"Same Dream China"

In the "Same Dream China" series of posts, I will reflect on recent dreams that I think provide some answer to the questions about "how I'm doing." The title of this series ("Same Dream China") is liberally borrowed from the wonderful Gold Panda track to which I often listen whilst walking and pondering along the streets and trails of China.

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I find myself back in Donsol, Philippines. Specifically, I am in the middle of the dive that I enjoyed last winter break. It is a drift dive, which means that a heavy current pushes the divers in such a way that they need not swim--and should not resist the current for risk of exhaustion. This particular drift dive is remarkably strong since the Pacific tides are sweeping into a narrow strait between two islands. The current is so strong that divers are required to use hooks and leashes to tether to the ocean floor. I remember surfacing with rope burn on my wrists, where I was tethered to the leash.

Anyways, I am floating rapidly in the current. I do not have a tank, but I can breathe. Wildlife also is pushed helplessly in the current: leopard sharks, octopi, eels, and other schools of small fish. Anemones dance on the reefs. The visibility (water clarity) is astounding. I breathe calmly, but aware of the fact that this is not a natural setting--that I should experience stress and discomfort.


I do not feel panicked about lacking a tank, about lacking a leash, about being helpless to the push of the Pacific's current.

Pilipin

Everybody! Pose like a Chinese schoolgirl!

This post is a continuation of the last--my recent series of lazy rehashing of my journal.

01/27:

My thoughts (especially those I deem worth writing) have slowed. Is this a sign of relaxation? A shift in mindset due to current state and prospective jobs? Or an indication of having processed my anxieties to a point of acceptance?
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I pass-out to power ballads blasting on a bus between Clark and Manila. When I wake, it's to a dingy city covered in filth, billboards, box buildings, and few green things. During our brief walk to get bi-bim-bop, our senses are assaulted by honking cars, neon, whispering drug dealers, and self-advertising prostitutes.
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01/28:

Street vendors and hustlers walk the aisles of our bus as we slowly drift through Manila traffic with the coach door open.

Children wearing only underwear sit on our fast-craft pontoon and beg while the sun beats on their tanned skin.
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Thin beaches. Coves with bangkas. Perfect sunsets. Drunken admissions and mosquito net riggings.