1

I had the school dream again. I have the school dream very frequently. I don’t know if I get it more than the average person, but I think so. Because I tell my friends, and they say, “Again?”
I think it is because the human mind is geared and prepped for work. For very hard work that is always life or death. It is the animals who have that that survive, and so we have all evolved to be like that. But now all I do is sit around and try to amuse myself.

Freud spoke about this type of dream in The Interpretation of Dreams. He says that people mostly think this type of dream is to remind us that we are past the drudgery of school life. In reality, however, it reminds us that there is work to be done; that we should be working at least as hard as when we were in school.

In my dream this time I was about to graduate. I needed to work on something in school using books. In the dream I had to carry a few books, around four, five, or six, and they were split between two plastic envelopes. I tried to put them all in one, but they wouldn’t fit. So, I had to put them back. I remember I was reading in my room—in my old room, the room that I had as a kid. The room that’s seen the most trouble. The room where I was many, many times when I was up to no good.

And then I read for so long that I missed school. And I decided to go anyway, even if I was very, very late, but when I got there, everyone was in the gym, practicing for graduation, and doing choreographed steps at the outside basketball court, moving forwards and sideways to turn around, probably to give everyone a view of their diploma?

Later, they put up banners against the walls and the fences, showing people who did not pass, not to shame them but as a simple matter of course, and it turned out that I did pass after all. Even if I seemed to think that I would fail chemistry, especially because I did not pass my final assignment. I was so happy that I thought about texting my parents, but I decided to tell them when I got home.

In those dreams, I always feel strange. And not bad, either. I do not feel dread or malaise or fear. I feel content. I feel very content and happy, but not in an excited way. Even if I am failing an exam or having to do another year, and I am nervous about that in my dream, still, I feel alright in a way that I am not in my waking life. Days seem to be brighter and more meaningful there, despite the troubles of my ongoing academics. I think it is because there, I have a purpose. Freud said that a dream is a fulfillment of a wish, and sometimes these wishes are repressed wishes that we do not wish to recognize. In my case, I think the wish is to have a sense of purpose. Though it will be troublesome, and I will have responsibilities, and I may fail, at least I am doing something.

Anything…

2

I was told that he is a bank president now.

I was surprised. He used to be a poet. In college, he used to be popular. People and professors admired him for his writing. He had an intimate knowledge of himself, his feelings. His verse had a kind of innocence and yearning and discontent; he reminded me of Kerouac. And he had a kind of boyish charm with his easygoing, breezy attitude. I liked him the moment I saw him. And later I loved him.

But things went awry the way these things go. He stopped talking to me. And now he was a bank president. I remember his mother was a bank president. Maybe he got the first job that he was offered. I also know that they were very wealthy, and now that he was a bank president then he would continue to be wealthy.

However, during our younger years, he gave me the impression of being someone who would sacrifice everything for his poetry. Including his wealth. In any case, his parents were so wealthy that he could have lived off of their money while working on his verse. Then again maybe he is like Kafka or TS Eliot, who would work on his writing while having a dayjob. But how much time does a bank president really have?

He and I used to have a business together. I couldn’t have him as a romantic partner, so I had him as a business partner. That was comparable, in a sense. Deeper responsibilities than being merely friends. Although he seemed to like me a lot before we became business partners. We would meet every Thursday by the bay, across from the cultural center, and speak until past midnight.

But when we got the business, I realized that this would never do. He would never give me what I truly wanted from him, and being in that state only made me want him more and more. So, one day, after we hadn’t seen each other for a month because it was the holidays, I said we should call it off. And I remember seeing him so shattered and confused. I didn’t expect him to act that way. It made me feel like he didn’t want to lose connection with me. And I remember crying later when I got home. We met again to sell our remaining stock for a few more months, until we fought one day at a cafe because I was complaining that people like him who avoided social media were selfish (I don’t know how we ended up talking about that), and he left and he blocked me and he never spoke to me again.

I was an ass. I look back now and recognize that for much of my youth I was an ass. Until today, because of that experience, I boldly tell anyone who I like that I like them. Because I don’t want to go through that entire thing again. And if that causes someone to leave me, then that’s better than me trying to chase after them, getting my hopes up, being nervous all the time, wondering if they like me, and then eventually being told that they’re not interested or having things go wrong and missing my opportunity.

In any case, occasionally, I see him in my dreams. Only a few weeks ago, I saw him there, playing the piano, hanging out with me in a dormitory with two beds. I recongized the room as the one I stayed at during a school retreat. I shared it with five people, but in my dream, it was my and his room we shared in college. In there, he was playing the piano with his long, slender fingers. In reality he played the guitar. I suppose he played a bit of piano, too.

I’ve never spoken to him ever since that time at the cafe. That was more than 10 years ago now. So, I don’t know why he still appears in my dreams. Although they say that the first person you love becomes the one by which all other loves are measured.

3

And ever since then obviously my lovelife has been an unmitigated disaster. The people I had been in real life have always been immature. I don’t know why that always turned out that way. My long distance relationships have always been more interested and varied, but always doomed. Always invariably doomed.

I like long distance relationships. I like them because they are meaningless, mostly, for us. But we can pretend it matters. I like to pretend. One of the reasons I like to write. Once, the man was very close to coming here. And I was so afraid. I remember being so afraid. Not of him, or of violence, but just the fact that everything was going to change. That a relationship in person would require so much of me.

I have dreams about boys I like occasionally. I’m surprised it is not more often. Do I secretly not even care about whether anyone loves me? Of those occasional times I’ve never had a sex dream since I was like in puberty.

Given how much I wish I had somebody who loved me, this seems to be strong evidence against the Freudian commonplace that dreams contain a wish. Although maybe I am not looking hard enough. Maybe there is a reason I want to be loved, and it is that reason that is appearing in my dreams. Lacan had a name for this: objet petit a—the thing that people have, “it,” “the x factor,” “je ne sais qua” that makes us want them.

I can only guess what that might be for me. Although the objet petit a is not so transparent as to be any one thing; in the unconscious things are not as they are in the ordinary world. Objects, feelings, ideas, concepts, &c., are not demarcated the way ordinary things are.

But if I had to guess, it would be someone who could give me a purpose.

4

The text around the Hokusai woodcut:

“LARGE OCTOPUS: My wish comes true at last, this day of days; finally I have you in my grasp! Your “bobo” is ripe and full, how wonderful! Superior to all others! To suck and suck and suck some more. After we do it masterfully, I’ll guide you to the Dragon Palace of the Sea God and envelop you. “Zuu sufu sufu chyu chyu chyu tsu zuu fufufuuu…”

MAIDEN: You hateful octopus! Your sucking at the mouth of my womb makes me gasp for breath! Aah! Yes… it’s… there!!! With the sucker, the sucker!! Inside, squiggle, squiggle, oooh! Oooh, good, oooh good! There, there! Theeeeere! Goood! Whew! Aah! Good, good, aaaaaaaaaah! Not yet! Until now it was I that men called an octopus! An octopus! Ooh! Whew! How are you able…!? Ooh! “Yoyoyooh, saa… hicha hicha gucha gucha, yuchyuu chyu guzu guzu suu suuu…”

LARGE OCTOPUS: All eight limbs to interwine with!! How do you like it this way? Ah, look! The inside has swollen, moistened by the warm waters of lust. “Nura nura doku doku doku…”

MAIDEN: Yes, it tingles now; soon there will be no sensation at all left in my hips. Ooooooh! Boundaries and borders gone! I’ve vanished…!!!!!!

SMALL OCTOPUS: After daddy finishes, I too want to rub and rub my suckers at the ridge of your furry place until you disappear and then I’ll suck some more. “Chyu chyu…””