What do we take away from dreams, and who are we really in comparison with those characters we show ourselves to be within them? Yesterday as I rode the U-bike across the city I come to a point at the river where everything that I’d become in life reflected back to me with piercing shards of light, the waters of that foreign land linking me to every other. Within those beams of light I saw the vast divide between the boy I was when my father lived, and the man I’ve become after, and directly because of his death. Words fail. Feelings rush for expression. The hard truths of life are the easiest to ignore until their certainty becomes inescapable, and we must exchange our fantasies for reality, asserting our true humanity or face the consequences of living a fatal fiction whose wick, wax and flame are one in the same, US. Our body, mind and soul.
I wept at that river, for my father, and myself. I held nothing back. There was no point. In all the grand echelons of experience nothing so overwhelms us as absolution, or its kin. We reflect on all that was, as a being in the moment, and everything that comes next becomes an ever-increasing calculation, a moment-by-moment alteration of every decision, because of all those you’ve already made. In other words, I’ve become wise, and such a becoming always requires a sacrifice. Innocence of course, that much is obvious, but also the loss of our youth, health and sanity, taken in small bites over the course of years, then regurgitated back to us in waves of regret which act as modifiers for the rest of our lives. Moderators if you will, of our choices.
This is what dreams mean to me. They are psychospiritual modifiers for our behavior which we cannot escape, nor rationalize, and that is the key. For it is our ability to rationalize which prevents us from being able to actualize our true selves and thus accomplish the goals worthy of them. The illusions we cast over reality allow us to negate it, at least in our own heads. Dreams aren’t like that.
(You won’t rationalize the tea ceremony you had with your dead father in the basement, while trying to control a wild dog that loves you, isn’t yours, but wants to be and won’t let you help a strange woman with her iPad as the entire city sinks beneath the waves, and you certainly won’t make head or tail of finding a group of savage children coaxing you to climb a sheer cliff face in order to swing from unseen vines and chose a shallow grave for yourself below…)
You will however, be able to feel the emotional impact of ceremony, family, community and technology, all of which are under eternal threat, or threatening the rest, now won’t you? Using negation, we can know what no other method will show. What does the thing happening, take away? Did the dog prevent the woman from success with technology? Did the waves prevent community, or care? Did not being able to drink the tea with my father, prevent me from getting to know and honor him? The answer to all these questions is no. Nothing was taken away. The woman wasn’t prevented from getting to know technology. Family and community were maintained. I know my father better now, through the dream, and its apophatic lesson.
The dream taught me that, even as every force of man and nature works at odds, the substantial things to our existence continue on, and it is the struggle and refinement of ourselves and thus our situations, which give it all meaning. Always to the higher, they say. Go for gold. Make the most of it. The hallmarks of high achievement.
On that ride, before my tears had even finished, I promised my father that even though I had failed him in life, I would honor him in death. Carrying the family name as I had sworn not to while he lived. I thanked him for all he’d done. All those hard lessons meant for hardheaded fools like me. How can I deny the result? I am who I am because of him, and because of all the men like him who helped mold me. So, what now? Where do I go now that I know and understand the lessons? Do I go on a crusade, marching across time and space for the heart and soul of an entire race? An entire civilization? Yes. But also no. My goals are universal, and my methods equally so, for love has no bounds, nor limits.
The feelings I felt had to find a road to express themselves through, so I left the hostel and got another regular u-bike, non-electric, heading up instead of around this time. It was tough going, as the bike isn’t exactly built for such hard climbs. On the way up I rode for a short time with a pair of American expats riding $7,000 dollar rode bikes who moved here more than 30 years ago, and were now married to Taiwanese women and running businesses here together. We spoke as we rode, and when the reaching the fork in the rode, said our fair-wells. It’s always a trip to meet your countrymen living abroad, showing you all the ways you could be, if only you leapt to another pond. but as I rode I was motivated by an elder couple descending the hill in a jog.
“Ohhh Very Strong!” they said with wide eyes and nodding heads.
“I try!” I replied with an exhausted breath.
As soon as I passed the corner, out of sight from the elderly couple, I found abandoned and broken watch towers, overgrown by vines and large leafed greenery, too dangerous to climb from all the rot.
A mile after that, at the summit of the mountain there was a high-end resort whose entrance was giant boulders concreted together and etched with yellow metal, its parking lot filled with luxury cars of foreign and domestic makes. This is where the climb ended and I zoomed down the road, being passed by some of the same sports cars in both directions.
Below that another mile was a Buddhist temple on the edge of a cliff, whose only visible tenants were an army of cats, surprised at my appearance, though within I could hear the chanting of monks. On a foot-path leading down the hill from the monastery was an ancient village overgrown by the jungle beside a waterfall, whose plaques were so caked with moss that they seemed to be more plant than anything else.
The ride down was fast and fun in the jungle forest. I returned my U-bike once back in town, paying $2.00 for the time... what a screaming deal. Then I looked up vegan eats and found a small buffet place. I ordered a massive plate for $3.00 and then, when trying to order another one, the owners just said.
“Thank you for coming, come again!”
“No no,” I said smiling, “I want another plate please.” The lady was in shock, and had I not just climbed a mountain I would never have been hungry enough to finish both either. I ordered different things for the second order and paid the $6 total. An old toothless woman smiling at me like a fool, nodding excitedly at my appetite. I left that little shop and found the subway, 80 minutes later I was back at the Hostel, wondering at where life would take me next. I had no idea...