Coldplay - Sparks
I don’t normally have vivid dreams. However in times when I am heavily concentrating on things or I tend to not sleep well and do not get much good sleep, I will have wild and imaginative dreams that I will most likely remember for a lifetime. This is one such dream that I had in early October, 2000.
I had a perfect sense of just being. I surmised rather quickly that I was floating in total darkness. I say “floating” only because I really have no other words to describe the state of being that I felt in that moment. It was a strange feeling that I still, to this day, struggle to attach adequate words. There was no sense of cold or warmth. There was no sense of up or down, left or right. I couldn’t feel anything or smell anything. I didn’t have any sense of a body. It was just this sense of being; an existing in a shapeless space of blackness contained in a vast expanse of nothingness. The only sensation I could define, though ever so faintly, was that I could hear Coldplay’s song ‘Sparks’. It was a completely blissful moment where everything seemed to stand completely still except for the passage of time through the playing of the song.
I soon had a sense of tiny star that appeared way off in the distance. It startled me at first, but my anxiety soon subsided and turned to curiosity and I wanted to know what it was that was piercing this perfect blackness. So I just thought about moving toward this star and the star began to grow larger. I remember thinking that I had no sense of movement, so I couldn’t tell if I was moving or if the star was moving toward me. But I figured that it really didn’t matter and re-focused back on the star.
As the star grew larger and larger, I soon realized that the star really wasn’t a star, but a translucent cube about the size of a small room. Suspended inside the center of this cube was a solitary wooden chair. Sitting on this chair was a girl in the most beautiful white dress. The dress wasn’t overly ornate. It was floor length with spaghetti straps over the shoulders. Just a simple white dress, but dazzlingly beautiful given the amount of radiant light that was emanating from the cube. As for the light, I couldn’t see a source. It just came from the cube. It spilled out from everywhere inside the cube. It was nearly blinding to look at directly, but so amazingly beautiful that you just couldn’t look away. As for the girl, I strained to see who she was, but I was still too far from the cube and she was looking down. I thought she apparently had not noticed me drawing closer.
I finally reached the edge of the cube and touched it. It was the first time I realized that I did have a body in the dream. My fingers pressed up against the cube, which felt like glass. My fingertips tingled and there was a crackle of static electricity as I moved them across the surface of the cube. As I pressed up against the cube, I stared at the girl in chair, who was still looking down and not noticing me. I struggled to see her, but she just sat there looking down almost as if she were waiting for someone. I look around the surfaces of the cube for an opening, but there were none. So I reattached my focus back to the girl. I just wanted her to look up at me. I wanted her to see me. So I called out, “Hey!”
That is when she looked up and my heart just stopped as I realized who she was. It was Paige. She took one look at me and smiled as warmly as I remembered. She stood up from the chair and stretched out her arms, waiting for me to come and embrace her. I wanted so badly to be inside that cube. But since there were no openings, how was I to get in there? I began to panic a little and thought that I should just try and break my way through the cube. But then I had a thought. What if I just thought, “Go inside”? And just like that, as immediately as I had that thought, I was inside the cube and face to face with Paige who was looking up at me and smiling. Then, without saying a word, we stood there, embraced and held each other until I woke up. It was the most innocently, completely beautiful dream I think I have ever had.
So what does this mean and why does it matter? Honestly, it doesn’t amount to a lot. It was just a dream. Nothing more. Not to diminish what I just wrote - Paige was someone I cared about tremendously once upon a time and I still do care about her now even though she is no longer in my life. I think about her nearly everyday. Though she didn’t want me and I admit that it still hurts, I hope that her life is better without me in it and that whoever she found makes her happy. In a weird way, my hoping that she is happy makes the disappointment of not having her in my life somehow worth it.
