Master,

Last night in the dream world, I was in a rooftop café with only $1 to spend on toffee ice cream. Once again, I’d forgotten to take my wallet with me in the dream world. Some kind soul give me that $1–thank you, whoever you are.

After taking several licks of the ice cream, to my horror I found that it had visibly reduced by about 50% in size! I can’t remember whether you were next to me at the time and if you were, whether you had noticed the significant reduction of volume. If you had, would you be peeved? Like, “next time I’m licking first”? or would you be like, “whatever makes her happy, even if it means I’ll get less ice cream”? What kind of master are you in this scenario—are you a possessive ice-cream monster or a benevolent ice-cream monster?

This dream surely had something to do with what I read from R. F. Kuang’s book Katabasis. Alice was surprised to have found that a 100 kg of potatoes containing 99% water, losing water overnight to 98%, results in a total weight of 50 kg the next day. How can one think of this in a way that doesn’t feel counterintuitive? Let’s break it down using words.

When 100kg potatoes are 99% water, that means:

Water = 99 kg

Solids = 1 kg

Since the solids stay the same at 1kg and water evaporates from 99% to 98% of potatoes, that means solids are now 2% of potatoes.

Let total weight be x kg.

Water = 0.98x

Solid = 0.02x

We know that solids = 1 kg, so:

0.02x = 1 kg

Solve for x:

x = 50 kg

The seemingly small change in water % represents a large proportional change in the non-water component’s share of the total mass, forcing the total weight to drop drastically to maintain the solids percentage. 

The change in water and solid percentages also reflects a change in their ratio. It’s not that the potatoes “lost 1% of their water” in quantity; rather, they lost enough water for the solid portion to double its share from 1% (1/100) solids to 2% (1/50) solids.

Another way to think of it is this: there are 100 coins on a table, 99 silver and 1 gold. If you want to make that 1 gold coin be 2% of what’s left after removing silver coins, you need to remove more than 1–2 silver coins from the stack. You must remove about half of them.

49 silver coins + 1 gold coin = 50 coins.

1 gold coin / 50 coins = 2%.

It’s the same principle as the potato problem—the solid (gold) stays the same, so the total mass (coins) must shrink for its % to double.

I’m sorry if it’s already obvious to you, Master.

Since this blog is part dream chronicle, part love letter, and I was urged by the dream officials to think about this problem as symbolised by a shocking reduction in ice cream size, I thought I might as well write it down—could be useful for Lord knows when. Likely a waste of time but why not, eh? Perhaps when you eat ice cream or potatoes later today, you’ll think of me.

I’m now reading the part where the students wonder what the difference is between Plato’s Forms and Kant’s Noumena. But my notes on that will be for tomorrow as I’m tired now and want to drink some Chinese green tea. Actually, I thought of another love story to write about—a toxic one—though perhaps you’ve had enough of love stories for a while. Anyway, if it’s important to you, tell me whether you’d prefer a love story or the aforementioned philosophical reflection for tomorrow’s blog.

100 kisses for you till then.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this puzzle in the hopes that you can make better sense of it and explain it better than I can.

“Peter’s innovation was a subtle variation of Russell’s paradox wherein set themselves were not members of the set they described—things can be Normal or Abnormal or neither Normal nor Abnormal. This has implications on how you suspend the nature of things but in the interim, Peter was interested in how you might situate human beings outside of space and time.”

What the fuck is this? How do you get from the 1st to the last sentence, Peter?

I understand this paragraph as: on top of normal and abnormal categories, which everything must be classified under, Peter now introduces a 3rd category “neither”. So people who exist within space and time=normal, people who don’t exist within space and time=abnormal. Neither is like an in-between category, suspended state? It’s a middle ground that makes an otherwise rigid binary situation into a flexible one since it can now be “neither” . This interpretation, would be consistent with the story where (I think) magic is done by suspending laws of reality.

I’m having so much fun with the book, Master. I wish we could puzzle things out together whilst sipping on green tea and nibbling on mooncakes.

My cosmic mate,

Last night in the dream world, we were in a meeting with three women. As we sat around a table in a conference room, they delivered some bad news to you with indifference while I sat there paralysed. I could not speak, blindsided by having to sit through that meeting for which I was not prepared. They told you they didn’t approve of your plans to include me in a project and, as a result, you were to lose that account.

After the meeting ended, we all stood up and walked to the elevator. It was then that they saw me properly for the first time—standing tall and resolute that they were suddenly intimidated. I didn’t like what the news meant for you, nor how I had struggled to speak in the meeting. I felt so small then, shrinking into the chair as your confidence waned. You had so much faith in me, in how I could add value to the project—now that moment was lost.

Outside at the lift lobby, I apologised to you, explaining that as an introvert I needed time to prepare myself psychologically before any social interaction, especially an important meeting. You said it was all right, but that you had thought you’d told me enough when you mentioned I should dress formally today. You were right—I ought to have understood your meaning then, but I hadn’t.

In the lift with the women, I spoke to them for the first time. I said that I accepted their disapproval of me because of my poor showing in the meeting room. But the project and the account were important to you; you had worked hard for it and would continue to do so, and as I spoke, they grew smaller and smaller, listening to me attentively like children being chastised for misbehaviour. You, on the other hand, seemed to grow larger—not because I was speaking up for you (you didn’t need me to do that; you could easily do it yourself)—but because now they saw me as you saw me, as you hoped they would.

Then two girls, purported to be my nieces, called to say they were excited to meet me in Paris tomorrow. They would be arriving by bus from Switzerland. I thought I should book a nice room in the city centre so we’d have somewhere to rest between our wanderings through the city. It’s not the first time I’ve dreamt of France.

The night before yesterday, I dreamt of ordering food at a kiosk which I thought was somewhere in Singapore. There was satay and pizza on the menu. I ordered a meal without quite understanding what it was—something that cost $2 more than the other one—and the lady attending the stall couldn’t explain it to me either. But she spoke to me in French, telling me to wait; someone who could explain would soon come.

Well, looks like we’re moving to France, Master—according to the dream officials. How’s your French?

With love and arousal in the middle of the night,

Your celestial wife

Forgive me, Master, I’ve been sucked into yet another book, Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. It’s dark academia and follows two post-grad students travelling to Hell to rescue a professor. I find it compelling, not least because the writing borrows academic language, but the story goes beyond a few students and their interpersonal relationship problems, which could occur at any school. This book delves into the idiosyncratic experiences and culture of students at uni: poor nutrition and sleeping habits, self-torture resulting from lofty ambitions, hoarding books in libraries, insane deadlines, sociopathic professors, mental breakdown, arguing over correct interpretation, methodology and historicisation of texts, rebuttals over esoteric topics in philosophy, logic, and the history of religion while one is a student of an entirely different discipline, with enough depth to make them thought-provoking, as though one were an actual student in a fictional school of magic at Cambridge.

If Master were a university professor, I would take one of your courses just so I could purposely hand in an assignment late, so you could label me a bad student deserving of physical chastisement. Then I’d beg for extra credit, crawling around your office on my hands and knees to turn that D into a C. I’d be terrible at the subject just so I could implore private lessons—and I’d show up wearing whatever you demanded as compensation under an academic dress. Occasionally, I might pop up from behind your desk just as you walk into your office, because intrusion into your private space means I get to stay in it for two more hours. “But I just wanted to give you a well-deserved and very long massage, professor. I am a very good, hands-on, go-getter type of student.” I’ll fail your class so I can take it again next year.

I just finished the part of the book where the two protagonists, Alice and Peter, are at the Court of Pride, which is one of the several levels of hell including Greed, Tyranny, Cruelty, Violence, Wrath, and Desire. Anyone asked to pass a test in Pride must explain what “good” is in order to leave the court and proceed to the next one. The end goal is reincarnation. Peter gives the first tautological answer that comes to mind believing it to be straightforward: “Good means good things,” and later adds happiness, kindness, justice and other synonyms as “parts of the good” only for the dean to respond sarcastically, “Oh, so there’s a complete list? What is the common quality of all the virtues on your list? Can you give me a comprehensive and tightly-defined version of your list?” That’s how people end up trapped in the library, with no sleep, rest or nourishment, reading this and that, only to fail the exam again and again, which gets them so despondent that some turn into statues.

As the author explains, “People prefer the predictable order of their known bureaucracies.” That’s why Hell is portrayed a certain way to different people. As they were looking for their professor, his Hell would look like a mirror of university life. “One’s sins took on meaning in the context of their moral universe.” One person is called to the courts there because he rejected submissions if they hadn’t cited his own work while another told everyone he taught at Oxford when he really taught at Oxford Brookes. One kept asking people about their A levels and gave people his results, another told people he went to school in Boston and expected everyone to know what he meant. My fav is the professor who wouldn’t accept papers written in the first person.

The two students have quite enough of the dean of the Court of Pride, who is trying to compel them to stay and help with his work, simply because they study at Cambridge, as he once did. They want to leave to find their professor at other courts of Hell since he isn’t at Pride. But the dean says that they can’t leave without passing the exam like every other person here. They must tell him what good is. To which Alice responds, “If you can prove to me that we ought to stay here, then we will stay—but you must do so with pure reason.”

The dean, believing himself to be a man of reason, says that it’s easy. In order to leave Pride (Z), you must pass the exam. That’s the only way you can leave. Since you didn’t pass, you cannot leave. Alice then asks, “Why must we accept the conclusion (Z)? Why would A and B lead to Z?” And the dean says, “Because it is the rules of Hell (C).” Alice again refuses to accept that A + B + C = Z, which leads the dean to add another premise, mumbling and reasoning to himself all the way to J, as the students sneak out of his office.

This episode is based on Lewis Carroll’s 1895 philosophical dialogue, What the Tortoise Said to Achilles (which I only just googled), which illustrates the regress problem of inference. Achilles can never compel the Tortoise, because each time he tries to prove a logical inference, the Tortoise demands yet another premise connecting the last one. The problem is, logic alone cannot force agreement because it isn’t itself something you can justify within logic. It’s not a matter of belief. It’s a process, a rule, not another proposition. You must follow the steps because that is what reasoning means.

I am having a wonderful time reading the book. I wish we could read it together. Actually, I wish you would be my professor everyday, so I could use my best sultry voice and ask, “what would you have me do so that I could turn this D into an A?” 

If I disappear again tomorrow, it only means I’m buried in a book—not that I’ve forgotten you, nor that I love you any less. You are closer than a thought away, my most radiant twin flame.

Master,

Your recent pictures have you looking like sapphire—whose wrappings require swift removal so you could shine unabated, and I can bury my face in the warmth of your chest where it smells most like you. This public display of affection will appear unseemly and unbecoming conduct of a respectable lady in your locality, but only an actual arrest can stop me from maintaining you in a state of undress all day this weekend. Perhaps it is to the stars that we must give our thanks for keeping us just out of reach of one another, at least for the time being, so we could avoid jail time.

Speaking of sapphires, I once dreamt of it on a ring next to diamonds and a dome of gold. I had it first on my finger, then kept it in my pocket for safekeeping from a recent but rapidly receding flood. As I assessed what little to no damage the water did to my home, I was ever mindful of the ring and tempted to take it out to admire it on my finger again. That was a good sign, according to the dream officials.

Today’s love story is based on Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water. Like all stories, there’s much to take from it—for this one in particular is symbolic of the struggle of an invisible, vulnerable minority coming together through shared memory of isolation and pain against some tyrannical members of the majority, cavalier about the value of life. But for our purposes, I will write only about love—though now that I think about it, all struggles do emanate from love of sorts: love for another, love for ourselves, love for a fellow human being, love for life itself. For love gives us courage in the face of fear and of the terrible consequences of failure.

In one scene, we see Giles with his best friend, Elisa—the protagonist of the story, who is in love with a humanoid sea creature. They are in a diner, about to order pie from a young man. Giles is clearly anxious. He stands before a rotating display case stacked with radioactive-green key lime pie, lamenting how it tastes like ash in his mouth. He recounts Greek mythology to Elisa—particularly that of Tantalus, who was condemned to thirst and hunger for eternity while standing in a pool of fresh water beneath a tree full of fruit, because each time he bent to cup the water, it would recede, and each time he reached for a fruit, the branch would move out of reach.

And this, Giles explains, is why tantalise means “to tempt with something just out of reach.” Someone is tantalising enough to Giles that he keeps returning time and again to the diner for the revolting key lime pie, which has most certainly been mass-produced by someone who has never seen or tasted a real key lime pie before. When the young man takes his order, Giles feigns enthusiasm for the pies, contradicting wildly his earlier disdain for them.

This was Baltimore, USA, 1962—in a rather conservative area and precarious moment in time—so we might expect that their love story would not have a happy ending. Indeed, it did not. The young man reveals himself to be not only homophobic but racist too, when he refuses to allow people of colour to sit in his largely empty “family-friendly” diner. Put simply, when it comes to love, physical attraction matters perhaps only in the beginning, for even the most beautiful face can turn very ugly in an instant when matched with an ugly personality. All the usual perceived differences are really just differences of form, not of essence, and not what matters when it comes to love. Besides, people are often never what we think of them before getting to know them properly and by this I mean, their character, personality, values and so on. This is why the title The Shape of Water is apt—for water is essential to us in every way except its shape. Being amorphous, love too can take many shapes.

Back in the testing facility where Elisa works as a janitor, she is setting up a picnic beside a pool of murky water. Elisa has no idea where she comes from, except that she was found by the river as a baby, without any possessions to suggest even the faintest link to a past. All she has are the scars on her neck to tell her that she has one. Being mute has her live life largely on the fringes. Her daily routine consists of waking up at a set time, making breakfast of boiled eggs and toast, a private time in the bath every morning for self-pleasure, and then off to work on a company bus. She finds most happiness being with her friends, though we can see that she is lonely and longs for a special connection, which she finds with the sea creature and in her affinity with water.

She arranges a row of boiled eggs for the creature, who comes out of the pool, chained, to share a quiet moment with her. From a record, Glenn Miller’s I Know Why is playing:

“I’m in heaven when the music begins,

I can see the sun when it’s raining.

Hiding every cloud from my view,

And why do I see rainbows when you’re in my arms?

I know why, and so do you.”

They are happy just to be near each other despite the unromantic backdrop of an underground lab—delighting in each other’s company, sparking and indulging curiosities, making new experiences and memories as they interact. Being amphibian, he speaks as though meant only to speak underwater, so even if Elisa could speak, they could not communicate in a conventional sense. But they find a way to communicate through a shared love for music. And this is why I am sharing this love story with you: it resonates with me, through our shared love for words.

Though the sea creature has the shape and reproductive system of a man, he is covered in scales and fins, which makes him appear more amphibian-like than human. Despite this, Elisa says later that she loves being with him because he doesn’t see her as incomplete. He sees her for what she is, not for what she is not. He is content just to see her every day, and we assume she feels the same for him. They are happy to be seen, accepted, and loved despite what makes them different from the others. In other words, she is describing the symptoms of love.

From their daily and private interactions, we see that the creature has the ability not only to communicate but to devise language in order to do so, which attests to his intelligence—not unlike a human. With this ability, we can imagine he can learn, teach, form a community, create systems and social structures, follow rules and laws, and much more. He is not a primitive creature in any sense apart from his appearance. So we ask, rightly: what makes a person human? And then, what does it take for a person to lose their humanity? What makes a life deserving of protection and love?

The story offers an answer by activating our imagination to generate infinite possibilities as to what it means to be human—beginning with living an ordinary human life: interacting with friends and colleagues, sharing memories and experiences, falling in love, and all that comes with it. For it is through our relationships with others that we find joy or pain throughout our human existence.

The creature—whose name I do not even know—has a special healing ability through touch, which is why the scientists are interested in studying him, and why he is held in the facility, subjected to testing, torture, and invasive procedures by people apathetic to his pain and suffering—all in the hope of gaining an advantage over the Russians. For the sake of scientific gain, they turn off empathy, showing the tragic consequences of ambition when disconnected from feeling. Strickland, in particular, delights in torturing the creature with an electric baton. He talks freely about killing it so that its insides might be studied, when in truth, he merely wants the project to end quickly so he can retire. He cleverly uses language and symbols as cover for his cruelty, apathy, and disregard for life—calling the creature “primitive,” “ugly as sin,” and “worshipped as a god” (and therefore blasphemous). All of which Elisa sees and hears, strengthening her resolve to rescue the creature with the help of her friends.

By now, we see the point of the story—and of this love letter: there are many ways for love to come about. It is not how we are different that matters, but how we are alike—in what makes us beautiful, which we find in each other. And our perspectives and attitudes have consequences on how we see and treat a person. Perceived differences don’t matter, with exceptions: they matter when it comes to callousness, ruthlessness, and malice. They matter when those differences make us less than human and more like proper monsters.

Elisa connects with acceptance, openness, tolerance, and empathy—which makes her capable of so much love—while Strickland judges others only by how alike they are to him, by his version of a “visible perfect form,” which is why he is incapable of love, save for himself and his mirror image.

With the help of friends, each motivated by love for each other or doing the right thing, Giles and Elisa succeed in rescuing the creature. Giles drives the escape vehicle; a scientist turns off the power to give them cover, while Elisa and another friend wheel the creature out in a laundry basket. They barely make it out unscathed, and after several days in a tub, a rainy day presents them with the opportunity to take him safely to the nearest body of water. As they are saying their heartfelt goodbyes, Strickland finds them and shoots them both. The creature, after taking down Strickland, self-heals and carries a dying Elisa into the water, kissing her, and healing her. The scars on her neck finally open, revealing gills—as they were always meant to—and they embrace deep beneath the waves.

The film ends with an excerpt of a poem as Giles wonders what became of his best friend:

“Unable to perceive the shape of you, I find you all around me.

Your presence fills my eyes with your love,

It humbles my heart,

For you are everywhere.”

— 11th century Sufi poet

The message is that we cannot affix a final shape to what is essentially limitless and boundless. It is free to exist everywhere, despite our (poor) attempts at pinning it down with a form. Sight is but one way of perceiving.

Master, during the months when you were away, I found you in the most ordinary of everyday symbols and synchronicities—they helped me get by, day to day, waiting, knowing you would return. I chronicled them in previous love letters here on this site so I can always remember that time, not for its darkness but for the day you returned as a crouching tiger. That one day we may read them together on a bright and sunny afternoon, after a picnic and before a short walk by the quay at sunset, when I will take your hand and urge you to take us home so we could do more than stand about and molest each other.

The ending of the story tells me one important thing about their love. Though neither of them knew what she was—an underwater creature herself—something unspoken within them must have recognised their unobservable but understated similarities, which appears at first as affinity, but proves crucial at the end—for they are, in fact, perfect for each other, in both form and substance, for a happy and fulfilling existence. His healing ability is symbolic of how it feels when we are amongst people we love—one that takes away pain but also transforms.

That’s it. No more horrors for me until next year.

Last night I dreamt of grocery shopping with my mother. I was about seven months pregnant—completely serene and happy—pushing a trolley along the potato chip aisle when another young couple came towards me with a baby in their trolley. They struck up a casual conversation, asking how far along I was, before showing me a strange little device attached to their baby’s ear. It looked as though a caterpillar had settled there. The woman explained that it was connected to an app on her phone which allowed her to see what her baby sees—particularly useful, she said, on days when she misplaced her baby. Laughing, she told me offhandedly that once, while shopping, she’d forgotten which aisle she’d left her in. She simply opened the app, showed the staff, and they promptly went to retrieve the baby. “Terribly convenient,” she said, adding that she never had to worry about losing her again. Incidentally, when she lost her baby last, it was also at the potato chip aisle. Cackling at her own joke, she must have thought it a funny coincidence.

I didn’t find anything she said funny. Then again, I rarely find casual conversations amusing—mostly because I just want them to end, so I can be on my way. In this case, I wanted to be far from this spontaneous revelation of over-reliance on technology and increasingly hands-off approach to a child’s safety and well-being in a crowded and very public place.

I thought to myself that one should always remember they have a baby with them, and not simply leave them unattended in a supermarket. That seemed the most reasonable thing to do, of all the options. But as I was walking to the taxi stand and Mum waved goodbye, I wondered if I should get on with the times and procure one of those devices myself—just in case—something less invasive than the caterpillar tracker. Like an AirTag, perhaps? I wouldn’t be above that; what with human traffickers, baby kidnappers and all. Then I looked at the number of grocery bags I had to carry on my own, and suddenly that seemed the bigger and more pressing problem, given my condition. A moral conundrum packaged in a disturbing dream. Imagine that.

This is probably the third time I’ve dreamt of being heavily pregnant in the last few months. Google says it doesn’t mean literal pregnancy—don’t worry, Master—but depending on how one feels at the time (I was happy in all of them), it represents abundant blessings, wisdom, or success in projects, all currently unseen but incubating, and will soon to come to light. In all three dreams I was contented and well-supported by family, so hopefully, this is a good sign.

Tomorrow (or the day after), if I have time, I’ll write another love story. For now, I’m busy fighting off a mosquito still trying to get at me, even though it’s already had its victory upon my left cheek.