last nite i had a dream––tell me what this means..
we are high above the hollywood hills, descending aerially through a rarefied landscape of oak groves, cypress, terraced gardens, and rolling acclivities until the dream resolves into an outdoor basketball court more dramatic than any other in the world––as though curated from the empyrean itself..
suspended amidst trees, gardens, and luxuriant hillsides, the court appears almost divinely secluded––a prelapsarian athletic sanctum ensconced high above el ay. the entire mise–en–scène feels theatrically decadent––like a private arcadia curated exclusively for the lakers––far removed from arenas, spectators, commercial spectacle, and the profane world below..
epistemically perched somewhere above the opulent gardens enveloping the court, i find myself contemplating players in the midst of a pickup game––moving freely, casually, ecstatically under open sky..
kobe is there––center stage. then, from out of my peripheral vision, the tall, unmistakable silhouette of lamar odom appears momentarily before evanescing again into the broader tableau. other players drift across the court in loose congregation, their movements relaxed, unguarded, spiritually inebriated, wholly unacquainted with the gravity retroactively saturating the scene..
amidst this scenery, i see myself––or perhaps another disembodied intelligence guiding me––serving as a kind of dreamscape docent: an explanatory, edifying presence quietly directing my friends through a living fragment of history, as though the ordinary succession of time has briefly given way..
look carefully, i whisper. we are somewhere within the final hours before kobe’s death..
the realization doesn't descend upon me with shock so much as a dispassionate, bordering–on–disconsolate clarity. everyone on the court is playing, laughing, moving through the afternoon as though the continuum before them would remain indefinitely intact––while i remain quietly captive to the dark apprehension that we are witnessing not merely the final hours of a man––but the final moments of an entire reality before its irreversible abrogation..
somewhere beyond the hills, beyond the horizon, beyond even the dreamscape's intelligible boundaries, another storm is gathering. i cannot yet see or name it, but its gravity is already permeating everything around us––the court, the players, the perfect lite of the sun, and the blissful serenity of a world utterly unaware of what is about to unfold..
standing there, i can see that the dreamscape has almost conspired toward contrived, theatrical perfection––the surrounding hillsides impossibly verdant, the court unnaturally pristine, the atmosphere suffused with a soft, hallowed stillness––as though creation itself had gone out of its way to preserve one final image of innocence before history descends..
nothing has transpired yet––the players remain in motion, the game continues, the radiant afternoon seems endless..
and yet, somewhere beneath the decadence and frivolity, i can feel the unseen machinations of history have already begun to turn..
the dream offers no further elaboration, no celestial exposition—only the hallowed spectacle of final movements upon a court tucked away in the decadent, rarefied hills of southern california, and the sepulchral intimation of a storm already ascendant somewhere unseen..
LS
