2nd July 2000

A friend died last night.

It was evening, and I was walking in the sunset by a castle wall. Someone ran up to me carrying a grey jacket and my heart filled with dread. The jacket belonged to a friend of mine who'd gone missing some time back. It was slightly tattered. The man carrying her coat apologised and told me they'd found her in the dungeons, and that she was dead. She'd suffered severe abrasions to her right hip and had died as a result.

I held her coat in my arms and knelt in grief. I remembered when I first met her, in her grey coat, rather more a businesswoman's powersuit top than a coat; I remembered walking the same route with her on a previous night, by the castle on my left and forests on the right facing a brilliant sunset and chatting as we went. I remembered her telling me her hopes and dreams, and that she had problems with her kidneys, and slight osteoarthritis of her right hip. Most of all I remembered her eyes, which were almond shaped I think, and intriguingly alive, and the feel of her , just walking beside me. I remembered feeling rather attracted to her, but yet not, if that makes sense. And now she was dead, and I was holding her coat in my arms, kneeling, just kneeling there mutely.

Then I woke up.

I don't usually remember my dreams with such clarity; in fact I don't usually remember my dreams at all. And to get two for the price of one (because now post-dream I remember dreaming the "previous night" as well, when she got captured by an evil villain and I woke up feeling terribly worried) I suppose I'm a lucky chap, except that she died so there won't be anymore sequels with her in it. I miss her. This girl from my dreams who can't possibly be real, who's dead. Perhaps dreams really are alternate universes after all, and she really was real... in my dreams. Perhaps if she'd lived I would have discovered my potential ability to fall in love with her, and we would have lived out the rest of our dream-years happily.

But no, a woman doesn't figure in my dream-life. Anna writes on her page that she wants an island, and not a house by the beach. Well, I want a house by a beach. A very secluded beach. With a porch that opens onto sand, and a view of the sea from my veranda. I'd come home after work, perhaps a half-hours drive from the hospital and city, to my house and sit in an armchair on my veranda watching the sunset over the sea, and drink grapefruit juice which I will have finally acquired a taste for, or perhaps iced amaretto coffee. I suppose if I had to have a mate for life, she'd have to sit by me, in another armchair, or perhaps a deckchair, and watch the sunset with me, and not get impatient waiting for the sun to go down, everyday. Perhaps my secluded beach will be on the shores of Anna's Island. I rather imagine her island would have beauitiful, crisp, sandy beaches with shorebound sea-breezes, and spectacular sunsets.

But it won't be with the girl in the grey-jacket, whatever the case. She's dead, this faceless (strange isn't that? I remember her eyes but not her face) individual with no-name, who isn't real at all (yes, to anyone who knows me well, this girl ISN'T real at least in this life, and I've never met her before) with the wondrous hopes for tomorrow. I miss her.

10.00 am.