the old man and the gift

I haven't had much to write about on this blog. To some extent, I suppose Twitter is consuming my mental bandwidth. That - or all my thoughts can actually be compressed very easily into packets of up to 140 characters each. It's like thought snacks, I guess. I'm not closing down the blog, though, because evidently I have an use for it right now.

My memory is terrible in general; my consciousness as a whole seems to absorb things very poorly. Every experience washes over it and very little residue remains in the creases and cracks - which makes it especially important to act quickly on a memory worth recording.
Especially if the memory is a dream. Those are quite slippery. That's why "dream diaries" are a thing. I guess, in a way, this blog serves that role among others.
So here's a dream which was transcribed by me directly after I woke up and realized I mustn't forget it.


I was at some kind of resort, sharing a room with some people, where I also had a PC on, with a brightly lit monitor which I kept checking (I believe mIRC was running on it).
It was near a forest, with a sea nearby.

I was out doing something (swimming)?, then I returned and noticed (I think it was on a porch or something) a box in which was a set of fairly nice headphones. I was looking at them when an old man showed up and told me that I can have them, if I want. I expressed gratitude. However, when I took just the headphones from the box, he was like "no no, have the whole box", and I realized that it was in fact a portable music player the size of a small radio set (it's the sort of thing you put on a table rather than carry in your pocket, but it's light so you can take it when travelling... yeah, a somewhat pointless concept, but it is a dream.)

I further expressed my gratitude, but I realized that something in what he was telling me is off... it was as though he was giving up on himself. Suicidal, perhaps. I inquired further mainly to learn that he had some nondescript disease (it was not cancer - it wasn't specified at all) which greatly shortened his lifespan and that his particular lifespan is very nearly exhausted.

I was quite touched by this. As the man left, I implored - perhaps the clearest part of my dream: "Please remember - in this day and age, we have the means to fight such diseases! Please do not give up." As he was already on his way to his next destination, I was not sure if he heard.

I returned to my room. It was set up in a strange way, permitting a water spout to be left open above a pillow. I made to turn it off, quite bewildered, and then met the person currently using the bed. He explained it was intentional - some way to cool the pillows off.
I set the gifted music player on my table beside my bed.

This is all I could remember.