Both and Neither (Pt. I)

    I feel like I haven’t posted in an ETERNITY, though it’s only been a month or so. Samhain is coming soon, and personal work/play, school and family has kept me busy. Still no excuse (even if no one actually reads these), so here we are finally putting up something new.

    Today’s post is part one of a two part entry, and a little bit off topic for this blog - but it‘s important nonetheless. It’s about something that’s played a large part in my life over the years. Something that’s affected people’s perceptions of me, and  influenced their reactions to me. It’s resulted in biases (both for and against me), it’s colored the humor and hate in my life, and despite all this, it’s been something I’ve pretty much ignored for most of my existence.

It’s my race.

    As I’ve mentioned before, I’m half-white, half-Korean. I say ‘white’ because, though that bit of my ancestry most likely comes from Germany, not a lot of the history on that side is accessible to me. My father’s side of the family hasn’t gone through a great deal of effort of trace the family tree back very far, and the matter has been made foggier by the numerous divorces and second-marriages that tied in additional blood and history. On my mom’s side, it’s Korean all the way back.

Not that it meant much to me until recently.
  
    Last year, performing in a Stand-up Comedy competition at my school, I made the comment that “I’m about as Korean as Taco Bell.” The routine - which won me first place, by-the-by - mostly focused on my relationship with my Mom, a Korean who came to the states as the wife of a G.I., my father. I didn’t realize until sometime in my preteens that there was a history of Korean women coming to the US in such a way for nearly half a century. It was something I mistakenly thought that had little to nothing to do with ‘me.’
  

A chip off the block in the road

As wonderful as my spiritual journey has been so far, it hasn’t all been rainbows and metaphorical unicorns.

Lately, night after night, I find myself sitting up until the sun rises. Two, three days go by before I give in and lay down, close my eyes, and pass into black sleep and wake feeling sluggish and worse off than I did before.

It’s the dreams.

I can’t remember most of what happens in them, but I know this - it’s almost always my father.


Hit the jump if you want to read more - but be forewarned that this is a seriously ‘downer’ post.

Sour Dreams

Anyone who’s been following along so far would know that, based on my past posts regarding Symbolism, Dream Guides and spiritual direction, that I hold dreams in pretty high regard. Even if dreams are just the result of the mind spitting out random images and ideas, I believe very strongly that they provide a window into the subconscious and the things that worry - or delight us - the most.

A month or two back, I was plagued by stressful dreams about my father, and life in general. I chased them off by hanging up a dream catcher near my bed, and putting a special gris-gris near my sleeping area, with carefully selected items inside to - if the intent was correct - redirect any bad dreams so that if they didn’t hit the dream catcher, they still wouldn’t get to me.

For a while, this seemed to work. If one were to believe the idea that Dreams come from outside the body or mind, and were the result of spiritual or magical influence, these measures made sense. And as I’ve said before, if they can affect my subconscious and give me calm, then I don’t care whether or not they’re magic.

But what if the cause of the dreams is completely internal? Magic or not, if I’m setting up things to keep out bad influences and ignoring the cause of stress carried in my own subconscious, then I’m not going to be very effective.

I’m bringing this all up because, much to my annoyance and loss of rest, the stressful dreams have returned with a vengeance.