I wonder what horses symbolize, for me. I awoke this mornng from a vivid dream that included horses.
I was leading a group of Hongnong kids along a street in Hongnong. This is not something I've done – my activities with the kids so far has been limited to inside the school – but it's easy to visualize, as I see kids that I'm teaching around town quite a bit. But I came to a field at the edge of the town, and there were horses. I was trying to get the kids to try riding the horses, but they were reluctant. I wasn't getting upset, but I was feeling frustrated. Some Korean adults of uncertain identity were looking on. The air smelled of wood-smoke, and it was cloudy, a bit blustery, but not damp.
The weather, these last few days, has reminded me of my winter/spring in Chile in 94, and everything is turning deeply green, as spring advances. I think the weather in the dream was based on that. And there are a lot of horses in Chile. Certainly, there are basically zero horses to be found in rural Korea – I think at the close of the war, in the 50's, they had eaten all their horses, and tractors, jeeps and trucks provided a better substitute than going out and finding a new stock of horses for the country.
But horses must mean something to me, personally. I had a period when horses were a pretty major part of my life, during those months I spent in rural Mexico in 87, when I actually had my own horse and rode every day. Why was I trying to get the kids to ride the horses, in the dream? Why were they refusing? I guess not very much was happening in the dream, but it was very, very vivid.