I awoke from a strange, very vivid dream, this morning.
Sometimes my dreams offer up details that seem amazingly realistic, and I have no idea where my subconscious might have dredged up such details. Case in point, this dream was almost like a short story, or the beginning to a novel, or a scene from a Wim Wenders movie. There was a main character, who was named Maude Sanders. Really.
When I woke up, I wondered, who in the world is Maude Sanders? Why is she in my dream? I googled the name, but nothing popped out as being the kind of thing that might have lodged in my subconscious. Maude Sanders appears to be an entirely fictional person that decided to make an appearance in my dream. But somehow, her name was clearly known and repeatedly stated in the dream – it was somehow important.
The dream. Or the story. Or whatever it was.
Maude Sanders
I was walking around some dusty Korean town – the sort that's so rural, and so forgotten by the last 20 or 30 years of economic miracles that it has an atmospheric vaguely reminiscent of Mexico – there are chickens being carried around and clucking in vacant lots, men smoking while squatting on street corners, old women carting bags vegetables on their heads. There was a woman selling knives laid out on a blanket on the sidewalk, but she seems to be dozing under her broad-brimmed hat. It's summer or early fall, the air is clear and unhumid, the sun is beating down.
It's not actually clear to me why I'm there. I'm really hungry, and I'm looking at the posted menus of the various restaurants strung out along the street leading from the bus station. I'm trying to work up the nerve to go into one of the restaurants and negotiate the Korean language, so I can order some food. I'm craving kimchi bokkeumbap, but none of the menus that I can see have it.
I finally walk into a cavernous place that is largely empty. There is a large television playing Korean pop music videos, but no one is watching. There are some men chatting with a waitress in by the back counter, leading to the kitchen area.
There's a thin, frail-looking Western woman, with dusty blond hair, sitting at a table alone in the center of the room. Some Korean men are regarding her speculatively, and when I walk in – yet another "foreigner" – they look up in surprise, and maybe assume she and I must know each other.
She introduced herself by the unusual method of showing me her discharge papers from a psychiatric facility. But that's getting ahead in the story.
I sat down along one of the walls, not anywhere near the young woman. The waitress came and took my order, and I ordered jjajangmyeon (noodles in black bean sauce), even though I don't actually like jjajangmyeon.
Right from the start, I could see that she was really, clearly, a very strange person. But she was young and attractive, and shortly after I sat down, I saw her go over and begin chatting with several middle-aged Korean men. This was before I spoke with her.
I was surprised and jealous to see that she was speaking stunningly good Korean – clearly accented, but fluent and effective. The men seemed more taken with that aspect of her than her gaunt beauty or her bizarre proposition.
What was the bizarre proposition? I gathered, early on, that she was talking about something illicit or unexpected with the men – I could see their shocked, uncomfortable reactions. It was unclear what it might be. The ones she was talking to when I first saw her were more stunned by than genuinely interested in whatever it was she was saying. Perhaps they were put off by the introduction – the frank announcement that she'd recently exited a mental hospital. It was probably overwhelming for a typical Korean man of limited world-view and provincial mentality.
By the time I got my food, she had returned to her table in the center of the room and was sitting alone, toying with, but not eating, some jjambbong – a spicy noodle and seafood concoction that goes under the rubric of "Chinese food" in Korea, but which no self-respecting Chinese person would cook. Kind of the same way "Chinese food" in rural America doesn't seem very Chinese to Chinese people, either. Although it's quite different, jjambbong always reminds me of Chilean curanto – I think it's the combination of pork and seafood in a stew.
I distinctly remember thinking about curanto, and Chile, in the dream. That's always strange, when there are reflective moments of just thinking inside of a dream-memory.
The woman, seeing me alone, and having been not-so-politely brushed off by the bewildered Korean men, came over and bluntly introduced herself, which is when I came to understand that the papers she was showing were the discharge papers from the psychiatric hospital.
"I'm Maude Sanders," she explained. She had a non-North American accent, but not British. Perhaps Australian, or Irish. It wasn't clear.
"You speak very good Korean," I said, noncommittally, fascinated by her unusual mode of introduction.
"It's not hard to pick up when you spend a few years in mental hospital in Korea," she explained. This did, indeed, make sense. But how was it that she came to spend a few years in a Korean nut house? I was afraid to ask. There was a short, awkward silence. I looked at the TV. She looked over at the Korean men.
She lowered her voice and leaned in close. I was drawn in by her attractiveness, but I could tell I wasn't going to like what she would say. It was an inside-the-dream premonition.
"Want to watch me kill myself?"
There were some disconnected images of me actually agreeing to this, right at the end.
But that was so shocking, that I woke up.
Dreams are so very strange. Except for the name, this dream isn't really that hard for me to interpret, actually. If you know me well, you will understand what I mean.
But the name has me puzzled. Why "Maude Sanders"? Why did the dream emphasize it, almost giving it as a title? Was it trying to help me make a short story?