Memoirs of a Shattered Soul — 05: Dreams and Snowstorms
In my dream, I was searching for my mother in a snowstorm. It seemed as though the storm had obliterated the whole world. Then I saw two familiar figures, dressed in stark black and white...
March 14, 2013
Last night I had a strange dream. I wasn’t going to write it down here, but when I started telling my father about it, he told me that I should. He said that dreams can be important: they allow our unconscious mind to work on problems that we are not able to solve when we’re awake.
I’m not sure how much I believe that, but I do think that dreams must have some meaning. Certainly, it costs me nothing to write my dream down.
Here’s what I remember: I was searching for my mother in the middle of a snowstorm. The snow was flying everywhere and it was bitterly cold. It seemed as though the snow had obliterated the whole world, because I could see literally nothing around me except the white snowflakes whipping around and around in the air. I was wearing a blue kimono, not really enough to protect me from the cold, and it was the only colour my eyes could see anywhere.
Then I saw two familiar figures, dressed in stark black and white, battling each other in the snow: Hoshi and Jo. Starr and Staff.
Hoshi tossed five throwing stars, or shuriken, into the air and the wind grabbed them almost like an invisible hand and made them whirl around dangerously. Two of them came close to Jo, but he reacted perfectly to bat them away with his staff.
It was hard to see them properly in their black and white garments in the middle of a snowstorm, but even so the elegance of their movements impressed me. Since the time I was very young, my father made me study kendo. I know that after years and years of training in martial arts, you can develop what’s called mushin, the ability to move without consciously thinking about it. That was how their movements seemed to me. It was like a kind of deadly dance.
No sooner had I thought this than a sudden change in the wind sent a shuriken hurtling toward me. Once again, Jo’s reaction was swift and perfectly accurate. He knocked the flying metal star out of the air before it reached me.
Then he spoke to me, but not in a human voice, which would have been drowned out by the wind. It was as if he had reached directly into my mind. He said, “Yukiko, do not be afraid. Your mother will be well. She is safe now, deep inside the castle.”
I felt confused. “What castle?!” I yelled, but now the wind really did drown out my voice.
However, it didn’t matter because at that moment I saw what the snowstorm had hidden from my sight until that point. We were close to Himeji Castle.
And then I woke up again.
I’ve been told before that trying to interpret your own dreams can be very tricky. Nevertheless, since I’ve taken the trouble to write the dream down I may as well go all the way and try to figure out what it means. Maybe years from now I’ll look at this journal and laugh at myself.
The fact that I was searching for my mother in the dream is pretty obviously because I miss her. Since she’s been in a coma, it’s been heartbreaking not to be able to share my life with her in any meaningful way. Even when I would visit her in the hospital and tell her what was going on in my life, although in my head I knew she heard me I could never really convince my heart. After a while it just became too painful.
The presence of Hoshi and Jo in the dream is also not so surprising. For as long as I’ve been alive, these characters have always been a part of my life. Their eternal battle haunted my imagination even before I learned the normal Japanese fairy tales that other children know, like Momotaro or Princess Kaguya and the Bamboo Cutter. I tell myself that I’m dreaming about Hoshi and Jo because they’re the only “friends” from my previous life that could follow me here from Japan. Even though they’re imaginary, it’s comforting to think about them. Only, I still can’t understand why we were in that whirling snowstorm…
Whenever I think of Hoshi and Jo, it’s humbling for me to realise that my father was only fifteen, the same age I am now, when he invented these characters and all of the lore that eventually became part of the Starr and Staff video game. In the story he wrote, a valiant samurai named Jotaro was assigned to guard Hideo, a prince of the Imperial family, and Hideo’s fiancée Kaida, who was the daughter of the Shogun. However, when the prince stole a magical dragon’s amulet from his father, he was killed and Jotaro was disgraced for not protecting him. Only Kaida’s pleading moved the Emperor to spare Jotaro’s life. What no one knew, though, was that the magical amulet had split both Jotaro and Kaida’s souls in two. They each had become literally two separate beings.
I often used to wonder what it would feel like for my soul to split in two. It was weird to imagine that. I think now I understand a little better, though. Right now it’s not hard at all to imagine that there might be another version of myself, a disgraced Yukiko still living in Japan while I walk through my days here in Lauterbrunnen.
A girl in a blue kimono, trying to reach Himeji Castle in the middle of a snowstorm. A girl who is shouting at the top of her lungs even though no one can hear her.
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