Dream

I went to see a fortune teller. She worked at a bank. You had to open a bank account in order to see her for a session. Her name was Elsa and she had orange hair and a sympathetic face.

"You can't do this to yourself," she said. "You can't live here and live another life in your head."

"But I've been doing it forever," I told her. "my whole life, maybe. I've always had two different lives. The one in my head and the real one."

"Hmm..." she said. "One day you'll stop. Don't push the envelope before then."

Pushing the envelope, I thought. A pilot's term for flying an aircraft at or beyond it's limits. I do this too. Notice the discursive elements of other people's speech. Etymology, symbol, metaphor. I have a conversation with myself about language even as I'm having a conversation. I guess I even do it in my dreams

There was a time when there weren't two lives. Only one. There were a couple of times. But I started to see the seams of reality, the foundation, the structure, the stitches that held it together. The scaffolding all around. It always happens eventually and then the world splits out of necessity.

One day, in the midst of this singular life, I had a dream about you. You owned a helicopter. You "lodged" it on the top of a building in Silverlake. You would fly over my neighborhood in it. I could see you above, you would look for me at my favorite places. At Intelligentsia Coffee, at the Farmer's Market, in Runyon Canyon. The helicopter was rusted gray, old. Sometimes you would wave, sometimes you would pretend you weren't looking for me. But you were, I could tell. When I woke up, I realized this was true. You did have a helicopter. I flew with you in it once. I remembered this memory so clearly that I couldn't tell what part was real and what part wasn't. Then I realized that none of it was.