Milton Raphael

Today was my piano teacher's (http://www.iamaprisoner.com/#milton.html) birthday. I had an early release day from school and when I got home, there he was waiting for me at the piano(apparently my mom forgot to tell me that we'd rescheduled the lesson for the day). The lesson lasted for over an hour. I told him happy birthday and he barely responded with a slight grin and a nod. When I asked him what he was going to do on his special day, he said he was giving lessons all day, then going home to prepare for a performance he's giving at the end of the month. I don't know if he has any family (or friends) in town. I hope someone at least gets him a cake. The only person in the world who seems more lonely than I am is Milton Raphael.

He hasn't been quite the same since, well, the dream. He talks less; what used to be small talk between us has been reduced to tiny talk. He seems just a little less passionate about the music. When he plays pieces for me now he seems almost in a zombie like state. I often catch him staring into oblivion, his eyes seeming to stare straight through space and time into a void. I sometimes find myself wondering, what have they done to him?

He has all but prohibited me from talking about the dream. Every time I get even close to bringing it up, he completely changes the subject. I know he knows more about the Polar Bear Project than he's telling me. How do I know? I know this isn't a great argument, but it's a gut feeling. Call it intuition. All musicians at heart know, and most of them are either too utterly confused or too far in denial to want to talk about it.

He still has the scar on the side of his head, the scar that he got in the dream, my dream.