Written across his chest… [a dream]


The walls were beginning to crack. Sand started to leak through and spill across the floor, and then, with a great crunch and the sound of stone fracturing apart, the wall finally collapsed into a dusty heap. He walked through from another world. A Roman Centurion; he was darkly handsome and his green eyes looked precious amongst the sand and dirt set in the creases of his face. He put down his shield – our history was written in feeling; No memory came as a vision, it was just undeniable fact, only known and not thought about – he was a lover from a long time ago. He took his chest plate off, we were laying side by side and his body was patterned with scars, souvenirs of war. As he noticed me examine his body I looked up in time to see him raise an eyebrow and then smirk.

  A moment passed and I got up and started walking, “You will.” He said reassuringly but said nothing else. I didn’t think but merely followed the direction of my feet, the path turned to dirt and each step scraped along as I marched up a hill. I cut through a dense forest until I was in a clearing framed by tall pine trees. A grizzly bear sat in front of a roll of parchment, as I approached him he lazily kicked his foot out and made the parchment roll out across the grass between us. The sun started to colour the sky with dawn, then I saw a symbol on his chest. It was Chinese or maybe Japanese perhaps. There was a brush on the grass and two jars of paint – one with red paint, the other white – he told me to begin and so I spread the red paint across the parchment with long strokes and then back again. I started with the white after. I painted the symbol and within it I wrote more words, words that I felt I knew but no meaning came to me. The bear looked over my efforts and told me “Good. But never forget it!”

After waking up the symbol was still there like a painting, set in my memory and so I looked it up. The Chinese meaning: Reality. Japanese: (similar symbol) Destiny/Life.

Hmm!