Without You

Without You
Originally uploaded by Tokyorosa

I wake from the dream but at the moment when we should part ways, this dream and I, I don’t want to let it go. My computer is next to me. I type this:

hapon ben there school earely turning on lights knowing there isn’tenough coffee in the world, goigndown to ‘bux, beni n elebator, walking hterebeing shadowed by homelessman, doingto bahgroom in building facejacetin stall wanting to take aphoto drinking bux?oprah or someone’sface on the window ben talking about tama on teh way down inthe elebator, how his motherinlaw didn’t like him or tamasaid.

I’m back in Tokyo. I’m arriving at work, turning on the lights, looking for a way to make coffee, starting my work day exhausted. The dream details mirror the non-dream details, but I am aware that I am dreaming. In the dream, I know I have enough time to go to the Starbucks around the corner and get a coffee. I didn’t go to Starbucks often in Tokyo, but I was familiar with the two that were within walking distance of The Kaisha. I ask Ben if he wants anything and we discuss his order--a latte, I seem to remember--and he gets into the elevator going to the ground floor, just as a way to keep me company. We’re talking about Tama-chan, his wife, and he tells me that as a result of something Tama-chan has told her, his mother-in-law doesn’t much like him. On the way down, he gets a call on his keitai, his cell phone, and I listen in on the conversation, realizing that someone at The Kaisha is calling him back to the office. We part ways on the ground floor.

I leave the building and turn the corner. The route is familiar, but the city is completely different. I’m being followed by a homeless man who is menacing in that way that the homeless often are. The dream shifts and I am no longer on the street. I’m in the public bathroom of an old, run-down building. I’ve got a Starbucks cup. I go into a stall. There is a window. On the window is a screen-printing of a woman who looks like Oprah Winfrey. I want to take a picture, so I pull out my keitai. And then I'm awake and grasping at the quickly receding dream.

It's the second or third Ben dream I've had in a month. Ben is a former co-worker at The Kaisha. I don't know why I keep dreaming about him. I don't have close ties to Ben--never did really though we worked really well together--but we email each other every couple of months. Last month, he married Tamae, the woman he met on the train in Tokyo almost five years ago. They're living in London now and Ben's working as a travel agent for an agency that specializes in arranging tours for sporting events all over Europe and Asia. Want to go with a group to see a World Cup Soccer match? Call Ben, he'll arrange it for you.

The photo above, by the way, was taken in December of 2005 at Ben's going away party. We were singing a pretty decent version of U2's "With Or Without You" to the group of about a hundred Kaisha staff and students who had assembled to wish him a fond farewell. Ben's wearing a jersey that the students gave him (along with a soccer ball they had signed) and lots of flowers and other gifts.