Last Night I Dreamt…

Last night I dreamt that a friend of mine died. He was the same friend mentioned in the post below, who introduced me to the music of Momus. This friend was a very independent spirit. He had a passion for travelling. As a result, he gave up his degree in medicine simply to travel, and I lost touch with him. I suppose I felt or suspected that he was not the kind who was good at keeping in touch, and so I never pursued the matter far. He was simply a friend who belonged to a particular time of my life, and whom I shall always think of as a friend if we meet again, or not. The last I heard, he has a family now, somewhere in Korea.

In the dream, it was too late for meeting again, though. I heard of his death in the same way I heard of his family in Korea – in a rumour that has crossed continents. When I heard the news, I wondered why I had not made the effort to get in touch with him, after all. Lives are so short, and his particularly. He was still young. What would happen to his family? What had been the point of it all? The travelling, the unfinished degree, the brief friendship, the new start in Korea, cut short?

But then, as if this were some kind of answer to such questions, I discovered that it was up to me to take care of his mortal remains. This was how we would meet again – with me burying him. It was not just the burial, but everything now that was my responsibility. I had to tell people that he had died – his friends and his family in Japan. I was still in touch with some of his friends, but not with his family, but it would be wrong of me to tell his friends before his family, and so I must keep silent on the matter until I could trace his family's address. In the meantime, I still had to bury him, while the corpse was fresh.

I say 'burying', but after I had placed his body in a coffin, I took it to the edge of a river and launched it onto the water. The coffin remained open, and the body was visible within, looking serene as an Indian saint. Indeed, I had a feeling that this river was the Ganges, though it looked much shallower, and the water was much clearer. I also knew that, when I had floated the body down the river, it would be burnt, as the bodies are that are taken to the Ganges.

Because the body was going to be reduced to ashes and lost forever, I followed the coffin as it floated down the river, and took photographs. I wanted some kind of record to show those I would later tell of his death. Then, after a while, the coffin became lodged under the wheels of a car that was parked in the river. This did not bother me too much, although its arrival at its destination would be delayed. Now, at least, the body would stay in one place, and I knew where it was. I took one last photograph and went off to tell people that he had died.

I next remember that I was in my monthly writing group. I had written a story all about my friend's death. The other writers were looking at it and scrawling red ink here and there, and telling me how I should change it. I was envious of my friend. I remembered how pure and serene he had looked, floating down that sparkling river. He was sacred and untouchable, beyond all reach. I had tried to write about it to communicate something of that to the world of the living, but it had ended up in this inky mess, with all these people seeing all the wrong words I had used and not the sacred whole that was beyond the words. I felt that it was sordid somehow, and yet, even this could not sully the sacredness of that death, just as being lodged beneath the car had not troubled my dead friend's tranquility.

Then, as they were suggesting corrections to my story, one of the other writers said to me, "You've changed the names, but this story is about you, really, isn't it?"

So ends the dream, or at least, so ends my memory of it. It is a dream with great resonance for me at the moment. The story I am writing now, called 'Shrike', seems to be coming from the same source as this dream. It is about death, and dealing with death in one's life. It is about the loss of people close to you, and the feeling of the sacred being made sordid, or being beyond reach of the sordid. And it is a story about telling stories. The dream could almost be a commentary on the story. Come to think of it, perhaps I will even use the dream in the story. Or perhaps I won't. In either case, the dream and the story seem to be twins of my imagination.