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First, some domestic scene-setting: Tony had plastic surgery to resemble キムタク and I was serving oranges that grew increasingly unlike ones I’d pick at the grocer, the last so much larger and hideous it had to be a saggy grapefruit. A cabbage in the fridge had a purple streak in the center that also indicated its past-best state. Then I was part of an outdoor procession returning home from a protest gathering and a young woman walking beside me looked dejected, so I took hold of her hand, which seemed to pick up her spirits. This platonic gesture caught the eye of my boyfriend, former co-worker Fred (to whom I apologize, my field isn’t what it used to be), whom I pointed out and neither of them was pleased. When we reached the tall carved double doors of the place I shared with him, I bid farewell to her and she turned my way with a Ruth Wilson smile under her hood, which all but sealed my fate with my current relationship. We retreated to our indoor pool with a third man, who joined us in a game where I threw a football at a target at the other end, but my partner remained distant. The living room hid the water under a retracting floor like the one at the host’s in The Party, and as well as we were doing, I knew it was time to divvy it all up.

Cursory keyword search tells me I may not have mentioned it yet, though dreams like this happen often enough that my recollections of them ought to convey the real emotional or intellectual impact from such self-inflicted scenarios. (I shall never forget one where I met 할머니 years after her passing and was overcome with sorrow that we didn’t have more time together, feeling it even after I woke.) But jealousy is for more passionate, primitive minds—I recall a recent opportunity to experience it when the wife took a younger lover, which left me nonplussed—and my simulation only produced resentment, a reminder of immature wardens.

I looked through the doorway and saw a young person’s bare arm suspended unnaturally high above the room, undulating slightly and the fingers wiggling to show that someone unseen was behind it. Suddenly I was attacked by a dozen gray fists, but I fought them back, defiant and insistent that they weren’t getting to me, even as the image of my aggressor in the back changed shape and color.

In quite the change of setting to an anime convention, my friend and I (I think it was Frank Hsu, because he was tall, thin and decked out in motorcycling leathers) were admiring the life-sized mechs on display, and when we learned we could actually climb inside one for photos, queued up thinking that we were first in line. Turned out it already stretched around the display and the others were full-on cosplaying as sentai pilots, so the Shoei or Arai helmet and riding gear looked philistine in comparison. Nearing the end of our wait, a woman with a baby approached and we let her cut ahead of us, but she then tried chaining in a fat relative who waddled up and we objected vehemently. I don’t remember taking any pictures because the very next thing, my buddy looked more like that fucker Steve Bannon and was thanking me; such an abrupt edit in my timeline frightened me that Alzheimer’s had struck and this was how my perception would continue, jumping from one moment to another, unaware of what happened between them.

It’s how I reconcile Severance and Navillera. (Although the former will probably be revealed to be mad science like Dr. Brain, the Trojan Horse implant that has to be “macrodata’d” to override memory or willpower conflicts.) Bread-winning aside, what good are we to our loved ones if we don’t know who they are anymore? What good are we to ourselves?

Another common disability I face in dreams is finding myself bereft of even the most basic of driving skills, a simple turn requiring power-assisted Herculean strength, the car speeding or veering out of control on eerie traffic-free freeways, and spacious lanes closing in on hundreds of dollars in deductible cosmetic damage, as it was last night, where I struggled to pull the Xterra’s yellow mirrors away from the concrete walls of a parking garage incline.

After that momentary predicament, I was on my feet but they were frozen with the rest of my body as I was approached by two back-lit figures from whose outlines I could make out were from Planet X, but they reminded me more of the aliens who beset the boys in one of the Gamera movies, squeaky voices and all.

I lie on my side but unlike Akio above I wasn’t fortunate enough to escape the encounter with only a shaved head (which frankly I’d thank them for, as of late), but a sore rectum—there was a loud banging on the door, which woke me to check the app if the camera caught anything, but it was probably just the boy in his adjoining room—might the psychosomatic pain, too, have had a more immediate source, a test of my receptivity to a different kind of pleasure?

Fortunate enough to be in attendance at a grand opening (or re-opening) event of a classic arcade, so when the announcement was made for a Street Fighter competition, I rushed to make it to the machine to beat the crowd. The custom console had four sets of six-button controls and one of them was unoccupied, but I wasn’t up to putting my skills to the test on this live-streamed event. Shortly thereafter—so short that the game was over and I was almost immediately outside, looking at the place from a distance leaning against a railing with my companions, a fair significant other and our cheery but comparatively frumpy friend. A life-sized fighter jet painted Black and Navy was parked in front, but it was a light-weight plastic model, which stretched and bounced on an exaggerated number of wheels exposed when flipped over. My girlfriend was unhappy with disparaging remarks I had made about our third wheel, hand-written on pre-printed forms, including one about his appearance, specifically his choice of clothing in sweats. So much that it dawned on me I had lost her to him, and my mind wandered to the availability of another Filipina (?) of her caliber.

I figure I can’t count on LINE to preserve our contributions indefinitely, so I’ll try to add historical context: Jin linked a fan song based on “The Inner Light” (which was parodied on Teen Titans Go!—furthering my belief that someone I know has been working on that show all this time), prompting my response below from my other favorite S05 episode and attempts lately to learn Joy Division bass lines.

I have waited in my shell
For a reason I can tell
For when it’s time I break free
You must be the one I see

I have studied all my life
To be more than just a wife
I can sense your heart’s desire
Anything you require

An old book to fall asleep
Knowledge surprisingly deep
Or a physicality
Of great durability

I am ready for this bond
And travel to worlds beyond
Take me to where you spoke of
Away to a land of love

It can’t possibly just be dawning upon me “there’s a lot of it about”—as Waters said about being down and out, but the same schisms apply—nor that the machinations of the bad guys (including crypto!) in fictional settings where even demons appear to be more than hallucinations pale in comparison to what’s happening in the real world. And while the utter banality of misbegotten intentions doesn’t make them any less horrific, I can’t rely on the onslaught of post-Roe news or congressional hearings like I can the annual weekly drama.
I insist that there are parallels with X-Files sister show Millennium—leading man with visions, a psychobabbler to try and explain them away (alright, Mrs. Black played a more supportive role than that), the inevitable Christian eschatology—but while network television of old had twenty-plus episodes a season to fill, often with frustrating excursions into the latter, isn’t it a coincidence that the then-INS would also detain a Chinese woman with preternatural insight?

Just an incredible filmography, practically all our favorites from Shaw Bros.