Double Dreams Starring William I. Newman, Ph.D

Yesterday morning I had an interesting experience -- two quick dreamlets back to back, separated by a short waking period, starring the same character.

First, I dreamt that my friend William came and started to tell me about the grindingly difficult qualifying exam his students had to sit (he's a professor of astrophysics at UCLA).  To show the awesome amount of work they had to put in, he held up his hand with the thumb and forefinger parted a couple of inches, to show how "thick" the exam was (I guess in my dreams Ph.D students still take pencil-and-paper tests).

Then I woke up, made a brief trip to the bathroom and came back to bed.  I soon fell asleep and dreamt again, and this time I was standing by the long edge of a narrow table or counter when William came in, wearing what looked like a white sailor's cap, sat down on the other side, and silently fixed me with an intense gaze.  I was perplexed and uneasy at first, thought maybe he was trying to weird me out for a joke, but then realized he was drawing me.  I cooperated by keeping the same quarter-profile facing him even as I moved along the edge of the table.

This double appearance of a character in two consecutive dreams reminded me of the time when I nearly woke out of a frustrating dream but through an act of will was able to #go_back_into_the_dream to resolve the situation, and in the process "doubled" myself.

As for William himself, he was an original member of the little group I once organized in the L.A. chapter of Mensa for the purpose of meeting once a month to dine and watch Korean movies together at my downtown flat.  I dignified it with the important-sounding title of "The Korean Cinema Lovers Society" (but only for personal reference^).  It was quite a diverse group at first, the membership including, other than Prof. Newman, an IT tech and his librarian wife, an Asian "tiger mom" and her young daughter, an ancient Jewish couple who I thought were married at first, but no, it turned out they were living in sin^ (they still send me holiday cards every year💖), and even a porn producer (it takes brains to produce good porn^;  come to think, my therapy group also included a porn producer, but he made gay porn -- before dying of AIDS).  As time went on the Society went the way of many such informal groups -- it gradually petered out, became smaller and smaller, and on several occasions William was the only one to show up^, but we kept it up for quite a while before life matters intervened.

Another Old Photo

taken inside my old flat.

I miss the collection of books, music and movies that filled it before it became necessary for me to move back to Korea after a lifetime in Los Angeles.  But after spending a fortune to have all my artwork professionally packed and insured and shipped off to Korea, I simply ran out of budget and couldn't afford to have all the other stuff sent along, too.

Many of the LPs were part of my father's collection, but the rest were all my own, collected over the decades.  Now when I look up the books I used to own, it's shocking how rare and expensive some of them are.  Some are long out of print and can't even be found.  I found a used copy of The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles Finney with the famous hallucinatory illustrations by Boris Artzybasheff -- the edition I used to own -- offered for sale at AbeBooks at $600 USD.  Another edition (also used) was listed at $2000!  As for the movies, aside from the usual classics and popular favorites I had also accumulated all sorts of lesser-known and obscure titles, artsy experimental films and cult favorites on DVD, now all but impossible to track down.  And hundreds of Korean movies.

Speaking of which, for the longest time I had little interest in Korean culture (aside from a few favored Korean restaurants) and had no interaction with the larger Korean community in L.A. unless strictly necessary.  Then, in 2003 I came across a newly-released Korean movie called A Tale of Two Sisters (directed by Kim, Jee Woon and remade in the States in 2009 as The Uninvited), gave it a try and I was hooked!  It was beautiful, complex, scary, mysterious and bittersweet -- even the soundtrack was wonderfully poignant, and remains among my favorite compositions to this day.  My eyes were opened to a whole new world of cinema (and by extension... yes, to Korean music and drama series as well😏) and I started collecting Korean movies left and right.  And not satisfied with just watching them by myself, I started going over to my friend Evelyn's house every few weeks with a few Korean DVDs to watch with her (she was an Emmy-winning script writer;  she spent a great deal of her time watching all sorts of movies in any case, both for her work and for personal pleasure... R.I.P., Ev).  I even formed a group with local Mensa members that met downtown once a month to have dinner, walk over to my place and watch Korean movies.  Some of those movies were hard-to-find small productions and simply can't be found any more, whether online or as DVD.  I guess I'll never stop missing them.  They were a big part of my life.

A Fun Coincidence

A few nights ago I watched a movie on DVD, a Korean production called 'Dancing Queen'.  It's a comedy about a Seoul housewife who gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to realize her dream;  in her youth she had dreamed of becoming a singer-dancer, but then she got married and what with the daily struggle to make ends meet and see her husband through law school, her dream was forgotten.  This time, she is determined not to let it slip through her fingers, and accepts the offer without telling her husband.  But then her lawyer hubby gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of his own -- he is plucked out of obscurity by the local political machine to be a mayoral candidate, and our heroine is confronted by a dilemma:  not only would it be unseemly in conservative South Korea for a political candidate's wife to put on a sexy costume and shake her booty onstage for the world to see, but it would be a fatal blow to the hubby's campaign if it came out that his wife had been keeping him in the dark about leading a double life as a K-pop idol -- can a man who cannot even 'govern' his own wife be trusted to govern a city of 10 million souls? (I know that sounds terribly sexist, but it's in the context of a mudslinging campaign and the movie addresses the point later).  Below are stills from the movie, courtesy of the internet:

It's a fun, fast-paced production with wonderful, funny yet touching performances from Uhm, JungHwa as the wife and Hwang, JungMin as the husband, and there's even an inspiring message at the end, and y'all should go out and see it if you can^^ -- but anyway, what this post is really about is this:  in the obligatory soul-searching scene in which the heroine is seen sitting alone, weighing her options, the room is lit by the dim light of a single ornamental lamp next to the couch -- and suddenly I recognized the lamp as identical to mine, which was sitting on a table just 5 feet from the one on the TV screen!

Related Posts:  Duck Alarm Clock;  Synchronistic Event #17

Duck Alarm Clock And... Maybe, Just Maybe... ESP?

Alternatively, this post could be titled "For Once, A Totally Useful(!) Case Of Serendipity".  If only this sort of thing would happen more often..! 

In 2008 I bought the South Korean movie 'Project Makeover' (Unniga ganda/언니가 간다) on DVD. It's a time travel comedy about a woman who gets a chance to go back and warn her younger self about a crucial, life-changing event, hoping thereby to improve her own present life.

Typically, time travel humor involves someone from the past being a fish out of water in the present and constantly amazed by modern developments -- but in this case, the opposite happens: once back in the Korea of her high-school days, the protagonist is constantly amused (with a wink to the audience) by the ubiquity of what to her are now nearly-forgotten relics, but to the people around her are the latest and trendiest innovations, such as pagers, dial-up modems and 'ancestral' *K-pop^^.


I liked the two lead actresses, Ko SoYoung and Jo An, who played older and younger versions, respectively, of the same woman; as well as the cute concept and the colorful, storybook-like visuals that fit the fantasy premise nicely. I even loved the theme song. I was surprised, therefore, to find out that the movie did not do so well in Korea. Shows you how much I know... oh well.

Anyway, at the beginning of the movie the heroine is awakened by the sound of a duck alarm clock going "Quack-quack".


It was so funny and cute I wanted one immediately, but since the movie was shot in South Korea I figured it was probably a local item, most likely not available here in Los Angeles.

Flash forward a year or so and my cousin Ben was about to graduate with a degree in pharmacology, so Mom and I needed to shop for a graduation present for the kid. We didn't know where to start because we hadn't decided what to get him, but while trying to decide that I suddenly had a 'feeling' involving the duck alarm clock and Kim's Home Center (김스 전기), a well-known store in Koreatown (founded by an old family friend, BTW). I therefore suggested we go and browse there, and Mom agreed that was as good a place to begin as any. I didn't tell her my real reason, though.

So we walk into Kim's Home Center, and what's the very first thing I see? -- a duck alarm clock, just like the one in the movie except the bow tie (which doubles as the alarm button) was more gray-blue than blue-gray, on a shelf behind the downstairs counter. I asked for one, and I was told there weren't any -- the one on display was the only one left in the store. So of course I asked them to sell it to me, which they did.

Coincidence? Don't know...  sure seems like something more was involved than mere coincidence, but I suppose anything's possible.



*K-pop: Korean pop music (including the dances that go with particular songs); part of South Korean popular entertainment in general, which is increasingly popular outside of Korea these days.