I can already feel that this will be a very long post. Keeping a dream journal is not something I’ve ever been accustomed to doing, but I probably will start soon. The two nightmares I’ve had this month are slowly coming to me in blurs, until the details are so fogged up that I can’t tell if it’s something I’ve made up myself, or if it was really in my dream.

The first one is hard to remember, and I know I should’ve at least written it down, but I relied too much on memory. All I can remember was a Halloween-esque dream with a man and woman, a couple. They lived in a shoddy, run-down, extremely tiny wooden house that stood in the middle of what seemed like an abandoned dessert. Inside their small house was a medium-sized kitchenette, and there were only two doors, one leading outside, and the other leading to a basement. The basement was extremely deep, and the steps leading down were steep. In the middle of the basement, at the very bottom, was a tall stool, and on that stool was a record player in the shape of a heart. I’m not sure if the heart-record-player was beating or not, but somehow I knew that it was the “heart” of that house. It was strange, because while the whole dream had very dark colors, the heart-record-player was colored a deep, startling pink. The composition of it was almost like a traditional comic page. All I remember next is a windy storm/tornado lifting some of the wooden components of the house away, the couple mildly arguing in the kitchenette, and the door connecting the kitchenette and the basement being open.

The second dream, which I had the night after the first dream, was very long. I woke up from it several times, and tried to go back to sleep, but it seemed like I only got back to the same dream. Some of the details I forgot as the days passed, but I just remember that we (a group of me and other people I don’t quite remember) were in a room (almost like a dining room with chairs and table, converted to a study room) and assigned to… something. A task? The leader of the group was a man who suspiciously looked like a version of Jim Carey’s character from the “A Series of Unfortunate Events” movie, only slightly older. We had to… do something. Arghh, it frustrates me now to forget, but some part of me does not want to remember. Maybe we were trapped inside the room and trying to get out? But the tall old man pointed to a book on one of the chairs that was unnoticed before… And that book turned out to be a white book, but somehow, I knew the title was “House of Leaves.” The old man told us that it would help us, if we followed all of the instructions in the book.

And suddenly we’re all in front of an old nursing home. We go inside and at first, I’m fearless, not wondering what the big deal is. The group scatters and we look around curiously. I walk through one of the hallways and turn on the light to one of the rooms. It turns out to be an empty beauty parlor (the kind you typically see in nursing homes) with spider webs on the chairs and rust on some of the metal fixtures. I shrug, still not feeling scared, and continue to look around the place. And scenes jumble, and our task starts. Perhaps it’s to face our fears, but one of the ladies in our group chooses to go first, and the scene jumps to me and her in the room being faced by… something… A ghost? An apparition? All I know is that it’s capable of hurting us, of torturing us, and suddenly I’m filled with incapacitating fear. And suddenly, the old man appears in front of us and scolds us for being afraid, and as punishment, conjures up an inflated air-dog-plushie(???) and I remember it had a big red nose, kind of like Rudolph… And the inflatable dog plushie was on wheels, and it jerked and suddenly, its huge nose rammed up against my face and I have no idea why it scared me, but it did. And I distinctly remember feeling it hurt. And I remember that whatever our task was, we were still not finished. And that somehow, we were now trapped in this dilapidated nursing home until we did finish. I remember one of us group members tried to escape, but when they went through the entrance, there were some soldiers waiting outside who shot them. I tried to escape later, and hid from the soldiers from behind the cars before breaking into a car and then driving off, with my group members following my example and hitching a ride with me. And then I remember an explosion, but I don’t think we were hurt. And maybe we escaped, or if we didn’t, I think the next scene was us with the old man AGAIN, in the old nursing home, AGAIN, with him chiding us like children and telling us that we still needed to follow the book before we could truly be free. Right now, I’m not entirely sure how the dream ended… but it seemed very open to interpretation.

The most recent dream I’ve had was about a couple of hours ago, while napping before lunchtime. I was in a huge mall, with my family, a friend, and a guy I used to like. We were in a huge movie/DVD store, and my parents went ahead and purchase 3 recent movies. I really don’t know what the titles were, or what they were about, but when I think of those DVDs, a flash of white and blue appear in my mind. While they were away paying for their purchases, I was wandering around the store with my friend. The store itself seemed much bigger than the mall that housed it, and even though there were shelves and rows of DVDs (like in a rental store), the tall white cases that held them were all generously spaced apart, and there was a lot of empty space between all the furniture. Looking back on it now, it seemed like whoever was the store’s interior designer, they were trying for a modernist (more space)-kind of design. 

The friend I was wandering around with… I only remember that he was male, but as for his face, I always come up with a blur. If I had written all of this down right after I woke up, I probably would have remembered who he was exactly, but I was downright spooked when I woke up, and I wanted to wait until I was outside to start writing. It’s sprinkling lightly right now, and even though the clouds are overcast, it’s still much brighter outside, then inside the house (with many of the curtains darkening the interiors of the house).

 But back to the dream… While wandering through the DVD store (I only abandon the term “movie” because I have this indescribable feeling that it was just a DVD store, with no VHS or blu-rays.) time passed and even though I did not meet with my parents or the rest of my family for what remained of my dream, I knew that they had walked to other parts of the mall to shop, and that most importantly, they were safe. I think I was probably supposed to meet up with them later, along with my guy friend and the guy I liked (for simplicity’s sake, I’ll just call him my “crush” from now on).

So I walked with my friend through the mall, and as we walked, I remembered that I had to get my crush something, since he was a foreign exchange student, and he’d be going back to his country soon. That was when I realized that my parents had purchased those movies for my crush, as a going away present. I felt a little put-off by that in my dream, because I wanted to give him something else more meaningful. It was then that the book “House of Leaves” came to mind. Even though the book might be difficult for a person who didn’t have a good grasp of the English language, I knew in the dream (and it’s true in real life), that my crush was an exceptional learner and spoke/understood English like a native. (Looking back on it now, I remembered that there are other versions of “House of Leaves” in other languages, but that didn’t occur to me in the dream.) But I knew that if I gave my crush a copy of “House of Leaves,” he would understand it, and undoubtedly appreciate the gift far more than just a regular DVD.

Needless to say, even though I knew that my friend and I were close to the meeting place with family (and my crush, who I felt was close-by), my friend and I stopped by a bookstore to our left. It started getting really strange at this point. The store was a little smaller compared to the other stores in the mall, but when I try to remember what it looked liked, I don’t remember any stores being beside it. Just pitch dark where the stores were supposed to be. But there were hanging lamp lights placed around the store, and in a way, the lights felt comforting.


As we got closer to the store, I felt like it was more of a tree house than anything. The pillars were wooden, and there were vines hanging from the roof (don’t ask me how the store has a complete roof when it’s already inside a building). The most amazing thing that struck me was that the store was standing on something that looked like wooden stilts. They weren’t high, but my friend and I had to jump to get inside the store.

I remember purchasing three books of “House of Leaves” and noticing that the covers were all different. Beyond the black cover were pages decorated with ornate, curling vines. I jokingly wondered if this was a “jungle theme” but the knowledge came to me suddenly that these books were a newer, updated version of “House of Leaves.”

After buying the three books, me and my friend sat down in the store. I gave one copy for him to keep, and he started flipping through the pages. I remember panicking then, because I realized that I needed to purchase one more copy of the book (in total, that would make four books) to give to my crush, but then I relaxed when I realized that I already had the book at home (the non-updated version), and that I can give him the updated-curling-vine-version that I had meant to buy for myself. But looking back on it, I had initially purchased three books. Wouldn’t that have been enough? One for my friend, one for me, one for my crush? Then why did I panic so much? Did my subconscious just ignore the third book’s existence, or was I really just saving the third book for someone else?

But as I relaxed, I sat with my friend and flipped through the pages. I noticed that there were actually drawings inside the book; they looked like pages from a manga. I flipped through the entire book and then got to the very last page, which showed three (or more?) children hanging with their hands from… from something, I’m not sure if it was a branch or not, because there was also a branch underneath their feet—a very small and brittle branch. Beyond them was encompassing darkness, and I knew instinctively that it was a giant, dark hole, and that if they let go of whatever it was that they were hanging from, they would fall endlessly into that pit. Now that I think of it, the word “hell” pops up in the recesses of my mind, but it seems too extreme… or maybe I just don’t want to believe that that’s what the dark hole represents, is.

Next thing I know, I’m immersed in the book, and literally, I feel like I’m with the children, but not hanging with them, more like looking down at their desperate and scared faces, almost like some sort of omniscient, observing being. The small brittle branch underneath their feet crumbles and cracks, and suddenly their hold on whatever’s keeping them from falling (a branch, someone’s hand—though I doubt this one—, I really don’t know for sure) grows more desperate and tighter.

And then… I wake up. I realize that I overslept from my nap, and it’s now early/mid-afternoon, and what woke me up was my mom’s alarm clock to pick up my sisters from school. I check up on her to see that she’s already awake, so I head back to the bedroom and try to get a little more sleep in. It’s funny, because whenever I have a nightmare and wake up, I have this overwhelming urge to go back to sleep, probably in hopes of having a good dream this time, to mask and belittle the effects of the bad one.

I did nap for a few minutes, but it was dreamless, but still unsettling. I changed and got ready to pick up my sisters. I ate a bit of breakfast’s leftovers and drank some sweet tea to calm down. Whenever I got ready to leave the house, and started remembering the dream in full detail, whenever I got to the children and the dark hole, one part of Poe’s “Haunted” came into my mind… “In this house of leaves [incorrigible part, lilting tone]…”

These dreams are unsettling, and I have no idea if stress from my real life is seeping into my subconscious and translating over to my dreams, but even though I’m chilled, it also interests me a lot.

Maybe I should start a dream journal for general things, hmm? There will be those who don’t believe in dreams having meanings, and maybe it’s just my over-analytical mind wanting to find meanings in things that don’t, but it sounds like something fun to take up.

I finished House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski a little more than a week ago, but it has not really affected me until now. Major things like nightmares (which I don’t usually have—it’s mostly nonsensical) started happening two nights ago. I’ll elaborate on those in a separate post, but it’s the little things that give me chills.

Recently, I’ve found that whenever someone says the word house, it appears like a visual flash in my head, in blue and Dante font.

“It’s so messy around here. You need to clean the house.”

“Can I drop by your house tomorrow?”

It’s a little ridiculous how the littlest things creep me out… I suppose the aftereffects of reading the book are just reaching me late.

fuwafuwacats:

aiko/ずっと
2011秋ドラマ『蜜の味〜A Taste Of Honey〜』

I get a feeling of nostalgia listening to this… ♪ 

I open my eyes groggily and immediately feel that something is not right. Faint light is streaming from the window blinds. I feel as tired waking up, as I did going to sleep a few hours earlier.

“One hour,” I promised myself. I was falling asleep on the keyboard and writing an incomprehensible mix of letters, numbers, and symbols on the screen. I would only need one hour to refresh, one hour to straighten up that ache in my neck, one hour to spend in a sinfully soft bed, before getting up to finish all of my paperwork due in clinical early in the morning. 

It was not one hour that passed, but five.

The light from the window is suspicious. I know it’s just the lamp lights scattered across campus, which are on 24/7, but it just doesn’t feel right. I get paranoid all over again. I reach for my phone, press a random button, and “4:57” shows up in horribly bright, cheerful font. 

Clinical starts at 6:15 am. My paperwork needs to be done before that time. It is not done. My paperwork needs to be printed before that time. It is not printed. I need to be in uniform, with my books, stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, and said paperwork [completed] inside the hospital classroom before 6:15.

I am still in my pajamas.

I die a thousand little deaths as I get quickly get ready. I dress in uniform in record time, not bothering to fix my hair, wash my face, brush my teeth, or get a little something for breakfast. I get into the car, drive like a speed demon to the hospital parking lot, and on the way, get stuck behind an extremely slow car (with a suspicious number of cars in the opposing lane, so no way to safely overtake).

I get to the parking lot at 5:35 and start walking the long road to the building with the computer lab. I realize again that the door to this particular building only opens at exactly 6:00 am. I curse to myself several times, take out my laptop, and try to finish my paperwork. By the time 6:00 am comes, I am rushing through that door like a hurricane, logging in to the nearest computer, and printing those billion pages of paperwork. I check my watch. 6:10. Still printing. I go visit the bathroom and realize I look like a hot mess. My uniform is crumpled, my eyebags have eyebags of their own, and my hair is up in different directions. The cherry on top: my stomach growls.

I grumble and get my paperwork before running all the way to the hospital from the campus building. I wish I could say good morning to the nice people I pass but I’d be a complete liar. I get inside the classroom and take a seat. 6:15. On time.  

This program has really tested my limits. I stay up late at night gathering information from various sources and completing all sorts of paperwork. I wake up early in the morning to drive to my clinical site to present aforementioned paperwork and care for my assigned client. 

It’s horrible because while I do want to stay in the program, there are times where all I wish for is to drop it. I am stressed every single day. I feel like I have mini heart attacks whenever I go to the classroom or clinical setting. I have this ridiculously paramount fear of failing. Sometimes I wish a car would hit me while I’m driving to clinical, or someone would kidnap me while I’m walking to class, just so I could be excused from the responsibility of going on with the program. That’s how bad it is. (In reality, no, I would not like to be hit by a car, nor would I like being kidnapped—although the last one is exempt when it comes to certain people *ahem*—)

But I get so many second thoughts. I am constantly hurrying, always trying to catch up with a deadline, always trying to studying for an upcoming test, anything. It’s the anticipation and nerves that get to me. That fear of failing. And I wish I were dead all over again. But the situations where I do succeed, it feels like nothing else in the world. I feel extraordinarily lucky and so damn glad to have done this. 

I guess in a way, it’s a sick cycle of bad and good feelings. I feel like such a drug addict. I wish it would get better, but it only seems to get worse. I’m worried that if I do come out of this program with a degree, my sanity will be at such a compromised state.

But no matter how much I loathe the entire situation, this program has made me discover the lengths to which I can persevere, and the extent to which I can deal with stressors. It always feels like the breaking point, but not quite. It drives me so crazy, but sometimes I think it won’t be so bad to be an insane lady with a degree in the end. I mean… she still has that degree.

It’s been a while since I’ve read a good book. Today was the last day of the 2010-2011 school year and I’ve been eagerly making plans for the summer all this week. A large part of that plan included a very large reading list, from books I’ve started and never finished from over a year ago to titles that have recently caught my attention and interest.

I finished with my finals yesterday, but I didn’t go home until late today because I wanted to see a good friend before she left for China (after an amazing two years!) and another friend before he graduated with a major in Psychology and went off for his English-teaching job in Korea. I was only able to see them in the afternoon, so that left me a lot of time to spare beforehand. Between deciding to start on that reading list and creating an account on Ragnarok (the latter’s been on my mind these past few weeks)… I sighed and figured, it’s been a year already, so why stall finishing all those books any longer?

In the end, I narrowed it down to the two books I already had in my suitcase. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie and Plum Wine by Angela Davis-Gardner. I was already halfway through Peter Pan, and it was very lively and interesting material, but admittedly, it gave me a huge headache sometimes, to read such proper writing. So I settled with Plum Wine, a book bought for my own guilty pleasure… I love to brush up on classics and whatnot, but on those occasions where I get the chance to read something I’m genuinely interested in… I take it and run.

In my case, I had first seen Plum Wine in the “Recommended by Our Staff” section in a large Barnes and Noble bookstore. I love that section because it’s rotated every once in a while, and there are usually short (and persuasive) comments to go with each book. I regrettably forgot what was written in that comment for Plum Wine, but the title intrigued me, and the summary even moreso.

Everything about Japan fascinates me. The culture, food, architecture, history, the people… The people the most, definitely. Their mannerisms, their thinking, their customs, their rules [especially those unspoken], their honne and their tatemae, their graceful sorrow—-.

All of this, I am in love with. And reading Plum Wine has made me re-realize that love once more.

And that’s why I’ve stayed up until 3 writing this journal entry and pouring all my thoughts and feelings into this little piece of writing, because it feels much more poignant after flipping that one last page, after reading that one last sentence… It fills me with complete wonder sometimes, how strongly that last sentence, let alone that last page or chapter, can make me feel. It can fill with me with an overwhelming surge of inspiration and happiness and satisfaction, or an overwhelming desperation, grief and sadness and depression, that nevertheless seems to give me conflicting feelings of hope and despair simultaneously. 

Or, it can do nothing to me.

And that’s possibly the worst thing a book can do. Make a reader say, “Ehh, whatever.” 

Plum Wine doesn’t do that for me. I had only read about twenty pages a year ago, but the memory was fuzzy and I wanted to experience it all at once. So after packing all of my stuff up in my car, I walked all the way to the English building on campus, sat in a chair in a secluded section, and flipped back to page one.

I was in a hurry for those first few pages… A hurry to get through all the stuff that I had remembered, and get to the bottom of this story. It’s a mystery, it’s a romance, it’s many life lessons in such a tiny book, but the authoress doesn’t forcefeed it to you. This is what I like. Subtlety. 

Sitting in that chair for hours, reading that book… I definitely felt my back and legs start to ache really bad, but I stretched, blew it off, and continued to read. After three hours had passed, I left the English building and traveled to the finances building which had slightly comfier seats. It had been raining a little hard earlier, and as I walked out, I noticed that although it got a little clearer and brighter, the rain was still falling (though not as heavily) while the sun shined on. One of the characters, Seiji, mentioned how in Japan, a day when rain fell while the sun still shined brightly showed that there was a fox wedding. These little anomalies… having events in a book show up similarly in real life… make me laugh and shake my head and just wonder.

I don’t want to give away too much about the book, but I can say that I definitely recommend it. I don’t know how I could’ve stopped after twenty or so pages a year ago… but I started in the beginning today and finished it twelve or so hours later—What can I say? I love taking my time and savoring all the phrases. If time would’ve allowed it, I would’ve finished it in one sitting, but as it was, I eventually had to stop to meet with my friends and then drive home quickly afterwards. It wasn’t until later, around 10:30 PM when I could start reading again. And even though I was so tired from all the exams and nuances of this week, I couldn’t stop until I finished.

I will have a few spoilers here on out, so reader beware!

The ending for me was the cincher. There were many times in the story when I was so sure it would end in this way or that. But to my heartache, it worked out in a way it might’ve worked out in real life. In the middle of the story, I was so sure it would all work out very neatly with the way things were going, and I was a little satisfied, happy, but somewhat disappointed. Somehow, deep inside, I was wishing it would go differently. I guess I’m a real cynic when it comes to happy endings.

In the end, though, I got my wish. It wasn’t on too bad a note, but it wasn’t exactly perfect either. This is definitely one of those books that had a last sentence that made me question, “… Wait! There should be another page to this, right? I can go request a proper version from my book retailer, right?! … Right?!”

 It felt so abrupt, and reminded me of Utada’s “Take 5” song where it cuts off so suddenly at the end. But looking back at it, it seems appropriate.

But it was very poignant, nonetheless, and even though the dialogue between the characters seemed definitive… and the last sentence the same way… there was no epilogue or any follow-up, so I would like to believe that things could have gone either way. 

In actuality, even though the last sentence was somewhat good, the most outstanding moments for me were halfway through the book and then a moment right before the end. Halfway through the book is an intimate moment between Seiji and Barbara. He mentions a double-entendre and for me, it was so subtle but so sexy at the same time, and what I wouldn’t give to have a man deliver a line to me as smoothly as he did! I can imagine Seiji’s mussed hair, the playful but serious tone in his voice, his steady and confident eyes, his mouth on her skin whispering those words. It really gave me goosebumps the first time I read it.

The second moment is all the way in the end. In fact, it’s a few sentences/dialogue before the last one. It’s actually a line said by Barbara to Seiji. Earlier in the story, it was revealed that calligraphy had an art of its own… Even with the same characters, different people will churn out different interpretations of it based on their thoughts or emotions. Sometimes, the final result might even be unreadable. Barbara gives Seiji a haiku written by herself in calligraphy the past summer they were together and since Seiji remarks playfully that he is unable to read it, she translates it into English and reads it aloud to him.

Immediately, the joking atmosphere ceases and there’s a serious, wavering one in its place. I believe that this haiku sums up all that’s happened in the book, all the moments captured into three short lines. It’s completely amazing, completely and utterly beautiful, and after reading it for the first time, I can’t help but read it a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth.

For me, this book was really life changing in that I learned many things about the Japanese culture that I hadn’t before. Other things that I have heard of were clarified as well. History also played a huge part in this, and since the events of this book took place not long after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, all the characters who had a connection to this devastating event… well, it was really eye-opening. I felt very sad and hopeless, and that it was all just so wrong and unfair. I had only read of Hiroshima in history books and watched it in school documentaries… but to have it written so personally… It was so hard to read, but just as necessary.

Plum Wine also made me ponder on some questions. When people’s pasts are broken so much, can they truly find hope again? And not just general “broken pasts” but pasts full of horror and devastation of the likes no human deserves to witness? How about love? There are so many factors that come into play. It also frustrated me how this was set in the 1960’s, where quick and reliable connections to others could not be as easily made and maintained as it is now. In this time period, how likely are you to meet someone who utterly changes your life in one continent, and then move to another, knowing that you might never be able to see or contact them again?

The last question, in fact, is the reason why it saddens me so much. I wish there would be a chance for them someday. When his past no longer follows him as closely as a shadow, maybe. I wonder if the end is really how it works in the real life or if I’m just a cynic… I wonder if it’s really possible to be able to walk out from an opportunity, from a person like that, and knowing that this is the one, but it cannot “happen in this world.” I wanted to throw the book and cradle it to me at the same time. Don’t these fucking idiots know that this kind of thing comes around only once in a lifetime?! Don’t they know that some don’t even experience something of this magnitude?

But the sad thing is maybe they do know. They know all too well. And maybe the truth is that the authoress didn’t do this to make the readers bawl and declare it an insta-classic (because that’s how insta-classics are usually made… from tragedies). Maybe it’s because it wouldn’t have worked out with him like this and her like this and their situation like this. In that last sentence… for him to suddenly do that, made me think that he had denied and eliminated all possibility of it from his mind, his heart. Fuck. It felt like his decision in that moment was final. To me, this is the most heartwrenching.

Ahh, I really love books like this. I knew I should’ve finished this book back when I first started on it. It’s okay in the beginning, but it picks up so much in the middle and definitely in the end! After reading the end in bed, I was overcome with that feeling… You know the one? Where it becomes painstakingly hard to swallow and there’s a sudden knot in your throat and in your stomach, and there’s a slight twinge of pressure behind your eyes. Do you know it?

I ended up crying then after a while of thinking, got out my laptop and started writing.

Plum Wine… for sure… is amazing. I would recommend to anyone. Give it a try and see if it’s to your taste. The last sip of it made me yearn for more.

So, I guess this is it. I’ve had many other online blogs, but they have all been private and mostly dealt with issues I couldn’t really talk about in the open. They were all used for emotional discharge, for lack of a better word. I stumbled across tumblr a year ago and was deeply inspired. I haven’t gone back since, but I do attend to keep a steady stream of entries on here. Not just a “discharge”… but everything. 

In my British Lit class, we were discussing William Wordsworth and what he thought of poetry. To summarize, he thought that poetry was done in a calm state. That once that exploding emotion was experienced, poets would linger on those thoughts for a while, calm down, reflect on them, and then put them on paper. This was so that there would be clarity in their writing. Wordsworth declared that not only should one wait a while for the haze in the mind to clear to be able to write coherently, BUT, that one should also not wait TOO long for the intense emotions to dissipate.

So… what is the point of this random British Lit reference? And why am I even including this when I don’t even write poetry? (Oh, I really wish I did though.) I believe Mr. Wordsworth’s advice can be held to writing in general. I really think that’s the best way of going about my personal entries, but I’m myself, and myself is generally a selfish, impatient person, so I will violate that rule many times. Just a warning.

That, and my journal entries are generally very long and rambling, if you haven’t guessed already. (This is the fourth paragraph. :D Hang in there!) I know, I know, tumblr is mostly used for short entries back-to-back, but I feel more comfortable doing the opposite. Which is, a few long entries from time to time.

To be honest, this is a very boring entry, but it’s the beginning, and I’m really looking forward to writing the rest. This is just an introductory thing, which some people don’t really find necessary, but it always troubles me to just “jump in.”

I’m not going to lie; this was created out of selfish reasons, and that was for myself. I’m such an over-analyst that sometimes I really think my head would explode with all the worrying and analyzing and random-thinking that I do. But if you want to read along, you are more than welcome to! 

Yours, only. ♥