A Day I Won't Soon Forget

[mdj <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

Most weekdays begin for me in a similar way. An alarm penetrates
unconscious slumber and drags my mind, with varying degrees of
success, begrudgingly toward a conscious state. But not this day.
Today whilst hitting that button I recalled immediately the last time
I'd looked at that clock, two hours before. I'd awoken then with a
start, as I often do from a dream, because a dream usually means I've
slept in. But not this day.

Perhaps only moments before then I was immersed in a situation from
which subliminal splinters extruded. A man of my acquaintance had
fallen gravely ill, and I was on my way to the hospital to pay him my
respects. I arrived to a scene reminiscent of a mystery. The man had
gone missing, something that's impossible for unconscious men to do,
unless of course they're abducted.

Now playing the role of investigator, I sought the culprits of this
crime. Because of sketchiness of memory and a desire to avoid
aspersions against my sanity, I'll just say that the scene ends after
a flurry of fantastical boyhood heroics with the unconscious man being
returned to the hospital.

The next scene I'm travelling alone, en route to the hospital with a
mind and heart full of trepidation. Why I don't know, but I think it's
because I'm not sure I've done the right thing. On arrival I come upon
a jubilant scene. The man is awake, and seemingly recovered,
surrounded by his loved ones. He sees me and smiles, beckons me to his
side. I go there and embrace him, and I feel something. Something I
can't describe, yet I know what it is. The feeling has lasted until
this very minute.

And that's how my day started.

For some such experiences may not be unusual, but it's not often that
I recall the details of dreams, and when I do they tend to preoccupy.
The subliminal splinter festered in partial consciousness, interrupted
suddenly by the vibration of my phone. But it wasn't just a message,
it was another alarm.

Steve Jobs was dead.

For the second time today I feel awoken from a slumber, and much like
the other a brief one, immediately punctuated by alarm: wasn't I just
thinking about this? Choking back tears I tried to process the
confusion. I wasn't thinking about that, I was thinking about the
dream. Not the same thought surely. A clear dichotomy existed. Shortly
after I tried to talk to Michael, but I couldn't talk, so I cried. I
stopped myself crying, but only by trying to stop talking.

One splinter had now become two. But why did I cry?

The boy lay on his bed. Crying. Cowering himself, foetal, he cries out
in pain. He cries out for comfort, yet recoils at its offering.
Something real had been taken away, yet still given. It had never
existed, and yet it still persisted. Too young to understand what the
revelation means, yet perhaps not, he's only three. Quickly the
reality is replaced by illusion, and in time the reality is laid bare.
Is it not only what it appears to be? Yet the boy once happy,
confident, extroverted, is replaced by another. He exists in the world
yet lives in the dream, and he fights it. To make it what it was. What
it is.

The boy in the dream is fascinated with technology, and he falls for
the Apple, so they get him one. Immersing himself in it, he finds
home. Within it he finds a world of wonder, precision, and beauty,
bounded only by his own imagination. It adapts as he changes and grows
as he grows. It's the perfect gift, it keeps on giving, and it's
always what he wants it to be. An imaginary friend except it's
*real*.

He learns of the Steves, who created his world, and he idolises them.
The engineer with a mastery of elegance of simplicity. The dreamer and
artist, who see it and feels it, who longs to share it with others. He
perfects it, so others can see its perfection. He's the dreamer who
lives the dream, and the boy loves them both like they're gods. Yet
with one he seems to share something he's sure that they both
*adopted*.

On the train home this evening I thought about Steve, and I thought
about my dream. I remembered I'd watched the Apple presentation before
bed the night before, and that the splinter was really the empty chair
at the start of the presentation. Subconsciously, I knew what was
happening then. My world had started to crumble, and I was already
grieving. The splinters are gone now but the wound is still bleeding.
A world that's always been with me is gone, and yet it's still there.

Today, the world lost Steve. I met my future self. I'm still in shock.
And it wasn't a dream.

There's just one more thing: The man in my dream wasn't Steve. The man
in the dream is my Dad.