lucyoncolorado

Hi. I think I'm in the right place. This is my first dream journal post. I'm excited to keep a log of my dreams and to look at yours! If I'm in the wrong place, please let me know!

In which I seek the help of a Korean snake oil doctor to heal my husband's beetle-infested head wound...

I’m sitting in the living room waiting for my husband to get out of the shower. He walks in, wet with the towel still around his waist. A large clump of hair has fallen out of the left side of his head, leaving a huge bald spot above his ear. He is not bothered by it and explains that it is just male pattern baldness. At first I try to be polite and supportive, but internally I’m struggling with the fleeting nature of youth. I’m only 32, not old enough to have a balding husband! I start to really regret ever taking advantage of having a young and good-looking husband, and I feel like it is all downhill from here.

My husband tells me that I’m being shallow and immature. He points out that there are plenty of attractive bald me. He mentions Captain Piccard and Amir Khan- even David Beckham is balding. I agree, but I tell him that he looks ridiculous with only one big bald spot in an otherwise thick head of black hair. We decide that the best thing to do is just shave it all off; nothing looks worse than a comb-over.

I grab the shears and get ready to make peace with aging, but when I move closer to his head, I see that actually there is a large gash deep in his skin, revealing parts of his skull, and full of marble-sized translucent beetles. He can tell by the look on my face that I’m disturbed, that something is terribly wrong. I won’t let him look in the mirror and instead insist that we rush right away to the ER.

We hurry out the door only to realize that we are living down on of Seoul’s confusing and crowded back alleys. None of the signs are in English and before long we are lost. Eventually we make our way to a main road where we are forced to hail a cab. A golf cart responds, and we hop in the back and make our hopelessly slow way through the city traffic to a hospital.

The clinic is on the outskirts of town in a Japanese style house with a large garden in front full of snakes from all over the world. There are dangerous coral snakes, cottonmouths, slithering rat snakes, giant yellow Burmese pythons, coiled rattlers, colorful boas dropping from trees and herds of tiny garden snakes wiggling between, over and under all the others. Bright blue and orange fluffy cats mingle with the snakes in the yard, sometimes leaping straight up into the air with their backs arched, hackles raised, tails poofed and toes pointed like the typical black Halloween cat on a fence post. The golf cart cabbie explains that the snakes are for the doctor’s snake oil and the cats are to guard the clinic and keep the snakes outside. He drives up into the yard, dodging the cats, with the wheels of the golf cart thumping and thudding on the snakes beneath the tires.

Two volunteer nurses rush outside and help us in. They take one look at the beetles infesting my husband’s head wound and explain that these are contagious pests like lice. We rush my husband off into his own private and isolated room where he must wait for the doctor, and then they warn me to wash my hands and burn my clothes.

I’m walking back down the hall towards the washroom when I notice a young man hiding in a dark corner holding a bobby pin. I ask him what he’s doing, and he explains that he is going to become a master burglar, thief and outlaw. He looks like he is about 14 years old with blonde hair and blue eyes. He reminds me of Leonardo DiCaprio on “Growing Pains“. I ask him why he doesn’t go to school or work towards a more hopeful future, and he explains that he wants people to sing songs about him, like Ned Kelly. I start to question his knowledge of folklore and his romantic misunderstanding of poverty related crime, but I decide it is not worth it. I go to the washroom and scrub my hands. When I come out, I see him at the end of the hall trying to pick the lock on my husband’s door. I punch him hard in the stomach and consider turning him into the police, but he looks so young and clueless that I feel sorry for him and instead let him go out the back door of the clinic. I even warn him about the yellow python.

Back in my husband’s hospital room, I pull up a chair by the door and sit and wait for the doctor. The dream then disintegrates into a discussion about the Krebb’s Cycle which I’m studying in real life.