the nomad diary

4:30am, Wednesday- My NE Seoul studio apartment verges on pure black as I lay slumbering my way through the final hours of a moonless night.  The light emitted from street lamps just outside my window faintly creeps through the holes and cracks in my blinds, thus granting an eerie blue tone to the otherwise pervasive darkness.  All is silent.

Then, without warning, my dreams are infiltrated by a familiar sound.  I awake suddenly to the realization that I have heard the welcome chime of my electronic key pad door handle.  I am far too familiar with the noise to mistake it.  Someone is trying to get in.  Or are they?  The front door remains closed for 5, 10, 15 seconds, just long enough for me to blame my imagination for the disruption and readily resume sleeping. 

A few moments pass.  This time it is not my ears, but the feel of a slight breeze moving softly over my face, that betrays a nearly silent intrusion.  I am awoken once again, this time to the silhouette of a person  looming in the shadows opposite my dark wood coffee table, a mere 10 feet from my window adjacent bed.  The eventual adjustment of my eyes to their low light environment afford me the knowledge that I am being faced intently by a girl, small in stature, whose face is mostly shrouded by an uncanny draping of long, dark hair.

Is this real, or am I dreaming?  Where have I seen this person before? 

Then it hits me. 

It’s the terrifying villain from famed horror flic, The Ring.   This means that I am dreaming, what a relief.

The dark figure takes two small steps in my direction, stops, and begins to tremble in a most unsettling fashion, as if each of her joints are preparing to fail simultaneously.

What a bizarre dream.  Everything- the cool night air, the dog barking, the pounding of my heart- it all seems so real. 

I think back to a movie I watched recently that had offered insight into the strange realm of lucid dreaming, in which the dreamer maintains an active an engaged mind despite being overcome by a deep sleep.  I remember one of the side characters discussing ways to determine whether or not you are indeed immersed in a waking dream state.  One such test, I recalled, was to look at the time on a digital clock.  If I really was asleep, as I was certain to be the case, the clock would be a scrambled and unreadable mess.   I reached for my glasses on the window sill, hurriedly put them on, and gazed across the room at my small red alarm clock.

Clear as ever.  I blinked hard, pinched myself, and sat straight up in bed.  This was no dream. 

With the realization of my consciousness came a wave of pure terror, an absolutely unprecedented anxiety, and a heightening of the senses.  With fight or flight mechanisms fully engaged, I stood up and made my way to the light switch.  Nothing is as scary in the light, is it?

Correct. 

The reality then presenting itself was somewhat different from that which my imagination had led me to anticipate.  Standing before me was indeed a very small person, trembling, with her hair flung over her face.  She was not, however, the walking dead soul sucker I had expected her to be, but rather a very drunk and confused Asian girl in her early 20′s. 

Unable to form sentences in Engligh or Korean, the girl offered a hopeless glance and slowly made her way to the closer of my two reading chairs.  Upon sitting down she proceeded to pet my dog, Mr. Lee, for about a minute, then return to her state of wordless disorientation. 

For lack of a better idea, without the slightest knowledge of how to properly handle the situation, I opted to remove an apple from the refrigerator and begin to slice it for her.  It seemed right at the time.  Don’t ask me. 

I watched as my uninvited houseguest methodically consumed two of the pieces I had brought her.  Then, as if retiring for an afternoon nap in her very own living room, she simply leaned back in the chair and went to sleep.  Out like a rock.

No one, regardless of their level of intoxication, enjoys sleeping upright, so I  pushed the two chairs together, front ends facing, thus creating a small bed.  Having paired this arrangement with the necessary drunk sleeper’s accoutrement(blanket, pillow, puke receptacle), I leaned the poor girl on her side and made my way back to bed.

Then, as if the night was short on either creepiness or sleep deprivation, two slow knocks came from my front door.  I made my way to greet what I assumed would be a rescue team of drunk Koreans, only to find a silent and empty hallway.  Yikes.

The drunk girl slept soundly well into the morning.  I, however, was not so fortunate.  It was with frayed nerves and sleepless eyes that I welcomed her back into the world of the sober, and proceeded to attempt an explanation, using exclusively body language and doodling, of how she had come to find herself in a stranger’s apartment. 

With gratitude and embarrassment abound, my new friend stumbled her way back through the door from which she had staged her eery entrance the night before.  I waved a friendly goodbye, made some tea, and took the dog for a walk around the neighborhood.

I’m locking my door from now on.