I play Jake. And we find out things about each other. She’s a nurse practitioner, and I’m a pre-teen with a terminal illness.
She takes blood samples and administers other tests and medications. And I feel time passing on, as I live my life (even go to school) inside the hospital, with Miriam as my nurse and best friend. I paint watercolor images for her, and make her greeting cards every day. She likes putting me to bed and talking soothingly to me before I fall asleep to nap. We become famous in the ward for being inseparable, and our joy becomes contagious, and the other kids begin to show good signs of health because of the fun and happiness.
But kids still die inside the ward. We all have the terminal illness, and we know our time will come, no matter how happy our lives may be currently. One of our favorite friends, Joaquin, dies. And we mourn him greatly. And miss him bad.
While coloring in a book about parks, I ask Miriam while I color a scene about kites, “Where will I go when I die?”
“Somewhere nice”, she tells me, “Somewhere beautiful.”
“Will YOU be there?”
“Maybe. I may not arrive at your same time. But when I do, rest assured I will find you, and we will be together.”
“Can we go now? We’re together now. Let’s go, and we can be with Joaquin. We can just fly to the heavens. Together. Like kites!”
“We can’t right now, sweetheart. We’re not ready for that yet. It’s not our time. Right now, our time is here. We need to take advantage of our time here.”
“I like spending time with you, here. Maybe we can go outside sometime and fly kites...”
“Maybe...”
And she gives me the warmest smile.
Time still passes. One day, I paint and do my math homework without Miriam. I miss her a lot, but I’m okay with it. As if it was something ordinary for her to be absent in my life. As if I had gotten used to it. But then I find a homemade greeting card with my school things, and it’s addressed to me. It has different-colored construction paper kites glued onto it, and the message says: ”Never forget, we will fly kites together one day. Until then, I will never forget you. I love you very much. Miriam.”
I cry. But then I stop, because I get suspicious, and a little angry. The message was dated: 1989!
I run to one of the nurses (played by one of my co-workers at Educational Services), who I felt I could trust (and seemed to have been working there for long years now), and I ask her, “She was fired wasn’t she?! That day!! She didn’t retire! She was fired! Because of me! Right? Is that why I get this now!? Who got this to me?!”
“She’s here, Jake”, the nurse replied, “She’s waiting for you, outside, in the back parking lot.”
“You know I can’t leave the ward...”
“You may be excused just this once, Jake”, the nurse smiled, “For this.”
And she led me to the back door (marked ‘Emergency Exit’), and I stepped out of the ward building; out onto the back parking lot. The sun was too bright for me, and I had to shield my eyes, but I could see a lone dark-blue van parked nearby. I slowed towards it, in my hospital gown, limping my way forward.
When I got close enough, I saw two old men sitting in the front of the van, who smiled when they saw me. And then I saw (through the windows) an older Claire Forlani in the backseat; and when she saw me, she turned her face and buried it into the chest of a man next to her.
So I decided to greet the old men first. They were very happy to see me, shaking my hand with utmost glee, and introduced themselves as Miriam’s dad and Miriam’s uncle. Then they allowed me to step into the back of the family van, and I saw the man that held the crying Claire. “That’s Miriam’s husband”, one of the old men said. “I am Jake. Very nice to meet you, sir”, I said to the husband, and extended my hand to greet him. He did not shake my hand. He simply smiled unhappily.
And then Miriam turned from her husband’s chest, and looked at me with her tear-filled eyes. Our eyes remained at a silent meeting for a few seconds, before she smiled and sniffled. She was about to say something, but I threw myself at her, longing for her hug. And we cried together in a firm embrace.
Next thing I know, we’re releasing each other from the hug, sitting on a couch, at her home. Her husband was there (he didn’t look too pleased), and so were the two old men. I understood that I was there for a visit, and I would be back at the hospital later.
I noticed a few things. Jake was no longer a boy; I was a young man. Miriam’s husband was played by Ralph Fiennes. And a little girl was playing in front of us, on the carpet of the living room floor. The little girl was my niece Taylor. But in the movie, she was Miriam’s daughter. We watched her play with building blocks, and it was explained to me that she suffered from the same illness I did. And, like me, was surviving well; longer than expected. She was showing a lot of progress, and they were even going to try to insert her into the social life soon.
I tell Miriam that I’m very happy for her; that I think everything is wonderful. And we smile at each other, and I reassure her that everything is fine with me. Suddenly, Miriam is showing me her dissertation. She was a doctor now.
Her dissertation was a photo-album-looking book. It was a study of hundreds of cases, hundreds of kids, with my disease. As I looked at it, and the pictures of the different kids, Miriam began to cry, “I wanted to see you. I tried to see you so many times! When I was working with these kids, I told them about you. I think sometimes it helped. They were so scared!”
I held her in my arms, and she cried on my shoulder. “I’m not scared anymore, Miriam”, I told her, “I understand the strength you’ve given me. And I’m ready for it to take me anywhere. As long as my heart is filled with the joy of you, I’m strong enough for anything.”
“I love you, Jake…”
“I love you, Miriam.”
And we hugged again. After the hug, Miriam cleared her eyes and wiped her nose, and got up to look on dinner or something. At some point, the old men had left the room, so that left me with her husband. “I’m very glad to get this opportunity”, I tell him, “To see your lives; how happy you are.”
“All she ever did was talk about you. All she ever thought of were the kids”, he seemed a little angry, “And then our own daughter is born with the disease. It rules our lives, and it comes before me. It always has.”
“Well I’m glad you stuck by her”, I replied, “She needed you, you must know that. She loves you and your daughter very much. The disease never came first, sir. Love did. She’s so full of love, and you’re a part of it. You’re a great man, to have remained with her, and to have loved her back.” I smile warmly at him.
The man gets teary-eyed, “If this makes her happy, that’s fine with me. But I can never understand it.” And with that, he got up and left.
I’m still smiling when the little girl moves up to join me on the couch. She smiles back at me. I move my hand over to touch her; caress her hair. But I never reach her. I lose the smile and pause my hand in mid-air, as I receive a great jolt of pain in my stomach; and then the pain travels throughout the rest of my body.
I manage to smile again. “Thank you, Miriam”, I say, “Thank you for giving me so much strength. Thank you for giving me so much love. Thank you, Miriam.” And I drop my arm, and freeze. I still have my eyes open (and I can see everything) and I’m still smiling, but I can’t move at all.
“My name’s not Miriam”, the little girl says, “Mommy!!”
Miriam comes running in, and halts in front of me. She releases a tiny gasp and a sniffle, but smiles back at me. She reaches over to my face to close my eyes, and whispers, “It’s nice and beautiful, isn’t it Jake? I will meet you. I will meet you there, Jake.”
Everything is blacked-out for a bit; then I find myself under a lamppost, at a foggy street, in front of a house. I’m with two other guys who are wearing leather jackets, with some kind of insignia over the hearts. They hand me a pair of the same leather jackets. I wear one; the other, I carry in my hand. “If you need anything…”, one of them tells me. “I’ll be alright”, I reply. And I walk over to the house.
I enter the house, without knocking, with the jacket in my hand. I’m in a kitchen, where an old lady is chopping vegetables. When she looks up at me, I see it’s an old version of Claire Forlani.
“I knew you’d come for me”, she says.
“Aren’t we meant to do this together?”, I reply, “From here, I join you, and we don’t have to be apart ever again.”
“I don’t believe you’re here”, she makes like she’s about to cry, “I cannot believe that you can be here…”
“I am with you. I always have been. Believe that.”, my eyes water.
“But I wasn’t there with you!”, Miriam breaks down, crying, “I didn’t try hard enough! I should have been there for you! I shouldn’t have left you alone! If I hadn’t come to see you that day, then you would have-”
“I would have gone with you in my heart, as where you had always been! I only lived because of you! I’m a miracle! I’m your miracle! Miriam, you’re the reason for those years of my life, and you’re the reason why I’m here now… Because you mean so much to me… Because you’ve done so much…”
“I’m scared…”, she shivers.
“Don’t be.”, I comfort her, while I wrap the leather jacket around her shoulders, “You were right. It’s nice and beautiful where we’re going.”
“And you’ll stay with me?”
“I’ll never leave your side.”
And we floated up, out of the kitchen, through a foggy nothingness… swaying in a warm breeze, towards a bright sky.
Like kites.
And that was the end of my dream.
Roob’n
Regarding Me
The thing is, Kim, I don't want to be burned out! I don't want to be doing things in my life that burn me out...
Things have to change...
I just don't know what.
Or what to change them to.
:(
Roob'n
The thing is, Kim, I don't want to be burned out! I don't want to be doing things in my life that burn me out...
Things have to change...
I just don't know what.
Or what to change them to.
:(
Roob'n
