What is the difference between a small, urbanly raised boy of 13 years of age who’s an orphan, has got no parents of his own biological making, but who manages to see life very differently to one of his peers, who is of the same age of course, but with biological parents who always there for him, always caring for him, always cuddling him away and keeping him warm and safe, providing for him and ensuring that he has got a great future ahead of him.
What is the difference?
Of course, everybody would notice the difference. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work that one out. But how do things work out for Milot? So - Milot sees things, he feels things, he has a great sense of indignation for things that a normal child of 12 or 13 years of age doesn’t. At school he’s looked at things negligibly, not taken too seriously and never given a chance to have his say or express himself. So much accumulated time goes past that he never has or had a chance to leave a mark in his school years. For him, things tend to go really fast. Everything is speedy, everything is fleeting. Whereas for the world around him, everything is slow, everything is dragging along, everything is just monotonous.
So Milot needs to find a purpose. A purpose that probably, without him realising it, will define him. A purpose that will make him think. A purpose that will probably turn him into an adult, an unwanted to be adult, who hasn’t got any other purpose that will define the age he lives in, but without the chances and opportunities for him to be somebody he doesn’t want to be, but somebody he’s got to be.
So, his mates become people instantly, because they are treated differently. They go back to their homes and they feel warm. They build relationships easily because their uncles and aunties and grandpas and grandmas warmed up to them easily. For Milot, that is doable, but he feels the biology. He feels that he’s the black sheep of the family. And he always finds ways to deal with it. And the ways to deal with it is delving into books, watching TV till late at night, and making space for his own thinking and his own emotionless state. Because if he was a normal 12-13 year old boy, he would probably do something completely different to what he normally does, like a normal mate of his from the crowd of peerhood. But, he doesn’t.
So, one day he gets up in the middle of the night and he rushes towards his stepmother’s bedroom and wakes her up, tells her that he’s been dreaming. And he tells her the dream and she listens patiently because although he’s not her own son, her own biological being, she still loves him, she cares about him. But she’s got a lot of things going on with her own partner for her to have that mental capacity to dedicate a lot more time to him.
So, Milot feels the loneliness and the isolation.
Don’t worry, child, that’s nothing to... Everything will be fine. You’re just seeing bad dreams. They sometimes can be turned into nightmares, so don’t worry about it. I used to see dreams when I was tiny, when I was your age, and the way I dealt with them is just, yeah, pretty much what you’ve just done, running towards one of the parents’ bedrooms and trying to get attention. That’s just normal. That’s just... Don’t worry.
So she cuddles him and she takes him back to his bed and he falls asleep straight away. And then another dream comes up on his mind. And he’s not sure now because he knows he’s aware of his surroundings. He’s aware where he is. And he remembers that his mum took him back to bed when he had the first round of his dream just earlier on. He decides to continue and keep going with the dream. And the dream is not as revealing as he expected it to be. He was fearful, but he was determined to see it through. And he was determined to feel it. And he was determined to understand it, where it’s coming from.
There in front of his face appears a woman, a dark-haired woman, who probably is much younger than his stepmother is. And he’s trying to work out why does she appear in front of him. And then just next to him, or next to her rather, there is a dark-haired man, very tall, slim figure, with a very expensive watch on his left hand, to whom he smiles at and calls him Milot about three times.
Almost to say as if Milot ignored him and he just needed his attention.
So he stares at these two people, never knowing who they are. He doesn’t actually want to know who they are, but for some reason he wants their presence. He wants to feel warm to them. He wants to say something to them, but he knows he can’t speak because in dreams you don’t speak, you don’t hear yourself. You don’t know yourself if you’re in a dream, because you might be something else, completely something else. You might be a dog, you might be a cat, you might be an elephant for that we know.
So, he just stares at her and she doesn’t smile, she doesn’t move, she doesn’t react. The other man moves about, walks around her, strikes her hair and says something, whispers something in her ear. Milot doesn’t know what that is, what he’s just said to her. But in a way Milot is happy that this dream is not as vicious as it can be and at least of all it’s not a nightmare.
So he just wants it to continue.
He wants to see himself somehow or find somewhere a mirror, in one of the rooms upstairs and just look at him in a dream and then wake himself up and go to his mama and say that he’d seen himself in a dream. This is something to recognise, this is quite something, this is just amazing mum.
But that’s not bound to happen.
He wants to wake himself up, but he can’t. So he decides to continue with the dreaming.
And then a loud bang is heard next door to the room where he sleeps in. And he wakes up. Oh, I’ve transformed himself. I’ve morphed into the one I am. Oh, that is bloody painful. How do I get myself back? He tells his,elf in astonishment. So he looks at his bookshelves and he tries to find Freud. He wants to try and find Freud’s book on dreams, what they are and how they operate and how they work and where they come from. You know, the usual slog that most scientists try and do, come up and draw up conclusions about certain phenomena, psychological, natural, biological, physical, quantum, metaphysical, etc.
He finds it, he pulls the book, it’s quite thick, it’s about three hundred and seventy-eight pages, and he skips through all the chapter after chapter. And he’s not happy with the answers he gets. He reads through, but they are not the definitions of what the dreams are in his terms. So then he puts the book back and he lies down. He doesn’t care what happened with the loud bang next door to him. He continues to daydream or night dream on this occasion. And then he immediately enters another stage of the dream, another phase of the dream. And that sets him in a forest, a green forest with black daffodils. How is he able to notice that when it’s all darkness, he can see black, he can see darkness?
He touches the daffodils, he smells them and he smells like any normal daffodil. And then he treads his path. Everything around him and in front of him is unwalkable.
No one’s treaded that path before. He can smell it, he can tell it, but he’s still for some reason got no fear. And he just walks, walks straight and straight and continues to see reams of trees on the left and the right of different sizes and different shapes. And they release this smell, this odour that he tries to work out in his brain what it actually is. There are some strong smells, there are some really light smells, some weak smells, some robust smells, but they all smell good. And every smell, it’s a period in his life. And he stops at this tree which has got this particular smell. It’s sweet roses. He remembers the sweet roses. And he stops and he smells and he inhales so deep that actually he morphs into another dream.
Wow.
Dream within a dream, he thinks to himself. What does it mean? And then he continues inhaling without breathing out. And then there he is. He’s in a caravan somewhere in Dakota in the United States. With a girlfriend. He’s in his mid-thirties now. And he seems to be happy. What does it mean? Milot asks himself. Why am I here? How did I access that? How did I... How am I going to make sense of this now? How do I know I’m in mid-thirties? Well, I looked at myself in the rear mirror and I could see myself. And yes, I am in mid-thirties. And he looks at the girl next to him and she seems to be perfectly happy. And they’re just laughing and Milot knows in his second brain that actually that’s not real. That’s him in furious time. How is that possible? And he wants just to continue and carry on and drive on and drive through. They go to places and then they happen to be in a forest again. And the 35-year-old Milot gets a flat punctured tyre. They pull up in his forest and it’s green with black daffodils. The girl is scared to go with him but she trusts him. And he holds her hand and they walk into the forest.
And they walk and they keep going and keep going and keep going. Until again they hit the ream of trees on the left and on the right. And the smells and the odours. And they tread in part but the tread in front of him is slightly unusual because this time around the forest is treaded. And then Milot thinks, oh wow, okay. So this is where I was. This is where I was almost 20 years ago. But he doesn’t want to think. He just wants to let Milot, the 35-year-old and his girl, hold their hands together and just carry on walking. And the girl decides to look up. And Milot, of 35 years of age, asks her, why are you doing that? And Milot, the younger, thinks, let her be. And Milot, the 35-year-old, thinks, no, she shouldn’t be. Why is she looking up? The rules are she should not look up. And then Milot starts thinking, Milot, the younger, what does he mean by the rules? What rules? Who sets them rules? What are you on about? And Milot, the 35-year-old man, tells Milot, the younger, that he should shut up and probably let the whole thing just be normal and take its natural course, would you? And Milot, the younger, stops thinking and just continues enjoying. So they keep treading until they reach an elevated patch of brown earth. It’s got no trees in it, but it’s got three daffodils on top of it. And Milot, the younger, wants to go and touch the daffodils and see if he can feel them and can smell them and can sense them. But Milot, the eldest, the 35-year-old man, Milot, thinks differently. He thinks differently. He should just walk all over it and just bloody do with it. It’s only daffodils, black daffodils. And Milot, the younger, thinks how unconscious is Milot, the eldest, being. He’s like, why is he like that? Where has the girl gone? The girl is sitting there passively without holding his hand and looking at him to almost ask permission whether she can look up. Why? Why can’t they look up? And then he looks up. And then I’m awake. And I’m back in my room again. And I’m starting to think now, Milot thinks to himself, that I’m not actually in a dream.
I’m actually seeing the future.
Seeing the future.
Seeing the future mould differently.
Seeing the future with complete me in it. And how good is that? How tiring must that be? And what is the purpose of me to grow, grow and grow? And to reach a point when I’ll be having a go and I’ll be ending up having a puncture in Dakota forest somewhere and just enter a forest and purposelessly just walk in a forest with no reason and meet daffodils.
He begins thinking seriously.
And he notices through the split light of a curtain that the sun is coming out and it’s six o’clock in the morning. The usual noise of the house begins with his dad shaving and showering and his mum hoovering and preparing the toast and the other of his siblings shouting and screaming. Some of them lazying about, not wanting to go to school and the others refusing to wake up. The usual malarkey that he puts up every day of his thirteen years of age.
He’s always the last one because he’s the most prepared one. So his mum doesn’t have to bother about going to wake him up because he’s already on his feet by the time she walks in to open the door. And she always hugs him and tells him how proud she is of him. And then they all hop on the caravan car which his mum drives and she drives them to school with the caravan, the same caravan that she uses to do Sunday market, the boot sales etc.
Everything at the back of the caravan is basically toys, magazines, stationery, women make-up, man shaving kit, socks and blouses and tops and trainers and shoes and overcoats and hats. There’s this particular hat that he’s eyed for a very long time and it sits on the top of one of the shelves at the back of the caravan. He remembers that a year ago his dad told him not to touch it. It’s a magic hat, his dad called it. But he wants to touch it. But his dad tells him, don’t touch it. Don’t ever touch it. Well, this is the opportunity because his dad is not there. It is his mum who’s there. And pretty much every time he’s there with his mum he can get away with a lot of things. So he grabs the hat and puts it on.
Miracle-Leah, the sister, one of the siblings, tells him that he looks cute in it. So he puts it on. And then he just sits back. And immediately he’s entered the plateau of dreams again. Bearing in mind he’s only got 10-15 minutes to reach the school. He’s confident that he can pull this one off. He thinks he knows what he’s doing. And he keeps wearing the hat. And he goes back to the forest in Dakota. And he is now on top of the brown earth daffodil cemetery. Again, It is a graveyard. And he’s been buried there for a long time. Its a cemetery. It is a graveyard, the girl tells Milot, the 35-year-old man. Yes, he goes. I think it is. And I think I know whose graveyard that is. And he sheds some tears. And the girl goes, cuddles him and tells him everything will be fine. Are you okay? And he can’t stop himself shedding tears. And then he decides to unearth what’s underneath it. And Milot the young wants to pull out of the dream. He can’t bear it anymore. It’s way too much. So he stops. He looks up. And Milot the young, almost seeing himself through a side mirror, stares in his eyes. And Milot, the 35-year-old man, stares back. You’ve got blue eyes, he tells him. Yes, so do you. Milot the young responds. But you look different though, Milot the young tells him. Yes, so do you. And the eldest, Milot, tells the young ones. What are we going to do? The eldest asks the young. I don’t know. But I wouldn’t unearth that. Why? Milot the young asks. Why? He responds. What do you mean why? You can’t ask why. You know what’s under there.
Come on, say it. No, I don’t want to say it. Yes, you should say it. No, I don’t want to say it.
Well, let the girl say it. Then, immediately both of them face the girl. And the girl says. No, I don’t know. I don’t know why I should say it. And then Milot the young says. Do you know what are we talking about? And she says. Yes, I do. I was there. What do you mean, the eldest inquisitively eyes her. Well, I was there. We were there. All of us were there. And at this point, Milot the young is slightly confused. He knows he’s wearing the hat and he’s got a few minutes left till he reaches school. And he knows that once the back door opens, every single one of his siblings are going to beat him to it. To flank out of the door because they need to go to school. So he needs to think quick. It’s decision time. What shall we do? What do we do? OK, let’s do it then. Let’s open it then. But Milot the young is not 100% sure.
Milot the young is very keen to do so, but he can’t do it without Milot the eldest’s approval. And his support and his understanding just in case anything goes wrong. So what shall we do then? The question comes back again. Oh, sod it. Let’s just do it. The eldest sticks his palms and his fingers as deep as he can to grab as much soil as he can to pull it out. But all of a sudden the soil becomes very thick and it becomes something else. It releases the smell of soap. And he pulls and digs his hands and his arms while Milot the young and the girl watch him, what he’s up to and what he’s doing.
Why is he doing it?
Why is he making it look like he’s basically fighting against a clay, a lava or something like that? Because that’s what it is, he says.
Because it’s clay.
Because it’s cold lava.
And Milot the young wakes himself up. It’s time to go to school. So his mum opens the back door, all the siblings fly out of the door and they’re all headed to school.
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