the absence of endearment

year 2009 portrait of my friend mariana, to fit in the context of the dream.

I had a terrible dream today.

I honestly don’t remember it completely, but a scene was framed in the deepest corners of my mind; it was so alive that I don’t even know how I could miss it.

I was at a store looking at the unforgivable furniture of my old grandmother’s house, I’ve been here before in my dreams, is bigger than a supermarket and everything on sale belongs to my family, or resembles my childhood. We are at war or the end of the world (whatever it means) is near; perhaps is the simple memory of the arrival of a hurricane and the emergency shops in my early life, that I buried deep inside with the meaning of collusion…

I’m always there looking for something in specific and I end up loosing it because I see something mysterious and interesting.

Then, possibly by accident I see a face between the corridors that I’m not looking for. I decided not to follow him, as I believe he no longer means anything to me, my memories from our past together don’t belong to my actual self, and suddenly I realize I couldn’t care less. It feels like coming back home and recognize the road only by the maps you are seeing, not remembering the breathing trees and the songs you sang, that sank within the visual memories.

Two strangers, and he is a stranger I rather pass on.

I buy everything I need, and when I leave the store I have two friends following me… And now at the end of the parking load, there is a giant yellow plastic inflatable thing; there’s a group of guys I don’t know laying there as they smoke from a pipe, reddish eyes with something else than THC on their blood; there is the stranger once more.

I pass them by, and stop for a second as I look back over my shoulder. His face looks disfigured, probably because my mind felt that it was not worth it to hold closer the memory of when I first met him.

I walk back at them, realizing the sun is setting over the sea that is just behind the hill we found ourselves in… I reach him and hit him on the arm so he pays attention to me, and I start screaming at him, words hurting my throat as they were accompanied with sharp knives.

“You are a liar” I say pointing at the sun that shines the scene as an overexposed photograph “If you cannot see this, and enjoy it, If you cannot breath this air as it is given to us and appreciate it, If you cannot lay here with your friends and cherish it, If you believe you need your drugs to feel alive, you are a liar, and you know you are lying” “You are a coward”.

One of his friends laugh and for a moment it seems that I’m looking at the real he, but that idea vanishes as I discover that my statement was the last remnant of endearment. With my screams fading in the thin air, the past is finally dead.

I'm at the absence of endearment.

ps. if you wonder the man of who I write in this post, does not represent the relationship that inspired the time traveler series. This is the real past, the beginning of things, only the seventeen year old me remembers his face.