Dream Upon Dream...

A few weeks back, I had another one of these recurring dreams of mine. I am only reminded of this because of a recent event. Sometimes, the memory is jarred by another dream. Otherwise, it is a circumstance of real life that triggers the memory.

These dreams, they feel like me living someone else's life for a few moments. Weirdly enough, just as strange as it was for John Cusack in Being John Malkovich.

They run along the same themes -- being in a vehicular accident, followed by scenes of some home i don't really know but feel I belong to for some reason. In the past it was a owner-type jeep that turned turtle after I had driven it backwards so fast in a panic over a bridge, as flood waters overcame what was the road I passed. The other time it was a motorcycle that I drove until I realized I was floating slowly up, leaving the motorcycle to careen of into the dirt roadside, me flying over a line of low trees over a sparse forest with nothing but the sound wind whistling in my ear to keep me company.

Dream upon dream, the car scenes were always followed by another, of homes and of places that felt like home. Places I felt I missed, but never really knew. There was this one that stuck to me. As I entered the long roofed garage-way just barely lit to fight off the darkness of dusk, I saw my father who passed many years ago. He was muttering something, trying to find something rummaging through stuffed boxes piled on the floor, absentmindedly nodding my way as though to welcome me home. I was thinking (in my dream of course), if dad was here where could Oliver and Jan be? They must be around here somewhere, playing. This is course being a dream, I was oblivious to how ridiculous it would have been for grown men to be playing. But then again, my brothers had just barely turned into men when they were taken by death. I wander on towards the house and go upstairs. I find a window, open it and start to climb out. There's another window adjacent to it and I try to cross to it. But the gap is just enough to make it impractical to reach or leap to. So I set my foot down on the piece of roofing that bridges the gap between both. I think to myself, in the growing darkness of night, this house feels so much like the house in Concepcion where I spent summers with my brothers. It was a house where we never felt we were strangers even though we were. We were family, but at the same time we were unfamiliar.

This one a few days back was the strangest in recent memory. You know how they say that you only remember the last parts of your dream? It's probably true. It's probably the parts of your dream that come nearest the near-wake state of your brain. This one was quite long for that period of almost-awakedness. It started off with a dirt-bike. I was driving it, and I was driving it fast through dark empty city streets lined with walled homes. Not very unlike that blind corner on Quezon Street nearest Sto. Entierro, only this long street is that blind corner over and over again. I could hear the roar of the engine as I negotiated the turns one after the other. The turns seemed to come more often as I begin to go faster and faster. I fight off the urge to slow, my mind telling  me to slow down as I barely miss the walls lining the curbs. I struggle harder and harder to keep myself lined up with the street and avoid the walls. And then it ends, a moment before I hit a wall.

What follows is the requisite almost-my-home scene. I'm in what seems to be a wide-roofed patio straight out of an expensive movie. White sheer curtains line the parts of it exposed to the lush-green garden outside. Dark brown colored furniture,  almost all hardwood, lined the place. I then see her. Her face is unfamiliar to me, but yet I feel I know her. She was appropriately dressed for the hot weather. She wore open a white long-sleeved button-down shirt over a white tank top with matching white shorts. I was thinking (in my dream, of course), why not khaki? Her features were clearly Asian. She almost looked like Julia Clarete, only much thinner and with more Oriental features. Her skin was wonderfully brown. Dark some people would say, but just right in my opinion. I start to cry as she approaches and she reaches out to hold my arm to console me. I break down. She nods in silence, as if to say I am forgiven. Then I wake up sobbing in my bunk bed, confused tears running down my cheeks. A moment later, I realize I had not slept in a bunk bed since my brothers died 18 years ago. I wake up again, this time for real, with the blazing afternoon sun shining on my face through the window that lay across the bed I slept in. As I came to my senses, I struggled to remember the dream. I'm not sure why, but I felt a strong urge that I should remember her. That I should remember the girl that forgave me...