It has been quite a while since the last time I wrote an entry. Even though I despise the activity of maintaining a blog as a fashion statement, I do have rare fits of pouring out junk from my brain just to clear up spaces for the exams. Therefore, the entry is kind of long, and you have no choice but to live with it.


Sui Dream


    Having enjoyed dreamless slumbers for the past 18.539726027 years of life, I suddenly had a complex dream on this very day. Of course it is not like I have never dreamed in my sleep before, but it is certainly rare enough (once or twice a year) for me to call it an event. Besides, it was at the time of those few miracles when one actually remembers what the dream was about. So I am going to do something about this. I am going to spit the words of His Fateful Eternity¹ right into your left nostril: I had a dream, bitch.

    This is called "Sui Dream" simply because I was recently engaged in a relationship with a Japanese anime series – Rozen Maiden. I was never really interested in watching Japanese anime until September, 2005, when housemates encouraged it, singers threatened for it (in exchange for acquaintanceship), friends prescribed it (to treat boredom), and a giant population of on-campus students forced all the newly fansubbed series onto my screen through the residence network. Before I could realise what video file was being played on my computer, I was already known as another victim of this post-consumerist popular culture.

    Anyways, Rozen Maiden is a series directed towards a male audience that would mistake magical dolls for sex toys and then realise, after a few episodes, that the dolls are just mixtures of darkness, fantasy, Gothic Lolita fashion, and perhaps interesting characters. Due to this somewhat attractive story, the main character/doll persuaded me to suddenly feel English and try having tea with Victorian tea sets. Despite the facts that the Irish have been reminding me to be wary of birds and Englishmen (or in this case, Englishwomen) ever since the dawn of time, and that my cafeteria cups were far from being Victorian, I still gave it a try. However, I will not comment on this activity because today I do not judge people based on their daily habits – be the case with sipping breakfast tea or drowning in whiskey 24/7.

    Coming back to the main topic – another doll is more relevant to what I was going to write in this entry; Suiseiseki possesses an artificial spirit – Sui Dream – that allows her to enter each person's dream and discover that the dream world always truly reflect the person's values, views, and heart. It just so happens that this metaphorical dream I had (when I accidentally fell asleep while cramming for an anthropology test) made me think about the inner-most part of myself that might wander in such a dream world and the possibility of it being studied by some sort of expert dream investigator in the form of a doll.

    I was walking toward a dark tunnel some 50 kilometres beneath the surface of the Earth. An old lady appeared. She accused me of doing something bad to her daughter. I was confused. I had no idea what she was talking about and I am definitely not a rapist. She pointed her finger at me and yelled and cried. I felt sorry. I felt bad. I was a criminal. Crowds of people pointed their fingers at me, calling names. I did not know what to say to the woman. I ran away. Behind the woman, I faintly saw a weeping girl at a distant corner.

    The sun blazed, quickly heating up the Earth and me. The sidewalk almost melted. I was thirsty and tired. I walked into McDonald's to get a drink. However, people were rushing out, giving the impression of an emergency. Fire, volcano, nine eleven, whatever, I just want something to drink. The manager said "fine, but we are all leaving and closing down. If you still want your life, get your damned coke and move your arse out of here as fast as possible, and don't forget to lock the doors." Then it was just me sitting in an empty restaurant. I got some sort of liquid and started taking huge gulps. I sat here for hours, not thinking about anything. When people started to come back in for their Happy Meals, I realised that I forgot to get out. So I rushed out the doors and remembered that I had left my jacket inside. I rushed back in. But now people were already getting ketchup for their "freedom" fries. I grabbed my jacket in panic and ran away, again.

    The afternoon was still fiery. I took a walk with my friend on the 50°C pavement. The deserted streets, having the steepest slopes, looked like downtown San Francisco without the tall buildings. It's great for skateboarding, I thought (though I don't even know how to skateboard). Speaking of which, a skateboarder came from behind. The guy was skateboarding alright, but without a skateboard. He was merely running, in a skateboarding fashion. The movements of his feet were odd yet interesting; it looked like he was actually on a skateboard, and what do you know, he was actually doing the coolest stunts! The guy was not wearing any shoes; even more strange, he was going uphill at a speed that awed both my friend and me. We must have thought this skate-foot-ing was some kind of new sport that's becoming one of the official Olympic Games, so we started mimicking. Furiously shuffling my feet, I failed to recognise my friend was already far ahead of me and almost catching up the guy. I became impatient. It was not very pleasant.

    The feel of responsibility for my anthropology test woke me up. I had napped for almost four hours. While cramming the text book into the brain on the day of the test, I somehow got the idea that the dream was reflecting something, telling me something. Maybe the usual pity I show toward my friend is really a side-effect of severe competitiveness and jealousy. Maybe and maybe, there are way too many maybes in this world. This is deep. It's either psychology or philosophy. Anyone interested? I might even take a summer course in this crap.


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¹ This was my newly acquired style of office for the honourable task of bog-sitting in a neighbour's brand new bathroom.

　

P.S. Another connection to Rozen Maiden is that I just thought of Alice in Wonderland, which one can potentially draw an analogy to when talking about any weird and insinuating dreams.