I was supposed to die amidst twisted metal and fire last Sunday, but I am not dead. About a month before, a strange acquaintance from a former life notified me by way of internet that he'd had a dream... no it was more than a dream it was a vision. He had seen my love and I die, and then noted that a calender near by read April 17th. Dreams have a way of making sense often despite blatant absurdity. This felt real to him in a way that he didn't really even expect me to understand. But I did understand. Not long before I received his message, I had a similar experience in which I witnessed the death of a dear friend and her young son. As they entered a particular intersection near their home, a man in a large commercial truck was searching for something on the seat next to him, failing to notice the hue of the traffic light shifting from green to yellow to red. Death was immediate upon impact. The next seen was of her husband and daughter alone contemplating a future without the other half of their family. I did not want to scare her, but I had to say something. She agreed to take a different route, and not to drive alone with her son for a while. Perhaps, this new vision was a continuation of something that had I had already set into motion. Maybe the signals are there for those who are willing to hear them. Of course, it could also be that I am crazy like they say, and the only reality that exists is the one that we can see and touch. Whatever the truth of the matter may be, I heeded the warning, stayed home, and planted corn and sunflowers in my garden.
The next day I feel ill. It started with a deep exhaustion like none I'd felt before. Then fluids began leaking from every orifice. No amount of soup or tea or warmth seemed to provide any relief. I tried to will myself well as I have done on many occasions, but my condition continued to worsen. Time stood still. Days passed. Shadows moved across walls. I drifted in and out of medicated sleep. My dreams were haunting and disturbing. I took to reading books that asked intriguing questions about the nature of humanity and the struggle between the individual and the collective. Each author had a way of placing the personal stories of love between alienated people into a greater sociopolitical context that shed gentle light like that of the moon, illuminating the hidden subtleties within their pages. I shivered in the heat and sweated the toxins out of my system. I wrote songs for ghosts. I remembered things I'd intentionally forgotten as everything I'd ever known flowed through the pores of my skin. At last I realized that I may have changed my "fate" but the death that had been meant for me would now have to move through me. I would have to feel it. I would have to suffer, think, ask questions, remember, sweat, cry, and be humbled by the fragility of my body's little system. And now I have taken leave from my sick bed to spend the small amount of energy I have regained to write if for no other reason that to prove that I am in fact still living.
