[dream] A Little Wish - January, 2004 and July, 2005

The first part of what I'm writing here wasn't really a dream, but the final of the trilogy of "visions" I experienced. In my first vision, I saw myself walking down the aisle five weeks before I got married, every detail an eerie carbon copy of the actual event. The second vision was of my divorce--a day before the wedding. Here's the third vision, hopefully the last one I will ever experience. At the time, I was having a severe on-going back problem and had to lie down frequently throughout the day. This vision came one of those days, while I was lying down in the mid-afternoon, neither quite asleep nor fully awake.

* * * * *

I seem a bit older. Perhaps in mid-thirties. My hair, long and straight, is in an up-do. It seems to be summer time, and I have on a black short sleeve shirt. And I am about seven months pregnant with a baby boy.

A little girl is next to me. She is wearing a short sleeve dress, and she has a bob-cut hair with bangs. The skin on her chubby cheeks seem extraordinarily fair against her jet black hair. She looks up at me, and, tugging at my shirt, asks,

"Mommy, mommy, where do babies come from?"

I chuckle a little, then I start to reply,

"Well, Sowon, the babies....."

* * * * *

It was the moment I called out her name that I came to my consciousness. I had never heard that name before, and my then husband and I had already picked out names for future possible additions to the family. My mind could not possibly make up a name like that--it had to be a vision. Sowon, meaning "a little wish" in Korean, was a unique name, but I felt a certain sense of familiarity. I was starting to anticipate the realization of this vision.

Later that same year, I called my marriage quits. I had a dog, Suni, at the time, and kept her for a while, until I realized that I could barely care for myself, let alone a dog. It was hard to let her go, but I found her a great home in June of 2005. A dream about Sowon came a month later.

* * * * *

I'm taking a nap in the master bedroom of the house I grew up in Korea. The sound of Suni's footsteps--her nails clicking against the wooden floors of the living room--awakens me. She's approaching the bedroom door, knowing that I am in there.

She whines outside the door for a bit as I keep quiet. Then, as can only be possible in a dream, she slides in through the gap under the door. She is ecstatic to see me. I am, too, but the prospect of having to return Suni to her current owner weighs down on me, just as I felt when I gave her up in the first place.

I take her out to the living room. The house is almost exactly the same as I remember it, except for a few minor things, notably a kitchen to the left of the master bedroom. In the kitchen is my ex on his cell phone, as he always was while we were married. In the dream we are still married, though obviously not happily. I briefly give him a look of disgust and contempt, then turn my eyes to Suni.

In place of Suni, though, I find Sowon sitting, looking exactly the same as in the vision I had. And seeing her, I burst into tears.

"I'm so sorry. Sowon, mommy's so sorry....."

I am choking on tears and can't continue. So she gets up, walks over to me, and gives me a hug.

"Mommy, it's okay," she says.

* * * * *

When I woke up after this dream, I sensed that the third vision will never realize. In the dream when I apologized to her, I was apologizing for not granting her life in this world. But I feel as though she had existed. Perhaps her soul, too delicate for earthly life, could only exist through my mind until the tumults of my psyche perished her.

Suni, May, 2005

[dream] Songs, May 17, 2007

All the songs were being lost.

They were songs of my memories , and each note of each song, as light as a dandelion seed, were being carried away by the wind. I felt the powerless angst to see them disappear in front of my eyes. In the end, all that remained were the songs of Bach.

[trip] Big Bear Lake, May, 2007

T. S. Elliot must have had the kind of April I was having when he wrote The Waste Land. I was never friends with the month of April, typically keeping as low a profile as I can. But the past month was proving to be one of the more--but not the most--cruel ones. By the end of the month, I was fatigued, mentally and emotionally. I needed to get away.

I wanted to go to a place that is either completely new to me or related to a pleasant memory. Initially having thought of Pismo Beach or Monterey/Carmel, I quickly realized that the entire central coast did not meet the conditions I set. After much wasted time on hesitations and indecisiveness, Big Bear Lake was finally chosen as the destination--it fell in the latter category.


Day 1, May 13, Sunday.

Sunday being the Mother's Day, I paid my obligatory visit to my mom on Saturday instead. But my mom being a mother, tried her best, with success, to get me to visit her again on Mother's Day. So my start was a late one, with three different types of crustaceans in my stomach.
My poor car, not used to such strenuous driving, had a difficult time going up the winding roads of the San Bernardino National Forest. I could feel the pains of my car--the last five miles gave me a short-lived migraine headache. Finally, around 6PM, I arrived and checked in at the Marina Resort.

It wasn't the most upscale a place to stay--the decor was hideous and ceiling was a bit too low. But it was clean, had a fireplace, and most importantly, a balcony with a view of the lake. As soon as the unpacking was done, I grabbed my Nikon and headed out.

Ducks, my goodness, the ducks! The Mallards were everywhere. And by a little magic of my camera and the sun, I got the shot below. Except for cropping the photo and adding a watermark, no Photoshop work was done to this. I didn't play with the color setting of my camera either.

I spent the rest of the evening quietly in my room, reading Hermann Hesse and drinking the wine I brought along, listening to--unseasonably--Schubert's Winterreise. Ever since my strangely spooky trip to San Simeon two and a half years ago, I made a habit of bringing my rosary to any trip. And starting this year, I added another one--an old family portrait.

Day 2, May 14, Monday.

The hotel's idea of "continental breakfast" was packaged cinnamon buns and watered down coffee. Utterly disappointed, I started wandering around the lobby, looking through the periodicals. One of the magazines featured an article about newest acquisitions at the Moonridge Zoo--a silver fox and what looked like a groundhog--and it became my first and only planned activity.

The two acre lot facility housed such animals as crows, squirrels, even seagulls. It was more like a wild life shelter than a zoo, but I had a surprisingly great time, and walked away with a couple of great photos.

Bald-headed Eagle

My encounter with a bear



Probably my favorite shot of the trip--a baby owl staring at its left over.

I went for a drive around the lake after leaving the zoo. Listening to Eroica, Beethoven's third symphony, and hugging every curve of the road along the lake was a thing of beauty.

After a late lunch of tilapia and sauteed vegetables at a local restaurant (really, what is a mountain-y meal to eat?), I went back to the room and made use of the balcony that had a view. Of the three books I brought along with me, I picked the collection of short stories by Ryu Murakami (not to be confused with Haruki Murakami, no relations), about food and women. It is an interesting read, even second time around, but he's still no match for his unrelated colleague.

As the sunset started to cast beautiful light on the scenery, I headed out with my camera again. There was a boardwalk I had seen while driving earlier that day, and I wanted to go there. Unfortunately, it wasn't too photo-worthy and I was left with only a boring picture.

The evening was uneventful. I did some more thinking, then tried to read Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, one of only two books of his I have not yet read. But I was overcome by complete exhaustion and I fell asleep even before finishing my wine.

Day 3, May 15, Tuesday

As I started packing to leave, I realized how much "stuff" I had. I had a small suitcase filled with my clothes and toiletries, a laptop case, a camera case, a tripod, and another tote bag containing the wine glass, wine opener, water bottles, etc. And I wondered if the words "travel light" have become obsolete to modern day people. Or is it just obsolete to me, having adopted peculiarities that require more and more "stuff" as I age? Either way, I wasn't too happy.

After checking out, I headed to Lake Arrowhead. Actually, my pleasant memory of a trip to Big Bear was Lake Arrowhead, not Big Bear Lake. Six years ago, a college friend of mine from Japan was visiting for a month. A fishing aficionado he was (probably still is), and insisted that we go to Arrowhead, with a cheap fishing rod in one hand and salmon roe in the other. A fishing aficionado I wasn't, but tagging along I could, I took The Fountainhead in one hand and my camera in the other. That day, he caught what looked like a rainbow trout. I, having dozed off while reading, ended up with a reddish tan on one side of my face.

When I got to the village, I went straight to McDonald's for lunch, reminiscing about the late lunch my friend and I had there six years ago.
Somehow in my CD player, Jimmi Hendrix found his way, adding more fun to the mountain driving (although it would have been really fun with Acura TL sports sedan that I would be getting in a couple months). I started driving around the lake, hoping to find the spot I had gone to last time I was here.

I did find the spot. But my friend and I must not have realized that we were trespassing on private property. We were bold then (or just ignorant), I guess, but I am not any more. So I left.

The music switched from Hendrix to The Beatles. But as I continued my descent down the mountain, I found myself missing Beethoven. At 3,000 feet elevation, I slipped in his String Quarter No. 13 into the CD player.

I was listening to Grosse Fuge as I passed the sign leaving the San Bernardino Mountains. And I came back to the reality that wasn't much different than before I drove up there.

[dream] Dream, July, 2006

When I was little, I could only travel long distance by train because of severe motion sickness. To this day, anything related to train is of nostalgia for me. So this dream was interesting to me because I was seeing a new face in an old setting.

* * * * *

In a secluded train station, he and I were waiting for the train to arrive. We stood facing each other, staring into the seemingly endless train tracks in opposite directions.

Then he kissed me, in a gesture that was neither abrupt nor hesitant. It was his unmitigated right, and I gave him my unspoken surrender. Far away, we heard the whistle of our long awaited train.

Thus the best kiss yet of my thirty-year life occurred--in a dream.
The tragedy of Anna Karenina was nowhere to be found.

Birthday, Marc Chagall, 1915