In my dream we’re (big surprise) back in Japan, and we’ve rented a car this time so we’re driving around Aomori and I’m getting so excited to see 紅葉 (autumn leaves).
Often, when a trip I’ve been looking forward to a little too much approaches, I have dream(s) about it. So predictably when our short jaunt back to Japan in the fall rolled around, of course I had a dream about Aomori.
See, there’s this thing I have for Aomori. I’ve been fixated on it for so long and yet had never managed to get there, so when I finally decided to make the trip, my subconscious went crazy.
But why Aomori? The first time I took a trip to Japan, it was just before fall, and so of course the JR ads everywhere were touting various autumn color spots to visit. And prominently featured that year was a billboard of an insanely beautiful view of beech leaves reflected off a tiny pond in the middle of Aomori, the northernmost prefecture of Honshu. In the bottom corner of the billboard were the words 青森、いいな, which roughly translates to “Aomori…how nice.” I LOVED that billboard. I couldn’t get enough of the tagline and the genius of simply letting the beauty of this place speak for itself. It was both infinitely amusing and impressive. From the moment I saw that billboard, I knew I wanted to visit Aomori.
Somehow I didn’t end up making it there until last fall. It was partly because Aomori is quite rural and it’s hard to get around without a car, and I didn’t have my Japanese driver’s license. And maybe it was partly because I sort of liked it living as a kind of dream for me. But after 5 years of wanting to visit Aomori, we finally did, and I am so glad we made it. Wandering the quiet old growth beech forests was beyond amazing for a forest lover like myself. And, as evidenced above, I got to visit the very pond featured in the billboard I saw while waiting for a train in Tokyo that first trip. It was quite the hilarious adventure which I won’t recount here, but visiting the spot that started my Aomori dream and snapping the same picture featured in that billboard was about more than just having a photo in my catalog. It captures the very essence of what motivates me to work on this blog. I had a vision, held in my mind so strongly it invaded my dreams, and I’ve managed to meld dream and reality into memory, and these photos are the proof.
In my dream I see rainbows everywhere, springing out of whiteness.
I find my more abstract dreams more inspiring than my long, plot-driven ones. When I came upon this exhibition in Tokyo last year it immediately reminded me of the rainbow flashes I saw in this dream, and it’s been sitting waiting in my queue for far too long. I do sometimes feel bad that it can take me months to get dreams put together, but I want more than anything for this project to stay a fun creative endeavor rather than a chore, so I’m working on banishing guilt entirely from the equation. In a lot of ways, 2018 was a year of “adult responsibility”, so while I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, if I do have an intention to set for the year, it’s all about less guilt and more chill. And of course lots more fun with Drempt!
I had a crazy dream about jumping through these portals into other worlds, doors perched on hillsides that lead to parallel universes of sorts. As you’re jumping through a portal you have to sort of turn yourself in mid air to actually cross over, if you just jump straight through it doesn’t work. You get a running start, throw yourself through these doorways, turn a little bit left or right, and then there’s this flash of color, red or blue or yellow, and you’re in a new world which is almost the same as the one you came from, but not quite, and they’re numbered, and we’re going backwards, approaching 1.
A lesson in patience: it took me over 5 years for the seed of this dream to sprout, but the experience of wandering chilly hillsides looking for hidden portals made it so worth it.
Hokkaido, Japan
I had a dream that I was shopping for candy in a sort of warehouse version of Cost Plus World Market. There’s candy everywhere and I’m loading up for some reason.
Of course there aren’t any Cost Plus stores in Japan, so I searched for a long time before finding this Showa-style candy store which I much preferred,even if it meant trekking out to one of my least favorite neighborhoods in Tokyo.
In this dream:
