Sacrifice of a Song

I don't quite remember the details of what led up to it, but in my dream, I get raped in my own house in my room. After that scene, when I'm coming down the stairs, I hear my dad saying he's going to sue and another voice saying that it's going to be hard since the other family's really rich and influential. I enter the dining room, which is huge like you see in mansions, and the lawyer immediately starts to talk to me, asking me about what happened. I explain and she leaves after taking notes, saying she'll do her best. As I'm heading back upstairs, I find myself wishing it was all a dream. And then I asked myself, "Isn't it a dream?" and that's where I woke up.

It wasn't a slow awakening where you sorta float to the top of your consciousness, but just opening your eyes and knowing it was all a dream. Leaving aside the rape part, which I really want to do, I just find it really interesting that I woke myself up by asking that. The entire time I was dreaming, I definitely didn't think it was a dream until the end, or else I would have woken myself up before I got raped... Anyway, I wonder if anyone else wakes themselves up like that?

There are conversations going on around me but I can't hear what is being said. It's a party in a huge hall that seems ritzy and high-class. Everyone's wearing pretty gowns and nice suits, but I feel like I'm in costume. I feel like I don't belong there, and finding it hard to breathe, I escape to the garden. It looks beautiful in the moonlight but it's so ordered and manicured that I can't bring myself to walk around in it, so I head toward the forest that's beyond the garden. Before I reach the treeline, I trip on something and go sprawling. The lights that lit the garden go out, and I'm far enough away from the house that there's not much illumination. I try to sit up and I feel something under my hand. It's an old-fashioned key, like for padlocks.

Then somehow I'm back in the huge hall, eating with the other guests. I excuse myself and head upstairs toward the guest rooms. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see myself reflected in the walls. I stop and look, and see that I'm wearing the key on a chain around my neck. It's tight like a collar but I don't feel choked. The key lies against my collarbone. Blood drips from it, and I look at my hand and discover it covered in blood.

I woke up around there because I forgot to turn off my computer speakers when I went to bed and my PC restarted on me, so the welcome to windows music startled me awake. I'm curious to know if I killed anyone with that key, haha. Or if I was killed, because I woke up with a distinct feeling that I was sitting on an unmarked grave when I found that key in the dream.

I can't be the only one who finds this book extremely frustrating. The conversations seem to meander and go on and on, and the character relationships throw me off track because they keep changing. How did Sophie go from being a stranger to someone Ryder's romantically involved with? He also keeps saying he's so busy but he seems to have all the time in the world to talk to people and try to help them.

I don't like wishy-washy characters and that's the impression that Ryder gives me. Perhaps that's the dream element, so that you never quite get what's going on and Ryder changes with every situation, but... it's so frustrating.

I'm in Rockefeller Center watching the people ice skate in the rink while I wait for a friend. An old woman shabbily dressed with several scarves around her neck walks up to me and starts babbling at me in a foreign language. She mistakes me for someone named Miya, and I keep trying to tell her that I'm not Miya. She reaches into a huge bag at her feet and pulls out an envelope, shoving it at me. I take it in surprise, and she tells me to deliver it. Then she up and disappears into the crowd, before I can even say that I'm not some mailman.

I look at the name on the envelope and see it's addressed to me. It's my name, not Miya, who the old woman thought I was. So I open it up and see more envelopes inside. I take one out. It's from a friend I haven't spoken to in years. Each letter I take out is from someone different, sometimes friends from elementary school, sometimes people I have never met face to face and certainly wouldn't have my address. The last is from a friend that passed away recently and I wonder how long ago the letter was written. The date stamped on the front is from two years ago. I open it and begin to read it, and that's where I wake up.

This is really one of those books that you either hate or you love. I don't hate it but I definitely don't love it. I enjoy linear narratives, and The Unconsoled just really... didn't give it to me. I feel like it jumped around too much, and if there was this strong motivating factor behind the events and action, it didn't make itself clear to me, and I guess that's what I need in a book. For an experimental book, it really tests waters that I haven't ever seen in other books. I have to say it was an interesting experience, but it's definitely not my type. Maybe it's just Ishiguro in general because I picked up Never Let Me Go and while I like it better, it's still not hitting me in a "have to finish this tonight even if it means staying up all night" sort of way.

While I really like my topic for the paper, it's hard to write about it. For one thing, how do I cite my sources that aren't in English? Should I cite my translation of the sentence? My presentation on dreams in the culture is channeled into the way I want to present it, and I chose dreams that would help support it but at times, I feel like I'm really grasping at straws. I'm going to cover dream incubation in more detail later than in the draft but in a way, that's the English equivalent of what my paper is covering, so it's not quite culturally specific the way I put it. Hah, I don't even know if I'm making sense in writing this. The paper seems like a lot of summary and repetition, and I don't know how it'll work out. Still mulling it over and thinking where & how I should change some of the aspects.

I'm running on a track that looks like my high school one yet is a lot bigger. A brown-haired boy sits in the grass field that's the center of the track, a whistle in his mouth. Every time I pass in front of that boy's line of sight, he toots his whistle and yells out for me to run one more lap. I'm out of breathe but I keep forcing myself to run. When I'm passing directly behind him, he yells out "Are you there?" and I tell myself that I can't answer. I keep running and running, never answering his question each time the boy asks him but I also never pause in my running even though it feels like I'm about to collapse.

The "Are you there?" question reminded me of an anime called Fafner in the Azure which I once helped a fansub group on. The characters in the anime weren't supposed to answer because it would tell their enemies their position. The question meant what it meant, but it also meant "do you exist?" and I find it a little odd I didn't answer that boy in my dream. Did I think he was an enemy? He knew I was there so... hmm. Stumped, but it's prolly not that big a deal. Too bad I didn't get the mechas that were in Fafner in my dream. That would have been nice, and I've always wanted to pilot one, haha. The running itself was probably just my feeling like I'm not getting anywhere with something I've been working on lately, which is true.

I don't remember what led up to it but I'm lost on a snowy mountain, and I keep walking around in circles. I can see a cave in the distance but no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to reach it. I can glimpse a small light in the cave, and I suddenly can feel the biting cold. The ground rumbles and shakes beneath my feet, and I think there's an avalanche or something coming. I scramble to hold onto something and out of the blue, I hear voices echoing, saying something like "Be careful when you get on and off... Always keep your belongings with you..."

Second dream in a row that I'm not getting anywhere. Wondering what my brain's trying to tell me...

Anyway, OT but Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays everyone ^_^