Matt texts the Thin Man before he has even fully decided to.
There is a kind of threshold in sending a message like that, where intention arrives slightly after action. The screen shows the name and then the words appear as if they were always going to exist.
Found her.
There is no immediate reply.
Matt goes to the hotel rooftop pool instead, because the body refuses to remain still when the mind is doing work it cannot complete. The city below is a port city, functional rather than beautiful, ships moving like punctuation marks across water that does not care about narrative.
He swims slowly. Not exercise. Just repetition. Something to keep him inside himself.
The Thin Man arrives without announcement.
Matt sees him later in the lobby, as if he has always been there and only now decided to become visible. There is nothing theatrical about his movement. He is dressed simply, unremarkable in a way that only becomes noticeable after you have already started paying attention.
They do not greet each other like friends. They never have. They greet each other like continuity.
Matt watches him cross the space and feels, not for the first time, that proximity to him changes the temperature of events.
LUCÍANA
The café is near the port, where the air carries salt and fuel in equal measure. Luciana arrives slightly early, not because she is nervous, but because she is efficient. She chooses a table where she can see the entrance without appearing to be watching it.
When Niko arrives, she recognizes him immediately, though recognition does not translate into welcome. Time has done what time does, which is soften edges without removing structure. He is older now, but not unfamiliar in the way she expects him to be unfamiliar.
They sit.
For a long moment, neither of them performs memory. When they finally speak, it is careful, almost formal. He asks about her life. She answers without inviting him into it. There is warmth in her tone, but it is bounded. Controlled.
She tells him about their son. He listens without interrupting.
“He is in Dubai,” she says after a time. “He is working in media. Content. Travel. He is doing well for himself.”
Niko nods once. No visible reaction beyond that. But something in the air shifts slightly, as if a long thread has been acknowledged without being pulled.
Luciana continues. She has a daughter now. A marriage. A life that has moved forward without apology. When Niko asks nothing more, and she is briefly grateful. Then she tells him, clearly and without cruelty, that this is not something she wants reopened.
He understands. He does not argue. He never argues with time.
MATT THOMAS AT THE HOTEL
I am still at the hotel when he returns. He does not look like a man who has just been refused something. He looks like a man who has confirmed a hypothesis and chosen not to act on it. There is a difference, and I am beginning to understand it.
I ask him if he saw her. He says yes.
I ask what she said. He does not answer immediately. Then he tells me about Dubai, about the son, about the fact that life has continued in a direction that does not require his permission.
I wait for more. There is no more.
That is when I realize how little I actually know about him, even now. Later that night, I finally ask the question I have been circling since Tokyo.
“What is your real name?”
He does not look surprised.
He never looks surprised.
He says he is from Georgia. That his name is Niko. That he was born in 1977.
Nothing more.
And somehow that is enough to change the entire shape of what I thought I was holding.
CODA — MATT THOMAS IN KOYTO
I am back in Kyoto, but I am not fully back in anything that resembles ordinary life. The school still exists. I still teach. I still perform the version of myself that can explain narrative voice to students who are mostly thinking about lunch. I have had readings now—one in Kyoto, one in Tokyo—and people are starting to treat me as if I might become something recognizable.
It does not go to my head. But the Thin Man does. He’s always there.
We talk on Signal in fragments. Nothing structured. No schedule. Just interruptions in time that feel more real than the rest of the day. I sit in shisha places after work and try to write, but what I am actually doing is waiting for the next message.
Book II is already taking shape in my head.
I am just not sure yet whether I am writing it is writing me.
Illustrations presented with thanks by Riko Kusahara
Note: This piece was written for the Psiber Dreaming Conference offered by IASD in September 2018, under a strict word limit that forced a level of compression I don’t always allow myself. It draws on a series of lucid dreaming experiences to explore how we determine whether we are dreaming or awake, and why those determinations so often fail under pressure. Looking back, I’m less interested in the specific techniques of lucidity than in the broader question the paper circles: what happens when our usual markers of reality—stability, plausibility, even self-awareness—prove unreliable? The result is less a theory of dreaming than a compact record of trying to think clearly inside a system that continually revises its own ground.
Epigraph I:
The difference between most people and myself is that for me the “dividing walls” are transparent. That is my peculiarity.
—Carl Jung
Epigraph II:
The conventional scientific sentiment has become that—while we don’t totally understand why dreaming happens—the dreams themselves are meaningless. They’re images and sounds we unconsciously collect, almost at random {…} Which seems like a potentially massive misjudgement.
—Chuck Klosterman
Dream I: I awake in a warehouse. The bed is against one wall–on the other is a thirty-foot mountain of cantaloupes. I realize I am dreaming. I get up and run my hands over the cantaloupes. They feel absolutely real—as tangible as in life. I remember that tangibility is not a viable reality test—I’ve made that mistake before. Now fully lucid, I decide to levitate. The room dissolves, and I float suspended somewhere in dense, colourless space. Eventually, I feel the need to come back to earth but cannot locate it. I feel something beneath me. This is my bed, and I awake back in the warehouse, relieved yet exhilarated. The cantaloupes are still there, however I don’t question them. I just happen to live in a room full of fruit. Moments later I awake again, this time in diurnal “reality.”
The most common dream experience is of waking from a dream we take to be real, only to understand that it was “just a dream.” However, a subset of dreamers, probably more than we generally imagine, have experienced lucid dreams, dreams in which, to some degree, they are aware they are dreaming. Lucid dreamers may also experience “false awakenings”[1]— the sensation of waking progressively through dream “levels.” False awakenings can be disorienting (Robert Waggoner writes that after seven successive false awakenings he “would accept {…} any reality {…} as long as it stayed put”[2]), or sought after (Daniel Love and Keith Hearne have independently developed techniques to induce false awakenings[3]). Regardless of the desirability of the experience, the existence of dream levels, far from a simple oddity, provides a potential window into massive metaphysical questions.
First, we need to understand how dreamers use evidence to establish whether they are dreaming or awake.
II:I am in a dreaming contest with another dreamer. The contest begins and slimy amphibians begin to appear. Some resemble frogs;others are in shapes that don’t exist in nature. Their size varies from that of a pinky to that of a fist and they are verycolourful.I am nottryingto dream them, rather they are spilling everywhere around my feet. I sense this is a dream and check on the other dreamer. He is standing to my right in empty space. He looks just like me and hasn’t begun his dream.
This dream is non-lucid at first and becomes lucid because of the bright color and absurd number of the amphibians. An awareness beyond the dream senses a non-natural situation.
III: I am picking out fruit at a fruit stand. There are some huge avocados, almost too good looking. I wonder if I am in a dream, and touch an avocado to check. The one I choose is ripe and soft—I squeeze it a little. There is no doubt that I am having a tactile experience, and I conclude I am not dreaming. Of course, I am.
Two dreams, two types of evidence. In Dream II, I correctly identify the amphibians as anomalous, and become lucid. In Dream III, my attempt to test the lifelikeness of the avocado as an indicator fails. Simply put, realistic sensation is not sufficiently indicative of reality. Love agrees: “we are not looking for a qualitative difference in how realistic the experience feels {…} we are {…} on the lookout for issues with stability and plausibility.”[4] In Dream I, at first the huge pile of melons in my bedroom appears implausible and triggers lucidity; after moving up a dream level, my mind overrides the implausibility by “justifying”[5] the anomaly.
Because we awake from sleep and dreams every morning, we are very familiar with the experience of awakening. It is therefore unsurprising that when we wake inside a dream we accept the new reality as the waking world, even if it contains anomalous elements.
IV: I am in a huge house where a large group of families on motorcycles arrive. The families are making noise all night. I realize I am dreaming and levitate over to the families. Later I decide to wake up. I ease myself out of bed, bumping my nose into an ironing board. The room looks and feels exactly like my room. I don’t recall theironingboard being there, but whatever. Moments later I awake again—the situation is identical, only, the ironing board is gone. I feel a pit in my stomach, wondering what is ultimately real.
Dream IV is a good example of how dream levels can become increasingly realistic as we move through them. An ironing board in front of the bed is (for me) more plausible than a house full of bikers. Dreams such as this beg the question of how we can ever be sure we are awake. I have dreamt of getting up, walking to the front door, opening it, and emerging into the sunshine in my neighbourhood. At every point, this dream felt entirely realistic with no anomalies. After experiences like this, is it wholly unrealistic that we could dream an entire morning? An entire day?
There are different ways to approach this kind of question. The first is to use rigorous reality tests.[6] Using reality tests after each fresh awakening can help us filter anomalies in what may be an increasingly realistic dream state. The second is to open ourselves to a wider set of questions. Although space limitations make full exploration of these questions impossible, modern dreamers would do well to recall that throughout recorded history people have speculated on the meaning of the dream state and what it can tell us about space, time, life after death, and the nature of reality.
As dreamers, we know that dreamtime behaves very differently than waking time. Robert Moss distinguishes between Chronos (“linear time”) and Kairos (the “spacious now.”) He writes that when Kairos operates in waking life, “ordinary time is {…} suspended or elastic,” and that the world can “quiver or shimmer.”[7] Moss’ Kairos time sounds a great deal like dreamtime. Jung in his memoir writes “our concepts of space and time have only approximate validity,”[8] and “there are indications that at least a part of the psyche is not subject to the laws of space and time.”[9] Jung makes multiple connections between dreams and life after death, suggesting that our waking world,
in which we are “conscious,” may in fact be a projection of a more “real” and permanent, even timeless, unconscious.[10]
In the Tibetan tradition of dream yoga, the yogi prepares for death through dreams and meditation, entering death consciously by releasing the bodily energy in such a way that the body partially or entirely dissolves into pure light. This “rainbow body” is well-documented in Tibet and China, and cases of this phenomenon have been reported across multiple religious traditions.[11] Finally, Moss connects dreams with the much discussed Many Worlds theory, as does, in popular culture, Richard Linklater. [12]
V:I am among a large group ofpeople on the top floor of a building. We lie down on our backs and formbundles. The molecular structure of these bundles begins to dissolve, webecome lighter, thentotally empty. This process is dictated by a power outside of us which doesn’t speak. Once empty, we have the choice to become anything we want. I choose to become white light. Suddenly I am transported through space in a burst of pure white light, my old body left entirely behind. This is the most peaceful and thrilling feeling in the world. Then, I am back into a new bundle, trying again to become empty. I make progress, but it is hard and I am over-concentrating. Progress ceases; I wake up.
Although I have thought at length about dreams, I am a normal person with a normal job, dreaming anonymously night after night. I don’t belong to a spiritual tradition, am not a yogi or a meditating hermit. As a lucid dreamer, like many of us, I am self-taught. While we anonymous dreamers are wise to suspend judgement about the particularities of a theory as mind-boggling as dreams as an interface to infinite parallel universes, it is perhaps not by chance that my dreams of ascending to a state of pure white light bear close resemblance to innumerable near-death experiences or the reported manifestations of a lifetime of dream yoga. Although admittedly outside of our normal rational mode of apprehension, the experience of journeying through multiple dream levels, and the energy and amazement which often accompany these experiences, may point the way toward worlds far above, below, or beyond our own.
Who are we in our trek through life? Are we the maker, or the made? The writer, or the page? The actor, or the stage? The happening, or the happened to? Perhaps, our ability to exercise agency in the vastness of forever depends in part on learning to navigate levels of “reality,” however we encounter them. Or, perhaps, journeying to the far side of the dream can bring us face to face with that which is actually dreaming us.
New Note: This is a small, wandering piece built on a simple premise: sometimes the things that stay with us are not the major events, but the minor curiosities that resist tidy explanation. A fragment of stage patter at a concert, a puzzling culinary difference between similar cuisines, the myth and reality of hostel life, the vastly different speeds at which people work, the improvisational courage required to make friends quickly, and the strange cultural persistence of the San Diego Chicken — none of these form a grand thesis, yet each carries its own quiet fascination. On Some Things I Find Interesting is less an argument than a map of attention, a record of the small anomalies and unresolved moments that continue to hover in memory precisely because they never fully resolve themselves.
Note: This is our second “list” piece, following our minor piece on airports. I happen to like “minor” pieces in general, and this piece is dedicated to a reader who said her our airport piece was her “sneaky favorite.” Here, we will simply list a few things I find interesting. There is no particular connection between these items, other than that I am interested in them.
I. Bradford Cox’s Stage Patter at a Deerhunter Concert in Osaka
A few years ago I went to see the band Deerhunter play live in Osaka. The original show I had tickets to was canceled and I didn’t get a notification, so I trekked all the way into Osaka only to find this out. This worked out ok though because I took a picture of some girls in fairy costumes on the trip. Anyway, the show was rescheduled for a few months later and the tickets were still valid.
The frontman for Deerhunter is called Bradford Cox. His side project is called Atlas Sound. Deerhunter is not one of my very favorite bands, but they are pretty awesome. I had seen Deerhunter before at a weekend long event called “Hostess Club Weekender” in Tokyo, which sounds a little edgy but was really just a series of Saturday and Sunday events featuring a bunch of bands. (I also saw the band Mogwai at Hostess Club, a band I thought I liked, but the show was boring and they were kind of bad.) My favorite Deerhunter song is “T.H.M.” from 2013’s Monomania, however my favorite Cox song by far is “The Shakes” from his side project called Atlas Sound. The Shakes opens thusly:
Found money and fame/ but I found them really late
Uh huh. “The Shakes” is more than a sneaky favorite; it contains multitudes. In any case, the re-scheduled Deerhunter show was in January or something and I was excited to see them. They were the headliner, however unfortunately they had an inordinate number of opening bands and by the time Deerhunter took the stage they had like only 45 minutes until the venue had to close. Brief as the show may have been, Cox managed to build in quite a bit of between songs patter. I am a big fan of between songs patter, and wrote about this topic at length here and here.
The one piece of patter I remember from this show was when Cox addressed the issue of Japanese toilets. Now, without getting too graphic, most Japanese toilets these days have a built-in “washlet” which, true to its description, washes your sensitive areas with water after your business is done. Here is Cox on the subject (as I recall, more or less):
“I love your toilets here. In our hotel the toilet has a stream of water which cleans you up after you use it. As a gay man I have to say this is a great feature.”
Now, what was so interesting to me about this patter was not the content per se, which was fairly straightforward and only just a little risqué. What fascinated me was that Cox in various interviews in the American press had referred to himself as asexual. Cox suffers from a serious skin condition, as well as maybe some kind of eating disorder, is super thin and generally has a lot going on. He has been pretty open about all of this, including his supposed asexuality. However here he was in Japan, where maybe only a quarter or so of the audience understood enough English to fully understand what he was saying, identifying as a gay man.
Of course I was and am aware that people’s self-identification, sexual or otherwise, can fluctuate, however I don’t think this is what was going on. Rather, it is my supposition, unproven albeit, that Cox preferred to index his supposed asexuality in the American media for reasons of his own, however in Japan allowed himself to speak his truth as a gay man. Perhaps, as I like to imagine, he thought that no one in the crowd would notice this little slight of hand. In the immortal words of the Lone Gunmen in the X-Files, however, “someone is always paying attention, Mr. Mulder.” In this instance, I was paying attention. And I was interested.
II: The Difference Between North Indian Food and Nepalese Food
In Japan, at least, there are a good number of both North Indian and Nepalese restaurants. The North Indian restaurants, for my money, are, without exception, way better. This is because of one simple reason, Nepalese food, as prepared in Japan, is full of sugar.
There is nothing I want less at lunch than a bunch of fucking sugar. I understand of course that carbohydrates in general are full of sugar and all the rest, so I guess my position is that food already has more than enough sugar without adding more. However, Nepalese restaurants put excess sugar in the curry, and super extra sugar in the nan bread. Sugar is everywhere, and it leaves me feeling bloated and bad. North Indian restaurants do not seem to have this problem. These also feature nans and curries, however they are un-sugared and basically delicious.
Now, I do not wish to demean all Nepalese restaurants, nor indeed Nepali food culture in general as I have never been there. For all I know, Nepali restaurants in Japan just happen to add a bunch of sugar for some reason. But I doubt it. I suppose that somewhere on the North Indian plain there as you move north toward Nepal sugar factors more and more into the cuisine. To each their own, but I don’t like it. This whole matter is of interest to me.
Postscript: As I am now totally gluten-free, I won’t be eating any more nan bread, sugared or un-sugared. Bye bye nan baby.
III: Hostels
Hostels are interesting. I have only really stayed at a hostel once, on the South Island of New Zealand when I was checking out the New Zealand Alps. I don’t remember much about this trip, however the basic features of hostel stays were all in place: the shared room and concomitant lack of a private bathroom and shower, the slight anxiety about getting one’s stuff stolen, and the opposite sense of excitement that one might meet, say, a chick.
A few years ago my buddy Paul (he is actually Tall Paul, but there was already another Tall Paul in Kyoto who kind of owns the nickname) came to town and asked me to catch up. I said yes, and met him at his hostel near downtown. When I got there, he introduced me to two gorgeous and sophisticated Indian-American woman from California. They were his “hostel friends.” (Tall) Paul is a very good looking guy, and this incident confirmed for me what I already suspected, that hostel life could be exciting, even action packed. Me and Paul and the ladies went out on the town and had a great time. My takeaway was that hostels rock.
On the other hand, my buddy Doug checked out of his life and into some Russian hostel action for about six months or so a while back. His plan, as I first heard it, sounded quite romantic, however when he returned from this sojourn he informed me that hostel life was not all it was cracked up to be. Hostel life in Russia, it turns out, was pretty dreary. I had no difficulty believing this, and arrived at a more balanced picture of hostels as a result.
All in all, hostels are interesting, however I don’t think hostel life is for me.
IV: People’s Working Speeds
I have noticed that folks tend to work at very different speeds. I am a teacher, and these days the job of a teacher is basically split between i) teaching in the classroom; ii) working on the computer; iii) taking breaks. Teachers, generally speaking, have a lot of flexibility with break taking, which is nice. And classroom teaching is bounded by the bell, so that’s settled. Which leaves computer work.
Some teachers rip through their computer work in a matter of minutes and are able to move on to other pursuits, such as Wordle. The top-end version of this type of teacher are marvels of efficiency and manage to go home on time every day. Other teachers are super slow, and pick at stuff for days, weeks even. While I respect the fact that everyone has their own process, this is not my style at all. Then there are the teachers in the middle, including myself. These folks are neither hyper-efficient nor super-slow. Rather, they tend to procrastinate around for a bit before settling in to serious work, after which they crunch and get things done.
As an ambivert myself, I like to gather just enough information, Goldilocks style, to be dangerous before I do my computer work. I neither need nor want all the information, however I function best when I have a general “feel” for the landscape. This is just how I work—like I said, everyone’s different.
V: Making Friends Quickly
When I was in university I was trying to hang around some artsy chicks, and was lucky enough to know a few. One day I was hanging out with them and a few girls I didn’t know came over. One of them was called Nadine. These new girls were super cool, and Nadine in particular was so cool as to be a little intimidating. She was from Eastern Europe. I definitely wanted to hang out with Nadine, and sure enough she invited me, right away, to accompany them all somewhere. I hesitated, for some reason. Maybe I didn’t know the first rule of improvisational theater, which is “yes and…” Yes and means, basically, follow the person that goes before you. I would have followed Nadine pretty much anywhere, however I said “I don’t really know you guys,” I said. “Well,” she replied, “this is how you get to know us.”
(The Nadine incident confirms one aspect of my social relations. I’m a Gemini sun with Mars in Leo in my 10th house. I am, basically speaking, not afraid of people. At the same time, I must admit that there is a certain class of beautiful women whom were I to meet them it might take me a second or two to find my tounge. This would include Brit Marling, actress and creator of The OA, Emily Haines, lead singer of Metric, and Kristin Stewart, actress in Personal Shopper. Nadine was not quite in this stratosphere, however she was pretty close.)
Nadine was right of course; I just wasn’t used to making friends quite so quickly. I came to my senses and went with Nadine and the crew. That was a good move.
I find Nadine’s approach to new people fantastic. It can be a little risky to apply it all the time, but in general it’s a good starting point. Love ya Nadine baby.
VI: The San Diego Chicken
Americans of a certain age may remember the San Diego Chicken. The San Diego Chicken was everywhere. As I recall, the San Diego Chicken was originally a mascot for the San Diego Padres baseball team that would run and jump around on the dugout and stuff. What the connection between the Padres (named after the Catholic priests that ran missions into California back in the day) and the chicken was, I have no idea. Nonetheless, the chicken, over time, somehow transcended the role of mere baseball mascot and became an all- purpose mascot for all types of situations. The chicken, in fact, became the uber-mascot, the mascot of mascots if you will.
I have an exact image in my head of the chicken; essentially the chicken was just a dude with a bunch of yellow feathers and a chicken-esque head. The resemblance to a real chicken was decent, however as mentioned the San Diego Chicken was super yellow. Also, the San Diego Chicken was ugly. Like seriously. Nonetheless, the chicken was huge, and became a meme before anyone even knew what a meme was. Therefore, the chicken must have had something going on. The chicken had his own baseball cards; the chicken was everywhere. At the time I didn’t get the chicken at all, and basically still don’t. But as with a lot of topics, there may be something I’m missing. That’s why I find the chicken interesting to this day.
Dedication: For AC, who likes lists, even though this barely is one.
Note: If you enjoyed this piece, you may also enjoy the pieces below which also use the list format.
The Kyoto Kibbitzer 