INT. FIFTH AVENUE CINEMAS — DAY
Maura and Aaron are at concession. It’s downtime, between shows.
Maura: He lives in Maryland.
Aaron: Uh oh.
Maura: It’s too late. I’m falling.
Me: No, it’s not. You can easily fall out of love.
Maura: [laughs] You’re so cynical.
Aaron says nothing.
I had a dream last night, and a very vivid one too. I was with some of my friends, and it was a sunny day. We were going across the city, through narrow passages between buildings. I was following my friend Lulu, who seemed to know where she was going, which was good because I sure as hell didn’t.
Eventually we came to this little shop. A woman inside told us to sit down at this large table. She said she was a psychic of some sort, and that she’d be able to tell us the future. Lulu sat beside me. She was playing with some tea lights. The woman told us to each take a candle/tea light and to light it. My tea light burned weakly. I think it was because there was a lot of melted wax, so the wick wasn’t exposed very much.
The woman started chanting some stuff. She told us that we would see our futures and I think most of us were pretty skeptical about it. I heard and noticed people around me oooh-ing and ahh-ing at things, but I wasn’t sure what they were seeing. An image formed before my eyes, like a hologram. There were three divers and two of them were having some unusual form of sex while the third was oblivious, swimming nearby. I kept watching, not knowing what this all meant, all the while still hearing my friends around me being amazed and excited and scared at their futures.
Lulu moved her hand around my hologram future-thing when she noticed I was unusually quiet, unlike everyone else. I waved her off, telling her I was watching it all unfold.
This next part is sort of a blank. I can’t remember it, unfortunately, but I can remember what I was watching had me extremely emotional and upset; events were implied, which I already knew to be true and it scared me. What I mean is this:
I was one year or two in the past. Don’t ask me why or how that happened. It was a dream. Strange things happen like that.
What I saw (or rather, what I saw implied) was that I’d meet a really interesting guy who I would eventually love, only to have it all break, leaving me in ruins. The thing is, since I was from the future, I already knew this to be true and I was suddenly so upset and emotional that I had the chance of possibly saving myself the hurt that I had already felt.
I could change my present by changing the past. But that would mean I would never meet Kem, that I would never get to know him and never love him. It would also, potentially, mean that I wouldn’t go through that slut phase I went through after our breakup, something I regret going through.
I cried. No, I bawled. I completely broke down watching my hologram future but it still continued. The image transformed into a forest of strange stalks of some sort, kind of like tulips. I kept crying and from behind the shrubs, a face appeared. It was a woman, her face done with makeup, ancient and mystic-looking. I asked her to stop, that I couldn’t take anymore, and she told me there was so much more I could know, but I refused. I had enough. She accepeted my response and then asked me, “What do you treasure the most, right now?”
I looked around and saw my friends, laughing. I told her my friends were the most important part of my life and that I loved them. Sure, I love my family as well, but there were certain things I couldn’t tell them that I could only feel comfortable telling my friends. She nodded, and rolled out a toy ball from behind the glade. It was decorated like a clown.
She told me to go have fun with them, to clown around, essentially. Then she and the hologram disappeared. I looked over at my friends. They each all had balls of their own, playing with them joyfully across the table. I smiled, but there was still something on my mind.
When we were all done, I went to see the woman, the psychic. I told her I saw things I knew would happen, and wondered if there was any way I could prevent it. I think she told me something, but I can’t remember. Soon after that, I woke up.
The odd thing about this (as if this wasn’t odd enough) is that I’ve thought about this idea before. I wrote a script about a guy who’s told he has a choice between two paths: finding and loving someone deeply for a short while but being emotionally devastated after, or not experiencing true love for an unknown amount of time. In the end, the protagonist accepts the road of love, knowing fully he’ll be hurt.
In my dream, I was a few years in the past, and the fact that I apparently had a choice to not only change how I would be emotionally but who I could be as a person (ie. not meeting Kem could change me from the person that I am now) was so powerful, so important that I was so upset. When I wrote the script as a “What if” sort of thing, I began to wonder in my own life, if I had the choice as to whether or not I met Kem and I knew it would make me so sad after for so long, would I still meet him? What would I do?
And now with this dream, I actually had the chance. If the choice were presented to me, I honestly don’t know what I would do. Before I ever started dating anyone, I didn’t know how bad a breakup leave you feeling. If I did know (ie. if the choice were given to me now), I think I might be safe and decide not to have met Kem at all. But if the choice were given to me two years ago, I probably would’ve gone for love because I was so… ready, I guess is the right word. I really was ready to dedicate myself to someone and I wanted to know what it would be like, which isn’t to say that I don’t want to date someone now, but that because of my past relationship, it’s left me a lot more jaded and hesitant about spending my feelings on someone.
Anyway, this was all a random expelling of thoughts that’ve been in my mind since waking up this morning, so if you’re wondering why my writing is really simple and not that great, that’s why. I’ll probably be thinking about this for a few days.
Sigh.
aaron's random musings 