The blue sky was lined with white, cotton clouds. The sun was bright but it wasn’t burning hot. Instead, the whole weather had a slight post winter cool to it.
And in this beautiful weather, I had in my hands a book. I have no knowledge where it came from, but judging from the contents (of which I was to read later), I could infer that someone had given it to me, and exactly who.
Scanning around, it seemed I was in this endless sea of green grass, swaying in the gentle breeze like the lull of tolling waves over a calm ocean.
There was no one in sight, not even the faintest silhouette of civilization as far as the eye could see.
How did I get here? How did I obtain this book?
I wish I knew certain things.
Flipping through the book would be the most obvious thing to do and I began reading it.
The first page was a love letter, written to an anonymous person, written with such passion and feeling that I inevitably felt touched and could not help but assume the receiving end of this affection. And it was signed off by, of all people, G, the lady I’m preoccupied with.
The instant I saw her name, my heart raced as my brain fired up all its neurons at once.
So somehow, she had given me this book and disappeared. She had somehow vanished into thin air, given that the vast, endless expanse of this grassland had no trace of anyone walking away.
And in that book, she wrote of love.
The excitement drove me beyond the edge of reasoning. The mystery of how I got the book (or even how I ended here) disintegrated like dandelions scattered by the wind.
I read on feverishly. It seemed like a cookbook of sorts; pastries, cakes and chocolates; yet interspersed with journal entries aside from the cooking instructions.
The entries were anonymously written with no mention of names, and the only hint of anything was the reference of “me” and “you”. The entries spoke of the days that has passed before; days of joy, happiness, passion and love. Yet these days mentioned were unfamiliar to me. The more I read these entries, the more confused I felt.
Did these happen? Did I live a life I never knew?
As I read on, I felt as if the clear day descended on me like a thick foreboding fog. A grey ghostly mist of vagueness and suffocation, a dreamlike blur within a dream. I flipped on trying to comprehend, trying to beat the cloud that was enveloping me when all of the sudden, the next page cleared everything
The sky was blue and bright, and the grass was swaying to the breeze’s lullaby.
The next entry had “me”, “you” and my name. Despite spotting those, I did not manage to catch what was written.
I wish I knew certain things.
As it dawned on me that I had poorly assumed the previous entries to have been directed at me, my world shifted in an instant.
I was now at a crowded swimming pool with the most surrealistic (even in a dream) setting that I have ever been in.
The pool was huge but shallow, and there were a million people, if not more, all over the place.
And there were people cycling, real bicycles, midwaist in the water.
I was swimming around underwater with the agility of a penguin and unlimited breath, meandering amongst the columns of legs and spoke wheels.
With no idea of what I was doing or going, I surfaced a few times and I would catch fleeting glimpses of G, weaving in and out of the crowd. Sometimes appearing to my left, but I would catch her disappearing on my right. My eyes dodged all over the place, trying to focus on her, but she would always, cunningly, teasingly, remain in the peripherals of my sight.
And as I tried and tired to catch her, a nagging thought kept pounding at the back of my head. The pounding was getting harder and louder, and it seemed to sound like a muffled scream, a scream telling me that G’s boyfriend was somewhere around.
The confusion, the chaos, the crowd, the mess, the noise, the ghost of G and the pounding. The incessant pounding. Louder and louder.
It became all too overwhelming as the pounding drowned everything out.
And I was going mad.
Then I woke.
My alarm had reached its maximum volume.
I laid in bed, thinking of my dream. A bittersweet dream.
What could it mean? What is it trying to tell me? Had it any relation in what I have decided to do? Or was it hinting at what I have decided not to do?
I wish I knew what the last entry said.
I wish I knew certain things.
