the only thing worse
than bad memories
is no memories at all..
[dismemberment plan]
4.21.2008
Weird Dreams, Black Holes.
I've been plagued recently by some really bizarre, vivid dreams. Anyone want to take a stab at "what it means"?
Last night, I had this awful nightmare that my dad and I were in my mom's SUV. He was driving me to someplace I can't recall, through some sort of summer camp. It was at this weird beach-like colony where young white people were running around on the sand in colorful swimsuits. I've seen this weird setting before in my dreams, many times. There's always a lot of dirty seaweed strewn about, the sky is a dead green, the sand gritty. The water is mucky, and a bubbly film floats on top of the crashing waves.
There was a small, black, petroleum-y lake under a hill. I, for some reason, asked my dad to drive closer and closer along the lip of this lake. I'm not sure why. It wasn't to show off to anyone (no one stood out to me in the crowds as anyone I knew), maybe it was just to see how far I could push him. Without putting up a fight (which is not like his character), he acquiesced and drove closer and closer to this black, disgusting, swampy lake.
The inevitable happened, and we got stuck. I hopped out and tried to push the car out of the black muck, but the car was stuck, and started sinking quickly. I yelled for help and screamed at my dad to get out of the car, but it was sinking too quickly, and no one came to help us. I ran to see if I could get someone, anyone, to save my dad, who was trapped, submerged under the thick, black mud.
I ran and came across some friends of mine. I'm not sure who they were, but I think we all went out somewhere, talking, catching up, laughing. I wondered to myself when I would have to break the news to my family that my father had succumbed to the dark mysterious mud, and that my strange request to drive the car close to this black lake had rendered my mother husbandless, and my brother and I fatherless.
I'm not sure how much time went by, but at some point the laughter became sincere and carefree, until a jarring sudden moment when I remembered with urgency that my dad was trapped inside of a car, at the bottom of a black lake. I chanced upon some kind of towing garage, where I summoned the help of a white man with a sunburned red face, a beer gut and a crew cut, to tear ass in his tow truck to this lake to save my father.
A diver in scuba gear dove into the muck with a hook, and emerged, announcing that he had successfully rigged the hook to the back of the car. I tried in vain to calculate how much time had gone by, and how much oxygen there was in the car for my dad to possibly survive on. It seemed like a lost cause. I wondered to myself if my dad had struggled, trying to open the door or crack a window to free himself, which probably would have only allowed the mud to enter the car, fill his nose, mouth, ears, and muffled his shouts and paralyzed his flailing limbs. It was not an image I enjoyed. Despite my dad's usual hardness, his cheapness, his usually ill-tempered mood, I considered him to be a good man, and I loved him. A crank started turning, a rope attached to the hook tightened, and the back of the car in which my dad was prisoner became visible.
That's when I woke up.
* * * * *
My personal thoughts on this dream is that it is no coincidence that last night, before I had this dream, my father and I finally had an uncomfortable discussion about me moving out, as my mother played "passive referee" (playing sudoku next to me as she occasionally shouted criticisms at both of us without looking up from her book). For the last two years in which I've tried unsuccessfully to move out on my own, my dad has gone into hysterics every time I brought up the topic. He wails, saying that he is going to faint, and how could I be such a horrible daughter with skewed thinking to even consider moving out. He still thinks I should live at home until I am married to a Korean man, an idea which admittedly shocks and horrifies me. Therefore, my dad has understandably been pretty much left in the dark of my moving plans in the past few months. My mom usually chimes in, too, saying that everyone in New York is a drug addict and an alcoholic, and dirty, which is not very helpful to my cause -- but lately, as the more progressive parent, she begrudgingly agreed to me in secret that it seems like it's time that I move out.
After first attempting to use threats, anger, and frustration with little success, my dad moved onto the most powerful strategy a charmingly petite and typically angry Asian parent can ever summon: guilt.
"But... I like it when you are here at home."
This was either a rare glimpse at my dad's soft side, or a crafty, desperate, last-resort attempt to appeal to my "good daughter" side. But I put my foot down. The conversation ended awkwardly, like a joke that trails off without a punchline, and I went up to my room. There, I received a call on my cell phone from my dad, who was downstairs in the living room, where I imagine he was shaken and recovering from the ordeal.
"Yaejina, even if it costs more money, I think you should find a place that you like," he said to me in Korean, his voice uncharacteristically gentle and giving.
My stomach ached with a feeling I can only describe as tender guilt. I can count the instances that my typically cheap-ass dad suggested using MORE money rather than less on one hand. Make that half a hand. Some kind of a mutilated hand that is mostly stump, and three little stalky growths popping out from a single knuckle. I said "okay" softly and hung up as the stomachache grew.
I don't want to feel like I'm abandoning my dad like a "bad daughter." I also don't think that leaving home at age 23, when I am gainfully employed, should count as "abandonment" -- though I can plainly see that my dad considers my moving out as such. I guess that the distance that has slowly grown between us over the past decade and a half could feel like an abandonment, with both of us being left feeling like the abandoner as well as the abandonee. But I want him to know that I would never leave him at the bottom of a black hole, alone, so that I could yukk it up with some friends -- despite my inexplicable actions in this weird dream I had last night -- and that I would dive straight into the murky black quicksand myself, tear the door off with my bare hands to free him, take his hand, and search for the surface with him again, without ever looking back.
[Peek-a-Foo]