Morning Correspondance

Morning Correspondance, originally uploaded by levari.

Morning Lee,

Are you working away on that screenplay that has this Friday's deadline?

I am happy to tell you I am feeling much better today...

Two nights ago I had quite a horrible dream that today I have come to understand has everything to do with what I have been going through, may I tell you about it?

In this dream, I am 4 months pregnant, and I am starting to have heavy contractions. I am in one of the country hospitals where I was shooting the births during my Vietnam trip a couple months ago. Anyway, in this hospital the nurses tell me that I am in labor. I am so confused and scared and am wondering how I could possibly have the baby at such an early stage, and I am terrified that once the baby comes out it is going to be too premature to live.

Then I suddenly find myself roaming on this mountain road high above the hospital, in ridiculous and horrifyng labor pain, wondering how my baby is going to be delivered. I know that I am going to have a baby with no one helping me and it is going to be in this mountain wildnerness. Aside from the pain, I feel this endless sadness, a sadness I've never felt anything quite like, simply that there is no one to help.

So, I think what this dream signifies is my fear that whoever I love will end up leaving me stranded and alone. The pregnancy represents all my pains and emotions that I have to carry with me about this. Having no one there to help, this is my fear becoming real. Being back in the Vietnamese hospital and mountainside where I took those photographs showed me that when I get sad, usually the only place in my mind I can find peace is to dream about the mountains of Sapa; this is where the tribal regions of Vietnam exist.

I don't know why but about eight years ago, when in
one of my darkest stages, I began to have two images of myself that morph into and out of each other quite at random:

For the first 5 years of the the 8, this image is of me sitting in a small, completely dark room with a small window and there is a tiny speck of light peeking through, but that is it, nothing else but darkness.

Then for the next 2 years, I see an image of myself as an older
lady, roaming around alone in strange, foreign lands, alone,
but finally in peace with myself....

Lee, these dreams, these images...it's always me ALONE. I am starting to wonder if it's also because I do believe that we
are all born alone and too will die alone? I wonder if I believe this, or is it just a phrase that has no more truth than any other philosophy.

Just thoughts...

Hope you are well.

And, oh, dinner on friday, you will be done with your
deadline and good to go right?

k.

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reprinted with the permission of Katie Luong