Already Exhausted When I Woke up

憲法記念日。

*

I had a nightmare yet again, this time about my family, relatives and a former workplace, all rolled into one. I was working for the company in a small but many-storied building. It seems I returned to this company while all knowing its business is bullshit and the company was going under. I was even teaching a class. I felt so exhausted when I woke up.

The boss noticed me that one of my aunts contacted the company asking about my mother’s health condition and the boss asked me to hide… I was hiding in a classroom but after a while came out. Walking down the staircases, I met a woman whom I somehow believed was one of my cousins. I had expected an aunt if I would see anyone. And beside her there were three or four other cousins waiting for me for talks.

Having got an approval from the boss, we went out to a nearby coffee shop and talked. It was raining. I told them that I wished to see them much earlier when the situation was not so acute. It was an amicable encounter with them after about 30 years, though I didn’t recognize any of them.

Back home in Kyoto, a few people, apparently my cousins again, were trying to move a cupboard from the kitchen. They failed to keep the balance and the cupboard fell onto one of them. He seriously damaged, even broke, his neck.

In a square pool just large enough for a person, the man was floating not realizing he is most likely dead from his neck injury. However, the moment he moved, his face distorted in an unendurable pain.

*

I don’t remember if any appeared in the dream of this early morning but some of the recurring scenes in my dreams are my Osaka apartment and its owner and a neighborhood shop where I would buy cans of beer or bottles of vodka. Almost invariably, I move around the town by bicycle, which I actually was doing in the real life.

And my old family house in Kyoto is lent to an auntie I’m not acquainted with. Nevertheless, I still go there to see my mother.

The images are often quite different from the real ones, but somehow I recognize everything in dreams.

*

I’m still new to “Meetup” meetings. But I can say that they are an, if not the, ideal as people don’t hesitate to communicate in foreign languages, whether in Japanese, French or Chinese. When people talk in any language whereof I have only a little knowledge (French and Chinese), I become all ears to try to pick up a word or two. And then, I wonder why some people try to stick to an environment where only their native languages are spoken for a variety of negative reasons.