Star Wars Dreamin’
I love vacation, especially when it’s mine. Last week I learned that I had seven vacation days that I would lose at the end of the year, so I worked extra hours to finish the new exporter.
With the increase in sleep that accompanies a vacation I’ve been having many dreams, and they’ve been fun — last night I was fighting a zombie invasion — which reminded me of a dream I had a couple of months ago. This is the only Star Wars-related dream I’ve ever had, and I’ve surprised it was as good as it was considering that I’m not the biggest fan of that mythos. Anyway, hope you like it (Please let me know if you did ... or didn’t. This blog is such a lonely space).
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Teacher
“It’s hot,” she said, not really intending it to sound as frustrated as it did.
“Yeah.” Luke could appreciate his sister’s attitude. He had grown up in the desert, living on his uncle’s moisture farm. Leia was raised in very different surroundings. Born First Daughter of the House Organa, Royal Princess of the planet Alderan, Leia was groomed for diplomacy and grew to become a Senator of the Republic. Now, she was practicing a fighting stance under the mid-afternoon glare of Tatooine’s twin suns and sweating profusely.
Maybe we should take a break,” he said, not intending to sound so conciliatory.
“I don’t want to take a break. I want to get this over — “ her frustration surged through and she broke her stance a moment, then forced herself back, her right foot forward, left foot behind and turned ninety degrees, weight up on the balls of her feet, lifting the sword with both hands until the pommel rested just inches from the right side of her face, the blade pointing towards the sky. “I mean, I want to get this right.”
She wants to be pushed, he thought, and he should be pushing her.
She started the breathing exercises, which felt more awkward now then they did when she began them this morning. “I thought you said there were no bugs here,” she said, annoyed.
“Bugs? Ah, there aren’t, unless you count the Silver Vulture but that’s more of a bird and it’s got a big —“
“Then what am I hearing? It’s really distracting.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them with a slight smile, “Oh, that’s the hum from the light saber. I guess it does sound like an insect. I’m not used to hearing them since I didn’t grow up around them.” He wanted to tell her about the insects in the swamps where he trained on the planet Degobah, but he noticed her lips pursed in a scowl, and he dropped the smile from his face. “She’s your student,” he said inwardly, “not your buddy. Forget that she’s your sister and be her teacher.” He suspended all other thought to allow this one to sink down and plant itself into his consciousness, but before it could embed itself another burst through; “But she is your sister.”
In a flash of memory, Luke is ten years old, tuning the moisture reclaimators on the South Ridge, a box of tools his only company. Surrounding him is the brown of sun baked sand and wind scoured rock. This is when he thought he was an orphan, before he learned what really happened to his parents and that he had a twin sister.
Now he’s eleven and his uncle has purchased a droid to run diagnostics and reduce downtime. Its only vocalizations are beeps and whistles but Luke wishes the reclaimators to break down so that the droid can accompany him. Once, in the hopes that he and the droid could spend a couple of days doing a replacement, he tuned one unit’s thermostats so low that it continuously cycled until the motor burned out. When his uncle heard the unit went down, however, he just assumed that even Luke’s tuning could not be trusted. Another flash and he’s standing in front of his furious uncle, his eyes cast down at the sand.
Leia’s words brought him back, “I haven’t seen any birds since I got here.”
“The Silver Vulture is rare. It nests just under the sand to escape the heat.” Luke blinks hard in an attempt to clear his head. “Now, let’s try and focus on your breathing while keeping your body relaxed. If you tense up your muscles won’t be able to hold the stance.” He can see signs of her tension as the tip of the light saber begins to waver. The amount of time she holds the fighting posture should be getting longer, but if anything her progress is degrading. He opens his mouth to suggest another break when he sees a figure watching them.
“Speaking of rare ... I’ll be right back,” he said as he walked toward the observer. The figure was a middle aged man with brown hair who wore the robes of a Jedi. Surrounding him was a thin glow, the halo that marks a Force ghost.
“Hello, Luke. You look well, my son,” the man said and smiled. No matter how often Luke saw his father smile, he always noticed a small sadness in his face, something ineffable, as if he lost something dear a long time ago and for all his searching can’t find it.
“Thanks, Father. It’s really good to see you.”
“I know it’s been some time, Luke. Please understand that I don’t want to disrupt your sister’s training. She’s beginning her life as a Jedi, and beginnings are delicate things.”
“Yeah,” Luke glances back at Leia to see the tip of the light saber shaking as if she was trying to draw small circles in the air, “it’s ... delicate.”
“It would be easier if she wasn’t your sister.”
Turning back, Luke looked down at the sand, “I should be tougher on her, like Master Yoda was with me. I’m amazed to hear myself say it, but it’s true. He was hard on me but I learned a lot, and when I got tired he pushed me not to give up.”
Anakin looked at his son a moment, and then said, “Do something for me.” Lowering his voice to just above a whisper, “Make her angry.”
“What?” Luke said too loudly. Catching himself, he continued, “She’s frustrated as it is, which is ruining her posture, not to mention her control. And how am I supposed to make her angry, anyway?”
Keeping his voice quiet, Anakin leaned closer, “You’re her brother, Luke. It won’t be that hard.”
Luke took a moment as his father’s words sink in. “Yeah. Ok.” He turned and walked back to Leia and the struggling light saber, whose circles had grown wider and more chaotic. “Dad’s here, just saying ‘Hi.’ But he doesn’t want to distract us, so you keep up that, ah,” he chuckles, “yeah, keep it up,” turning his head and clumsily attempting to cover another chuckle with a cough.
“What’s funny?” Leia asked.
“Nothing.” Luke said a little too quickly, followed by another suppressed laugh. “Nothing at all.”
Leia broke her stance, loosely holding the still active light saber in her right hand while placing her left hand on her hip. “What’s so funny?”
“Really, nothing” Luke said while a grin broke free on his face and betrayed him.
“Listen! I’m hot, I’m frustrated, and I’m armed! So, you’d better tell me!”
“Ok,” Luke said between giggles, “it’s just, you still stand like a Princess.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” she shouted.
“ You know, the way you’re always posing.”
“Posing? I’m in a fighting stance, so I guess you could call that a pose!”
“Yeah, but your chin does that thing,” Luke said, followed by more giggles.
“What thing?” her voice louder.
“It sticks up like you’re sniffing something gross.”
Leia stabs her brother with an accusatory finger. “Well, then maybe it’s bathtime, Mister!” she said, with no trace of humor on her face.
“And your,” Luke said before his laughter stopped him.
“My what?!” Leia shouts.
“Your butt,” he said, clutching at his sides.
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY BUTT!” she roared, her face contorted with rage.
“It,” he pauses to wipe a tear, “it sticks out like your light saber got stuck up — “
Leia’s angry scream cut him short as Luke rolled out of the way of a light saber swinging toward his chest. Returning to his feet he somersaulted backwards as Leia buried the light saber in the sand where he stood a moment before, the heat of the blade leaving a line of glass in the sand.
“He wanted me to make her angry,” Luke thought, “so I guess I’ve done one thing right today.” He couldn’t remember seeing her so incensed. Before he could contemplate begging her to stop her onslaught, Luke dodged left and then right, barely avoiding another couple of vicious slashes. Leia’s reflexes were impressive. Suddenly Luke saw Anakin beckoning to him from over Leia’s right shoulder, standing about thirty meters away. Dropping to a crouch to avoid a blow to his head, he then leapt twice his height over his sister’s head and landed in a sprint for the area in which his father, now nowhere to be seen, was standing.
If he thought Leia was surprised by his leap, he didn’t think it for long. Luke realized that his sister was faster than him, and he could hear from the crunch of the sand and the hum of the light saber that she was gaining ground. “I’m going to have to turn and fight,” he said to himself, but the thought of fighting — really fighting — his sister put panic into his run. “Father!” he shouted, hoping to get some idea from Anakin of what to do, but he heard no response. Just then, his right foot abruptly sunk several inches into the sand and Luke fell hard, badly scrapping his face on the desert floor.
He rolled onto his back to see his sister standing over him, her eyes wide with rage, raising the light saber high. He made ready to deliver a kick that would likely shatter her kneecap, pulling his left knee to his chest, but just before he could release he saw his father appear, his lips almost touching her right ear.
“Yes, my daughter,” Anakin said in a calm voice, “do it.”
Just then, a high pitched shriek split the air, followed by another. Luke could see that Leia was no longer looking at him, but at something on the ground by his right foot. He lifted his head to see a partially uncovered nest with two Silver Vulture chicks. Newly hatched, their pure white fuzzy down shone brighter than the suns.
“Strike, Leia. You may kill them but who cares? You weren’t thinking of consequences when you allowed yourself to get angry, when you tried to hurt your own brother. Do it.”
“No!” Leia turned, placing the blade between her and her father.
Luke could see the sad expression taking hold of his father’s features once again. “The ignorant think that anger makes them strong,” Anakin said, “but it’s a blind strength. What good is strength when you can’t discern friend from foe? Or enemy from innocent?”
A heavy silence hung for a few moments before Leia broke it by deactivating the light saber. Luke got back to his feet, quickly testing his right ankle to find that while a little tender, it wasn’t sprained. Anakin said, ‘Be well, my children,’ before turning and walking toward the setting suns.
Watching him go, Luke said, “I think that’s enough for today.” Leia attached the light saber to her belt and walked away, a mixture of shock and revulsion on her face.
Wiping blood from his sand-scraped face, Luke knelt before the nest, trying to cover the exposed portion while his thoughts replayed the events of the past few minutes. He wondered if he went too far, or what he might have done if he’d been forced to fight Leia. What if one of them was seriously hurt? His eyes drifted toward his prosthetic hand, remembering. “None of this would have happened,” he mumbled aloud to himself, “if I’d been a better teacher.”
By accident, Luke discovered that by mixing his blood with the sand he could make thin strips, enough to cover the nest, which he then sprinkled with loose sand to make them look like the surroundings. It wasn’t unnoticeable, but it seemed to do the job, and the chicks stopped their crying.
As he stood to get a better look, he heard a familiar voice beside him.
“Clever, you are.”
Luke looked to see the image of his former master, Yoda, gazing up at him, shimmering with the same halo as his father.
“Hello, Master Yoda.” Luke felt a swell of happiness at seeing his old teacher, but he didn’t feel like smiling. “I wish I was clever.”
“Your father you saw today.”
“Yes.”
“Help you with Leia’s training, did he?” Yoda asked.
“I think Leia learned a lot from him today.”
“And learned what did you?”
“I think that all I learned was that I’m not a very good teacher.”
“Our greatest teacher, your father is,” Yoda said in a quiet voice. “In all the history of the Jedi, the best he has become.”
“My father is the greatest teacher in Jedi history,” Luke said, taking in the enormous number of years that history spans. “Better than you? Master Yoda, how is that possible? How did he learn so much?”
“Made the most mistakes, he did. Study and train, day after day, yet always Failure our best teacher remains. Fail well, young Skywalker.” And with those words, Yoda left Luke staring at the reddening sky.
With the increase in sleep that accompanies a vacation I’ve been having many dreams, and they’ve been fun — last night I was fighting a zombie invasion — which reminded me of a dream I had a couple of months ago. This is the only Star Wars-related dream I’ve ever had, and I’ve surprised it was as good as it was considering that I’m not the biggest fan of that mythos. Anyway, hope you like it (Please let me know if you did ... or didn’t. This blog is such a lonely space).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Teacher
“It’s hot,” she said, not really intending it to sound as frustrated as it did.
“Yeah.” Luke could appreciate his sister’s attitude. He had grown up in the desert, living on his uncle’s moisture farm. Leia was raised in very different surroundings. Born First Daughter of the House Organa, Royal Princess of the planet Alderan, Leia was groomed for diplomacy and grew to become a Senator of the Republic. Now, she was practicing a fighting stance under the mid-afternoon glare of Tatooine’s twin suns and sweating profusely.
Maybe we should take a break,” he said, not intending to sound so conciliatory.
“I don’t want to take a break. I want to get this over — “ her frustration surged through and she broke her stance a moment, then forced herself back, her right foot forward, left foot behind and turned ninety degrees, weight up on the balls of her feet, lifting the sword with both hands until the pommel rested just inches from the right side of her face, the blade pointing towards the sky. “I mean, I want to get this right.”
She wants to be pushed, he thought, and he should be pushing her.
She started the breathing exercises, which felt more awkward now then they did when she began them this morning. “I thought you said there were no bugs here,” she said, annoyed.
“Bugs? Ah, there aren’t, unless you count the Silver Vulture but that’s more of a bird and it’s got a big —“
“Then what am I hearing? It’s really distracting.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them with a slight smile, “Oh, that’s the hum from the light saber. I guess it does sound like an insect. I’m not used to hearing them since I didn’t grow up around them.” He wanted to tell her about the insects in the swamps where he trained on the planet Degobah, but he noticed her lips pursed in a scowl, and he dropped the smile from his face. “She’s your student,” he said inwardly, “not your buddy. Forget that she’s your sister and be her teacher.” He suspended all other thought to allow this one to sink down and plant itself into his consciousness, but before it could embed itself another burst through; “But she is your sister.”
In a flash of memory, Luke is ten years old, tuning the moisture reclaimators on the South Ridge, a box of tools his only company. Surrounding him is the brown of sun baked sand and wind scoured rock. This is when he thought he was an orphan, before he learned what really happened to his parents and that he had a twin sister.
Now he’s eleven and his uncle has purchased a droid to run diagnostics and reduce downtime. Its only vocalizations are beeps and whistles but Luke wishes the reclaimators to break down so that the droid can accompany him. Once, in the hopes that he and the droid could spend a couple of days doing a replacement, he tuned one unit’s thermostats so low that it continuously cycled until the motor burned out. When his uncle heard the unit went down, however, he just assumed that even Luke’s tuning could not be trusted. Another flash and he’s standing in front of his furious uncle, his eyes cast down at the sand.
Leia’s words brought him back, “I haven’t seen any birds since I got here.”
“The Silver Vulture is rare. It nests just under the sand to escape the heat.” Luke blinks hard in an attempt to clear his head. “Now, let’s try and focus on your breathing while keeping your body relaxed. If you tense up your muscles won’t be able to hold the stance.” He can see signs of her tension as the tip of the light saber begins to waver. The amount of time she holds the fighting posture should be getting longer, but if anything her progress is degrading. He opens his mouth to suggest another break when he sees a figure watching them.
“Speaking of rare ... I’ll be right back,” he said as he walked toward the observer. The figure was a middle aged man with brown hair who wore the robes of a Jedi. Surrounding him was a thin glow, the halo that marks a Force ghost.
“Hello, Luke. You look well, my son,” the man said and smiled. No matter how often Luke saw his father smile, he always noticed a small sadness in his face, something ineffable, as if he lost something dear a long time ago and for all his searching can’t find it.
“Thanks, Father. It’s really good to see you.”
“I know it’s been some time, Luke. Please understand that I don’t want to disrupt your sister’s training. She’s beginning her life as a Jedi, and beginnings are delicate things.”
“Yeah,” Luke glances back at Leia to see the tip of the light saber shaking as if she was trying to draw small circles in the air, “it’s ... delicate.”
“It would be easier if she wasn’t your sister.”
Turning back, Luke looked down at the sand, “I should be tougher on her, like Master Yoda was with me. I’m amazed to hear myself say it, but it’s true. He was hard on me but I learned a lot, and when I got tired he pushed me not to give up.”
Anakin looked at his son a moment, and then said, “Do something for me.” Lowering his voice to just above a whisper, “Make her angry.”
“What?” Luke said too loudly. Catching himself, he continued, “She’s frustrated as it is, which is ruining her posture, not to mention her control. And how am I supposed to make her angry, anyway?”
Keeping his voice quiet, Anakin leaned closer, “You’re her brother, Luke. It won’t be that hard.”
Luke took a moment as his father’s words sink in. “Yeah. Ok.” He turned and walked back to Leia and the struggling light saber, whose circles had grown wider and more chaotic. “Dad’s here, just saying ‘Hi.’ But he doesn’t want to distract us, so you keep up that, ah,” he chuckles, “yeah, keep it up,” turning his head and clumsily attempting to cover another chuckle with a cough.
“What’s funny?” Leia asked.
“Nothing.” Luke said a little too quickly, followed by another suppressed laugh. “Nothing at all.”
Leia broke her stance, loosely holding the still active light saber in her right hand while placing her left hand on her hip. “What’s so funny?”
“Really, nothing” Luke said while a grin broke free on his face and betrayed him.
“Listen! I’m hot, I’m frustrated, and I’m armed! So, you’d better tell me!”
“Ok,” Luke said between giggles, “it’s just, you still stand like a Princess.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” she shouted.
“ You know, the way you’re always posing.”
“Posing? I’m in a fighting stance, so I guess you could call that a pose!”
“Yeah, but your chin does that thing,” Luke said, followed by more giggles.
“What thing?” her voice louder.
“It sticks up like you’re sniffing something gross.”
Leia stabs her brother with an accusatory finger. “Well, then maybe it’s bathtime, Mister!” she said, with no trace of humor on her face.
“And your,” Luke said before his laughter stopped him.
“My what?!” Leia shouts.
“Your butt,” he said, clutching at his sides.
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY BUTT!” she roared, her face contorted with rage.
“It,” he pauses to wipe a tear, “it sticks out like your light saber got stuck up — “
Leia’s angry scream cut him short as Luke rolled out of the way of a light saber swinging toward his chest. Returning to his feet he somersaulted backwards as Leia buried the light saber in the sand where he stood a moment before, the heat of the blade leaving a line of glass in the sand.
“He wanted me to make her angry,” Luke thought, “so I guess I’ve done one thing right today.” He couldn’t remember seeing her so incensed. Before he could contemplate begging her to stop her onslaught, Luke dodged left and then right, barely avoiding another couple of vicious slashes. Leia’s reflexes were impressive. Suddenly Luke saw Anakin beckoning to him from over Leia’s right shoulder, standing about thirty meters away. Dropping to a crouch to avoid a blow to his head, he then leapt twice his height over his sister’s head and landed in a sprint for the area in which his father, now nowhere to be seen, was standing.
If he thought Leia was surprised by his leap, he didn’t think it for long. Luke realized that his sister was faster than him, and he could hear from the crunch of the sand and the hum of the light saber that she was gaining ground. “I’m going to have to turn and fight,” he said to himself, but the thought of fighting — really fighting — his sister put panic into his run. “Father!” he shouted, hoping to get some idea from Anakin of what to do, but he heard no response. Just then, his right foot abruptly sunk several inches into the sand and Luke fell hard, badly scrapping his face on the desert floor.
He rolled onto his back to see his sister standing over him, her eyes wide with rage, raising the light saber high. He made ready to deliver a kick that would likely shatter her kneecap, pulling his left knee to his chest, but just before he could release he saw his father appear, his lips almost touching her right ear.
“Yes, my daughter,” Anakin said in a calm voice, “do it.”
Just then, a high pitched shriek split the air, followed by another. Luke could see that Leia was no longer looking at him, but at something on the ground by his right foot. He lifted his head to see a partially uncovered nest with two Silver Vulture chicks. Newly hatched, their pure white fuzzy down shone brighter than the suns.
“Strike, Leia. You may kill them but who cares? You weren’t thinking of consequences when you allowed yourself to get angry, when you tried to hurt your own brother. Do it.”
“No!” Leia turned, placing the blade between her and her father.
Luke could see the sad expression taking hold of his father’s features once again. “The ignorant think that anger makes them strong,” Anakin said, “but it’s a blind strength. What good is strength when you can’t discern friend from foe? Or enemy from innocent?”
A heavy silence hung for a few moments before Leia broke it by deactivating the light saber. Luke got back to his feet, quickly testing his right ankle to find that while a little tender, it wasn’t sprained. Anakin said, ‘Be well, my children,’ before turning and walking toward the setting suns.
Watching him go, Luke said, “I think that’s enough for today.” Leia attached the light saber to her belt and walked away, a mixture of shock and revulsion on her face.
Wiping blood from his sand-scraped face, Luke knelt before the nest, trying to cover the exposed portion while his thoughts replayed the events of the past few minutes. He wondered if he went too far, or what he might have done if he’d been forced to fight Leia. What if one of them was seriously hurt? His eyes drifted toward his prosthetic hand, remembering. “None of this would have happened,” he mumbled aloud to himself, “if I’d been a better teacher.”
By accident, Luke discovered that by mixing his blood with the sand he could make thin strips, enough to cover the nest, which he then sprinkled with loose sand to make them look like the surroundings. It wasn’t unnoticeable, but it seemed to do the job, and the chicks stopped their crying.
As he stood to get a better look, he heard a familiar voice beside him.
“Clever, you are.”
Luke looked to see the image of his former master, Yoda, gazing up at him, shimmering with the same halo as his father.
“Hello, Master Yoda.” Luke felt a swell of happiness at seeing his old teacher, but he didn’t feel like smiling. “I wish I was clever.”
“Your father you saw today.”
“Yes.”
“Help you with Leia’s training, did he?” Yoda asked.
“I think Leia learned a lot from him today.”
“And learned what did you?”
“I think that all I learned was that I’m not a very good teacher.”
“Our greatest teacher, your father is,” Yoda said in a quiet voice. “In all the history of the Jedi, the best he has become.”
“My father is the greatest teacher in Jedi history,” Luke said, taking in the enormous number of years that history spans. “Better than you? Master Yoda, how is that possible? How did he learn so much?”
“Made the most mistakes, he did. Study and train, day after day, yet always Failure our best teacher remains. Fail well, young Skywalker.” And with those words, Yoda left Luke staring at the reddening sky.
posted by Christopher A. Dellario at 6:55 PM
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