End of the Road


It's the end of a dream.

Never has such a sentence been made with such resonance. Dreams, after all, are transient in their own ways. It does not have a measurable meter, nor is it physically grasped in the same way that you and I do. Reach for your dreams, aim for it, but of course, within the physical world, though those are the words that may, from time to time, ring within our ears, it is nigh on impossible to do so.

Dreams are things that, in the most literal of senses, do not exist.

And yet...

...and yet here I am, standing. Waiting and...feeling.

The hair on the back of my neck began to stand. Rise, erect, hailing the chief, the new leader, the change in atmosphere. We know not now the causes of such a situation, but the effect is palpable.

The dream is dying.

I looked around. The paint is as pristine as ever. The furniture are all in place, without as much as a fraction of soft leather out of place. The television doesn't seem like it has been turned on for a while, but the very thin layer of dust does not disguise its quality or functionality.

I walked over to the TV, and picked up one of the plethora of remotes next to it. Actually, I lied; there's only three. One each for the TV, stereo and DVD player. Still, it seemed to my trained eye, at least, to be three more than necessary. There's still a part of me that rejects the access of almost every single thing at my fingertips, despite the fact that I may well qualify to be a fully-fledged member of the 21st century. My soul is old; could I be a person reincarnated? "Dude," my friend Mus, once proclaimed, "I can't believe you walked in there and came out with 'The Very Best of...Frank Sinatra." It's true, I loved and still adore Ol' Blue Eyes. Mus, as an aside, is my cosmic brother, as we both share the same birthday. I doubt whether cosmic brother is actually an academically defined term.

Academics are not my concern for now. I put in the DVD, pushed play, and sat down. For a moment, I could hear the echo. It's the echo of silence ringing all around me. You know the sound you here when you are totally still, and there is nothing around at all. And yet, it rings, loudly, almost unbearably so. It's that sound.

It's the end of dreams.

I shuddered; the hairs are still standing, at attention, without the possibility of ease, at least for a few minutes more. The pictures surrounded me with memories of the past. One, a big one, on the wall, a portrait of two people; loving, caring, and mutually so. Theirs is a love that carried and powered its way through the thick and very thin of four decades or so. There are, and were, other loves, and of that I have no doubt, but they say that love, when it really is love, will find its way back to you eventually. For these two, it did.

The house used to be filled with sounds. Even in the far off distance, you would hear the television at the back of the house, turned on, even in the middle of the night. Nobody would be watching, of course, since the only audience member interested in the television would have been asleep by then. By the time the eyes shut for the last time, the watcher became the watch...ee. Yet you, sitting in the living room, or trying to sleep off the day's exhaustion, would be reassured that there is someone, somewhere, in the house. The TV becomes an indicator not just of the events outside of the house all over the world within that 24 hour period, but also a sign and symbol of life within the house itself at that very moment. At the worst of times, it can be rather annoying, and your mind would wonder about the environmental cost of keeping the TV on the whole night. There would be an urge within you to get up and shut the damn thing up.

At the best of times, it can be a soothing and calming influence.

It's not there anymore. Nothing, no one, except for me, right now, is there anymore.

The movie finished. It is my most personal film, and nobody gave a damn. Not a complaint, merely an observation. A telling one, nevertheless. I got up, and turned everything off.

And with a single glance back at the room, spacious, luxurious, and filled with some memories not of my own making, I turned off the light, and walked deeper into the deafening silence of the darkness.

Down the road where all dreams die.

Comments

dsachiko said…
geeez.

The thoughts that went through my mind whilst skimming through this were:
1) Death of a loved one
2) You watched a loved one get married to someone else
3) You are tying the knot sometime soon, and are saying goodbye to the single-life dream.

Naturally, I know my thoughts are highly inaccurate. So do drop a line and update me.

xox
dims
Fikri said…
Why are they all related to past/present/future loves? Is it not possible to be about empty houses?

...

Probably not. :)
dsachiko said…
Hehe, because it is only love that leaves you dreamless.
Anything else, you CAN find again :)
Now stop being so elusive and spit out the truth.
Fikri said…
I want to talk to you about love, Dims, but you've hit the nail right on the head, love...is an elusive truth in its own right. :)