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20140816

The Lady With No Legs (satire)

Recently I've had dreams so real that I'm almost convinced that during sleep my consciousness crosses over to another dimension that only exists in my mind.

Probably it's a side effect of my brain transferring my daily memories that have emotional meaning into long term memory.

One memory of my childhood is of an Asian woman who reminds me of my mother except she is floating and has no legs because she is a ghost. I had this dream when I was nine. The thing is, that's how ghosts are depicted in a few Asian ghost stories.

However, I never watched Asian ghost stories but read about it within the past five years. So how does a nine year old Asian kid dream about a ghost from his culture's mythology?

Maybe that's because the ghost might be an ancestor. About that time, my grandmother on my father's side was influencing my mother negatively, a subtle form of mental abuse which in Japanese culture is accepted as a social norm.

Yesterday I visited my mother, and she told me about my father's grandmother, and my father's uncle, his mother's brother, who is my great-uncle. He was close to his mother even after she ran away with a lover. This is because of a younger child's love for his mother.

Perhaps the ghost I dreamed about is my great grandmother. She never said anything to me in the dream. Why would she? Perhaps she appear in my dream because my grandmother couldn't get over my great grandmother's abandonment of her daughter and her son. For my grandmother was old enough to resent her mother abandoning her.

To avoid scandal, my great grandfather got adopted into a rich family's. My grandmother grew up privileged, yet she married a farmer in Canada to get away from her mother, due to the shame my great grandmother brought to the family.

Perhaps this explains why I don't care if a person is rich or poor, as long as they promote respect of other people, regardless of social status. It might even explain why I never got married.

In recent years I've never dreamed about Asian ghosts in my dreams anymore because I sleep lightly.

Reference:

"A yūrei's hands dangle lifelessly from the wrists, which are held outstretched with the elbows near the body. They typically lack legs and feet, floating in the air." & mdash; Yurei: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%ABrei

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