last nite i had a dream––tell me what this means lolzz..

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 sequestered––a prelapsarian athletic sanctum ensconced high above el ay. the entire mise–en–scène––a quiet arcadia reserved exclusively for the lakers––feels exquisitely decadent, far removed from arenas, spectators, commercial spectacle, and the great unwashed below..

epistemically perched somewhere above the opulent gardens enveloping the court, i find myself evaluating players in the middle 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 materializes momentarily before evanescing again into the broader tableau. other players drift across the court in loose congregations, their movements relaxed, unguarded, almost spiritually inebriated––wholly unacquainted with the gravity already retroactively saturating the scene..

amidst this context, i see myself––or maybe something else guiding me?––serving as a kind of temporal docent: an explanatory, edifying presence subtly directing my friends through a living fragment of history, as though the quotidian 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, disconsolate clarity. everyone on the court is playing, laughing, moving through the afternoon as though the sublunary continuum before them will remain indefinitely intact––while i remain totally captive to the dark apprehension that we are witnessing not merely the final hours of a man––but the last moments of an entire reality before its inevitable abrogation..

somewhere beyond the immaculate hills, beyond the horizon, beyond even the dreamscape's intelligible boundaries, another storm is embryonic. i cannot yet see or name it, but its gravity is already insinuating itself into 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 in a kind of daze––my gaze absently tracing the micro–corrugations of a distant treeline––i become increasingly disquieted by the staged perfection of the mise–en–scène––the bordering–on–grotesquely verdant surrounding hillsides, the unnaturally pristine court, the atmosphere imbued with a soft, hallowed stillness––almost as though creation itself has gone out of its way to preserve one last reprieve, 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 amidst the decadence and pretty erewhon smiles, i can feel the unseen machinations of history already beginning to turn..

the dream offers no further elaboration, no gratifying celestial exposition––only the hallowed spectacle of final movements on a court tucked away in the rarefied hills of paradise, and the sepulchral intimation of a storm already ascendant somewhere unseen..

LS