"Happy ingredient for happy meal with preciouse [sic] family. Good ingredient makes delicious meal!" – this was on a packet of garlic powder I bought at the Homever store. I went there last night, having decided to buy some makings for some pasta, and stock up on orange juice and the little cans of cold coffee I'm becoming addicted to.
Last night I had a dream – what I call synthetic, not in the contemporary connotation of "artificial" but in the etymological sense of a compositional bringing-together of many disparate elements. The dream was very vivid and the most remarkable I've had in some time – perhaps the touch of fever from this cold I've got?
As I remember it, the dream picks up in medias res with Michelle insisting on a "big wedding" – but the setting is here in Ilsan, Korea – more or less. And it's not like this dream is taking place in the past, exactly, though there are a lot of people around from different points in my life – family, friends, etc.
I'm really disconcerted by the idea of a wedding of any kind, and so I argue back, "but… we're already married." This seems like an important and incontrovertible point; I feel confident this will win the argument. Michelle nevertheless persists, complaining that we never had a "real" wedding, and, well, it's her due, somehow. I get less diplomatic, and decide the only way to win this argument is to bring up the unmentionable: "but… you're dead, Michelle." How can she argue against that?
But Michelle says, seriously, without a pause, "we're ALL dead, Jared."
This leaves me stunned and almost paralyzed – I feel like a minor character in Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo (the absolute greatest Mexican novel, period). So in this stunned state, the huge wedding proceeds. The location is a vast, palatial hotel located incongrously out on the tidal mud flats near the Incheon airport. Very modern, full of those Korean luxury decorative touches – statuary in poor taste, mirrored walls, faux marble floors, fountains. I become aware that both Randy and Jeffrey are present – contemporary versions of them, not old versions: Jeff is clearly a grown man, somewhat disgusted and definitely uninterested by the goings-on.
The ceremony itself is quite hazy, but I recall feeling very upset to find an orthodox rabbi officiating (where'd this guy come from?), and I remember that the soundtrack included a pop song by Madonna – a haunting bit whose name I don't recall [update – it's "Ray of Light"], but I have a vivid memory of the first time I heard this song: I was in the Burger King in Craig, Alaska, in October, 1998 – nice bit of temporal indexing by the dream-maker, eh?
After the ceremony, but before the reception, Michelle wants to take a walk, to look at the chemical plant next door. Her fascination with machines and factories… you know. But we end up out on the mud flats; we're barefoot. There are people selling things in little stands – shoes, cell phones, clothing – like at any busy street in Korea, or Mexico, for that matter. The mud is firm – really it's like the way sand feels on the beach, when the waves roll back and leave the sand bubbling and wet. I remember thinking this is not the way I would expect the mud flats out by Incheon to feel.
We see a boy flying a kite. It's a younger Jeffrey. Michelle takes my hand, and announces: "Jared, did you know that I can fly?" Of course I'm skeptical. But she simply raises her arms, still holding my hand, and begins to fly. I'm taken along with her. We circle over the chemical plant, and Michelle waxes poetic about the processes involved, all the pipes and distillation columns and such. We circle among some birds.
Some time later, I'm at the reception, which is going well – but Michelle is missing. Randy is roaringly drunk. The dream ends with Randy and I wandering through the enormous hotel looking for a restroom, but unable to find one – my Korean is not adequate to the task of asking about one, and it seems in poor taste to try to mime the necessity to the attendants we find.
End of dream.
This morning I went to the immigration office, took a number, and waited. The number on the display read 55… the number on my ticket said 112. The employees went to lunch, came back, I kept waiting. Finally, after 3 hours, it was my turn – it took 30 seconds for them to hand me back my passport and give me my new alien card. Now, I'm a LEGAL ALIEN. This is so… amazing.
It was raining very hard. There's a place that I walk by where there's a cat I've seen – it has a collar, so I think it might be owned, but it seems kind of feral. I saw it one night, chasing a rabbit into some bushes. I wonder what it's like to be a cat in such an intensely human environment, so densely populated with apartment buildings and businesses?