Tokyo to Tijuana: Gabriele Departing AmericaSills, Steven David Justin
General
Tokyo to Tijuana: Gabriele Departing America
Sills, Steven David Justin
Fiction
It was in a bland closet sized room that his cello was in one corner and he, a
laptop computer, a short wave radio, and his stack of clothes were at the other
end. When he arrived there after teaching in Chinchon, the ride made him feel
exhausted; and after an hour of work, his notebook paper with the Gabriele
symphony was under the sweaty socks of his feet, the Voice of America news
broadcast became nothing but static, and he was asleep.
A person remembers his last dream if awakened in a specific stage of dreaming,
if the mind is devising some way to startle the dreamer into going to the
bathroom, or if the examination of present problems in a skit becomes violent
images running amuck. Unrepressed wishes, and rehearsing events before they
actually take place to gain some sense of how to respond before they occur are
the ideas most often given for dreaming but the brain is a revelatory organ not
of future events but of present realities; and so it was with him.
He dreamt it was Buddha's birthday and that Yang Kwam was under a huge canvas
canopy on a university campus where the ground was a hard sandless desert.
Those under the canvas were resting and drinking as the others played soccer;
but Sang Huin was alone on a dry and grassless bluff that overlooked the
activity. He was drifting on and off in sleep; and although a bit conscious of
being alone and feeling reluctant to have Yang Kwam involved in a host of other
lives in his absence, he was unwilling to tamper with fate or reduce his
exposure to the sun, shaped with divine human limbs like Aten himself, that
kept putting him to sleep.
A man came up to him. He first spoke in Hanguk mal (Korean), but upon getting
no acknowledgment of having been understood, he changed to English.
"I thought that you surely knew a little Korean. It is my mistake."
Sang Huin sat up.
"Let me introduce myself. My name is Kim Jin Huan. My major is tourism. I study
here at Chongju University and I'm part of the English club here among other
things. I'm very pleased to meet you. You can teach me lots of things and we
can become friends but I can't learn at this altitude--not even of you. I think
it is best to come down below where the sun is not so hot. You are surely
thirsty."
Sang Huin shook his head and laid it back on the big rock that he used as a
pillow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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