We’ve only just left behind that time of year that feels most like living in a perpetual state of insomnia (dry-eyed, tight-skinned, perversely exhilarating), and now we’re already leaving (perhaps have already left) that all-too-brief period that feels most like a dream. It only lasts for a decidedly illusive week, but it’s a special week, dream-like in that:
not much happens, not really
everything that does happen feels very meaningful
buried trauma, family, and close friends often feature rather prominently
things are kind of boring
nothing makes any sense
I love it!
What’s not to love about liminal spaces? Sure, they can feel maddening and stultifying to be trapped within, but since they’re inherently temporary, it is, I think, important to be gentle with them, and gentle with yourself and others as you traverse them. This is also an apt method for handling dreams, too.
Just like liminal spaces are comforting because it means everything is slowing down (if only for a little while), dreams — no matter how chaotic — are soothing, because their presence means we’re getting enough sleep. And, like anything fallow, dreams are deceptively productive; they encourage us to analyze that which is opaque, to attach words to the slippery images hiding behind our eyelids, to figure out where our brains would venture once they’re encouraged to operate uninhibited by any external stimulation.
Of course, what I love most of all when it comes to dreams is hearing about the ones other people are having. Does it help if I play some small part in those dreams? Yes, of course. Is it necessary? Absolutely not, because the pleasure of hearing someone else’s dream is not the thrill of recognition, but of translation, of shifting one language into another and revealing (and reveling in) the myriad new ways you now have of understanding another person, their innermost thoughts, their world, the world.
Han Kang’s The Vegetarian starts off with a dream, a potent one that leads Yeong-hye to renounce eating meat, or any animal products at all. Her husband, from whose point of view the first of the novel’s three parts is told, is outraged at her decision. She has become an embarrassment to him, an affront to the respectable lifestyle he covets above all else. Her family, too, is infuriated; her father tries to force meat down his recalcitrant daughter’s throat. In response, Yeong-hye slits her wrist and is summarily hospitalized.
The other two parts of the book are told through the perspectives of her brother-in-law (an artist who is entranced and aroused by Yeong-hye) and her sister (an entrepreneur and devoted mother who struggles to reconcile Yeong-hye’s embrace of stasis — and even decline — with her own, unexamined impulse toward progress). Yeong-hye is rarely heard from directly, instead she is there to be interpreted by others, her actions translated to reflect what they themselves are thinking and feeling. She is the center of the novel, the point of the novel, and yet she is untouchable and unknowable, like a dream, like death.
The tension within The Vegetarian is fierce, often violent. It’s the violence of protest, of rebellion, against the kind of proscribed life that Yeong-hye’s sister, In-hye, leads; Yeong-hye is the one treated as if she is walking through life in a trance, mindlessly diminishing her own body for no reason that anyone around her can fathom. But, is there any greater form of agency than self-destruction? By the end of The Vegetarian, In-hye grapples with that very question, admitting that she “has dreams too… and I could let myself dissolve into them, let them take me over…”
The question of whether or not she will is unanswered, as is the question of whether or not she should. “We have to let ourselves wake up at some point, don’t we?” she asks, knowing all the while that, actually, we don’t. We don’t.
And yet, Han’s novel doesn’t merely offer a nihilistic take on protest or resistance; it’s not that simple. If anything, that is actually the message — nothing is that simple. Not rebellion, not conformity. Not even a dream.
The most dream-like part of our lives, as a whole, is childhood — not least because of how easy it is to pick apart every detail and ascribe to it meaning (sometimes outsized, but also sometimes not). Fleur Jaeggy — a writer who is sublimely cool, in every sense of the word — innately understands the peculiarities of childhood, of families, and how they color every hour of every day of the rest of our lives. (No big deal!)
In The Water Statues, she conjures up an ataraxic, ephemeral world, one that operates with all the legibility of a dream, which is to say quite a bit, if you’re paying attention. There are different sets of people, all lonely, if increasingly less alone, the kind of people who, as children, “consider everything ephemeral to be [their] property.” In the same way that it is only possible to determine what a dream is about by ignoring its narrative in favor of focusing on what it made you feel, it is pointless to consider too closely what it is that Jaeggy’s books are about when you could instead be feeling the shiver that races up your spine when reading about “soot-covered girls” who climb up through chimneys and onto rooftops, where “they count the stars, that drifting gold.” Or this description of a fire, about which is said: “Even a tiger would have rubbed itself against the crinoline of those flames, attracted by the breeze playing through the embers.”
If one of the reasons that dreams are so unsettling is that so much happens in them, while, of course, nothing is really happening at all (and what did happen, happened within the span of just a few minutes, during which we were unconscious), then it could be said that the problem with dreams is really just our discomfort with the passing of time and our total lack of control over it. This, too, is what is fundamentally unsettling in The Water Statues, the acknowledgment that no matter with what, or with whom, we surround ourselves, no matter how we bolster our lives against the waves of time as they come crashing at our shores, we can’t prevent ourselves from disappearing; “the sundial goes on marking time, with its small angular shadow, black and slithery on the tepid stone.”
And so we go on, even though, “in the finest hour of the night, freshness turned to squalor.” This is what it means to wake, to sleep, to live. To dream.
But also…
While technically gift-giving season is over, why let that prevent you from giving yourself the gift that I gave myself this year and that has resulted in hours of happiness and an actual gasp-worthy revelation about Nastassja Kinski’s wardrobe in Paris, Texas? The gift I’m talking about here is a Film Forum membership, and though it’s a New York City-specific treat, hopefully there’s a similar option close to wherever you live. Regardless, please watch Paris, Texas as soon as possible and see if you too have your mind blown by a certain fuzzy fuchsia item of clothing. And, while you’re at it, read about banana bread and post-9/11 cinema and deconstructionism. Thank you. (Film Forum)
Speaking of gifts, if you’re feeling particularly fortunate after the last week or so, why not pass that feeling on to some kids who could really use a reminder of how much love for them there is in this world? Transanta collects wish lists from trans youth, and makes it so, so easy to send a gift or two (or a donation) to someone who might not even know they’re part of a community that cares. Help them know this! (Transanta)
Ok, one last gift idea! Definitely the most exclaimed-over present I gave this year was the Body Back trigger point massage tool, which is an impressively sized, surprisingly lightweight means of administering relief to all the sore, soft spots of your body. What is a trigger point, you might be asking? “Trigger points are involuntary tight tender spots in a contracted muscle. This creates pain and dysfunction within the muscle.” The more you know, etc. (Body Back)