She paid me a visit in the dream world last night, and this time she brought a friend.

I was sitting in a classroom like the one I had in secondary school, studying for the O Levels and wishing I could snap my fingers and this would all be over—then I could be an adult, join the workforce, and earn money. Haha, right? I was already quite miserable then, but made even more inconsolable when I remembered that I had not studied for physics. In fact, I had not attended any lectures or seminars for a 1.5 years.

This, I suppose, is designed to mark a present pause, when I’ve been learning only from what life can offer. But wait—to not give physics a single thought all that time while knowing that I have an exam to take seems out of character for me. It seems to signify that I have fallen behind the cohort, something my subconscious tries to mollify with “One more year isn’t that bad.” And it really isn’t, to be at a different place in life than everyone else. Still, I had better be studying something useful, or I’ll be so pissed with myself.

I was musing next to Locker 6 Lady, babbling something about going to work and attending lectures at night for an hour, and how, if I took a course at the Bukit Timah campus (near the city centre) instead of the one in Clementi (west), I could save on travelling time. Yes, I was suddenly in university again, having snapped my fingers at some point in the dream and found myself having to work and take exams at the same time.

I was logged into my uni account, looking at the number of points I had to bid for courses, and saw that I had more than a million. Such an impressive amount compared with the scant 1,000 I had at the start, which could never win me a place in popular language courses. It was a form of capital, accumulated through another kind of work—reading, writing, reflecting, gaining new insights. While others, who could graduate now, scramble for courses with only a thousand points, I had enough to take whichever one caught my eye. I’m free to choose what suits me personally, rather than settling for what’s left because nobody liked it enough to bid for it. Freedom of choice is an undervalued form of currency.

Locker 6 Lady, ever there to remind me of my future language exam, introduced me to another lady who was also looking to take a language course. She came to find me while I was putting up Christmas decorations in a shopping mall along Orchard Road. The friend suggested we take French.

I said I couldn’t take Level 1 French—they would know I didn’t belong there the moment I opened my mouth. Level 3 seemed too hard, and I wanted an easy course. Level 2 felt the best fit: for those who had passed a certain exam years ago, which I had, but have since improved independently. Yes, you could say I was being a bit deceitful. As she walked away, I considered taking Level 1 German instead, to be on par with everyone else—no deceit from me there.

It was then that Locker 6 Lady came up to say goodbye—as though we were not going to see each other again because her job was done. Except it wasn’t: she still hadn’t told me where Locker 6 was, the one supposedly containing books. Maybe she brought that friend along as encouragement instead, because that was more important at the time in terms of relative need. I don’t know. It’s all perplexing.

Her introducing a friend marks an evolution of sorts, since it tells me that I will no longer be learning alone. It is an intellectual, linguistic and interpersonal relationships growth—perhaps even symbolising readiness to collaborate with a long-term partner. I am also reconnecting with language not as obligation (like physics) but because of practicality, utility, interest, and maybe even identity. It will be the final piece of the puzzle before I can finally graduate, and I have a lot of time, compare to other courses I’ve taken, to prepare for it.

The dilemma about choosing the right course reveals a tension: I’ve advanced, and I don’t want to be deceitful, because while I can deceive others, I cannot be deceitful to myself. I needed growth, not just a pretty mark on paper. At the same time, I’m using a sense of belonging as my guide. Locker 6 Lady’s farewell suggests a transition from tutelage to independence, having fulfilled her phase of guidance. Perhaps the knowledge inside Locker 6 is not meant to be given, but found through my own lived experience or I had already found it or no longer in need of it after all. The fact that I could have considered giving German a try suggests that the actual language—French—was not important. What mattered was finding one most suitable for me which could still be anything!

Now, as I have a milk mooncake for breakfast, it feels quite spectacular between my fingers and in my mouth. When introduced to a bit of body heat, it draws from it a buttery, milky, mildly sweet, sticky substance. Delightful. I enjoy being this provocative, though never intentionally so, at breakfast.

Traditional courtships are so tedious when they have been gamified with barely consistent or coherent rules. As I’m not qualified to rail on the matter, having little experience with it, and in the spirit of creating a positive space, I will endeavour to write about what I think I know and in the only way I know how—though the outcome may be a bit stunted—and so here’s yet another letter which I hope will sustain you, Master, throughout this weekend while I read and write literary notes instead of wishing to engage in improper conduct and/or vulgar behaviour with you at the turn of every hour.

Incidentally, I have stocked up on many Mongolian sugar-free milk mooncakes because the Magnum disagreed with me. I’d like to feed some to you. Texture wise, they’re in between a fudge and a mochi and can leave a pleasant, mildly greasy, milk-tasting residue on the fingers—and on other pointy body parts.

Last night I watched Dracula Untold at super speed to bring to mind how he differs from the other Dracula I wrote about recently. This Dracula, hereafter referred to as “Vlad” is more impulsive, reactive, and motivated largely by sentimentality—i.e. he leads by his heart, feeling, memory, nostalgia, affection, care, and familiar bonds. He is not as hopelessly in love as the other one but tends to create more problems than he solves with his nature.

For example, when asked about his signature and largely identifiable way of engaging in violence, Vlad attributes it to a desire to make an example, based on the belief that people are not afraid of swords but of monsters. As he is guided by feelings and not by strategy in the least, he assumes others are guided by theirs too—in this context, fear—so he torches one village so that “other villages may be spared.” By this, he means that they dare not act for fear of bringing about the same terrifying outcome to themselves, as opposed to being more inclined to come together and act against him because they are sick of his behaviour.

Tensions between the Transylvanians and their enemies worsen because of a vampire-like creature killing the latter, for which the former first come under heavy suspicion because of Vlad’s famed cruelty—but also largely based on gut feeling and tenuous reasoning such as proximity, mutual dislike, and lack of alternative explanations. Since they have more sense than to retaliate in kind with no proof or cause, they stoop to demanding that Vlad’s son be taken as their ward—akin to a glorified prisoner or hostage—to deter Vlad from acting against their interests. I suppose, in this regard, they are speaking to Vlad in the one language he understands: deterrence by threat of violence.

But balls to them, because strategies work only when people see value in delayed gratification—as reasonable and non-impulsive people do—which would be antithetical to someone like Vlad who plays with mainly one card—power and strength. So, at the moment when the son is to depart with the enemy, and under the tearful, pleading eyes of his wife, he slaughters the emissary—in full knowledge that, as a result of his poor judgement and unskilled handling of a diplomatic disaster, war will now come.

Desperate now to prevent the consequences of his actions, he goes to the cave to find the monster and asks for its powers to save his people from the mess he’s created. He gets them—to the monster’s delight—who only wants an apprentice, a slave, or an errant boy with whom to wreak havoc in the world, because he was trapped in the cave for far too long and such things make being trapped worthwhile. Vlad does not turn full vampire until he succumbs to his unbearable thirst for blood before his would-be master’s blood leaves his system (one would presume), and as we have already seen how impulsive he is, “I’m surprised by this turn of events” is the sort of thing nobody says when they hear that he has caved in.

Vlad makes many grave mistakes—in fudging up what is largely a misunderstanding and a diplomatic dispute, he puts himself in a position where he saves one (his son) at the expense of hundreds (his people), then saves his people at the expense of thousands more who would die from the battle, and later, as he becomes a full-fledged vampire and makes even more vampires. From early on, he knows the real cause of his enemies’ problems—the monster—and where it could be found. He could have used this knowledge to his advantage and repair diplomatic relations. Instead, he consolidates power for himself to defeat the enemy. Arguably, one could say Vlad wants to seek a permanent solution against enemies who have oppressed them for so long. This comes at the cost of making a deal with a monster in the proper and literal sense, and at real risk of becoming a pain in the neck later on, to scores of innocent people, of which he is fully aware.

Master, this is when I come to the point of this letter—and when it shows, I hope, its nature as being yet another saccharine one in the genus love. He is the opposite of you as a tiger/dragon because, as a brainy, long-term strategist and big-picture thinker (to me, at least), you live several steps in the future from the rest of us. While Vlad predominantly acts on impulse, feelings or intuition, you act with premeditation and intuition. I imagine the future is as real as you draw or plan it in your head (or close enough anyway)—so real you can almost touch it, see it take form, concretised, materialised before it actually does or before anyone else sees it too.

You’re a romantic, which explains why you can be impulsive sometimes, but in the sense (thankfully) limited by the blueprints you see in the stars and the heavens that grant you the confidence and ability to act with precision. As a result, you are composed and collected under stressful situations.

If we must compare who would make the more terrifying Dracula—you or Vlad—I think it depends on what we consider terrifying. Personally, I think a calm and calculating Dracula such as the one you would be, is far scarier than an instinctively reactive one, because only one of them is capable of bringing about purposeful, large-scale, and repeatable destruction.

Though I don’t think it would be easy for anyone to convince you to send our son to the enemy as a ward to prevent a war, I wouldn’t put it past you to do so if that were the only way to prevent a full-scale one. Not that you would allow things to come to that, because you would have already put things into motion to prevent such a situation from arising in the first place—through diplomacy, joint exercises, mutually beneficial agreements, dangling carrots to which no right-thinking person would say no, leading an investigation into the missing people, helping them solve problems for free as a gesture of goodwill in return for their backing the fuck off; turning the country into a valuable ally and partner by making proper alliances and not act crazy, without self-control and thus, unreliable and with whom one would avoid negotiating—or at the very least, not isolating the equally or more powerful enemy or ally so they can think the worse of you, etc., etc. Yes, I see you clearly in that light—one who understands that power does not lie solely in brute strength, but also in being in the best strategic position in a figurative sense.

In any case, I don’t think you would be so beset by longing like the wistful, intoxicated-by-love Dracula in the love tale, though I sometimes wish you were, just to equalise the board. You’d be a charming Dracula, for sure—equanimous, dignified, masterful, grounded, and very scary, because you could take over the world by artfully and measuredly puppeteering proxies, if you wanted to. Proxies because every day you must deal with a lot, and there has to be limit to these things, as there are only 24 hours in a day, even for a prosperous vampire. Indeed, there are two sides to every coin. I’d still love you, nonetheless.

I’m still not in the mood to write about the toxic love story, so instead I’ll write about what I’m looking forward to most this evening.

First, I must tell you about my moralising and consequently, mildly irritating dream.

I told some dream NPCs that I was going to return to the hotel lobby to wait for another NPC who had the key to our room. When I got to the lobby, the receptionist offered to open the door for me, believing that I had simply left the key inside. I nodded a yes, even though I knew that wasn’t true. I never had a key to begin with.

As we walked to the room, I began reassuring my inner moral police—who were shouting at me—that it was okay to lie in this case because it wasn’t a big lie. It wasn’t a big lie if there were no consequences. All it did was allow me into the room I was entitled to be in, a little earlier.

Lying is not inherently wrong, though we like to put our noses up at it because lying involves deceit, which is immoral—and in many instances, telling the truth is better. Usually, but not always. Lying is preferable to truth when it prevents an undesirable consequence—the most common of which is harm, whether to a person or their property, physically or mentally, including their self-esteem (particularly if it’s fragile to begin with).

Lying could be preferable when it achieves a more desirable outcome, especially if that outcome is not immoral in itself. For example, telling a child there are no vegetables in the vegetable purée so that they’ll eat it and get used to eating vegetables. The point is, when determining its final moral weight, we look at consequences, aims and objectives including their relative magnitudes and impacts.

So, back in the hotel scenario—maybe there were no consequences for me, but could I say the same for her? You could argue that registered guests are entitled to one key or entry into the room, and you wouldn’t be wrong unless the terms and conditions said otherwise.

If someone found out she had let in a guest who never had a key for a good reason, she could be in big trouble. Bad consequences. What if she’d let someone into the wrong room—or if that person was supposed to have checked out? What if I wasn’t a registered guest at all, only invited by the actual guest? What if that registered guest had taken away my key precisely because they wanted me to leave?

You can see where this is going. My brain decided that pondering such things from 2 to 4 in the morning was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The answer is: it all depends on context—that’s one thing we can say for certain. The dream ended when I told the lady, thanks for giving me the room on the ground floor. She smiled and said, you’re welcome—I know you prefer rooms on the ground floor, implying that I was a regular guest. Let’s just assume I was properly entitled to be in the room at the time, so we can end this discussion.

Anyway, as you know, I avoid sugar because I can’t deal with the high anymore. By this I mean that while I love desserts, I don’t love feeling sick afterwards. I reasoned that maybe it’s because after having one, I just sit there and do nothing. What if I had one and then went for a swim or a run, burning off that extra sugar in my blood ? It could work, especially since I’ve been feeling tired during my workouts lately, which I suspect is because I haven’t been eating enough beforehand.

Lemon Cheese Magnum is going at 50% off, and I’m looking forward to receiving a box of 3 this afternoon—which is great, until my mind casually wandered off to something I read in the news about a woman who once told her boyfriend: If you love me, you’ll give me what I want to make me happy. What she wanted was a Chanel bag to impress her friends, and since he didn’t have the money, she went and sold his car without his knowledge or permission. This is the sort of emotional manipulation or gaslighting nonsense that makes people afraid of getting into relationships.

It’s entirely consistent to love someone while still having boundaries and rights—because those are the things that come with being human. One does not cease to be human after falling in love, even though it sometimes feels that way. For instance, Master wouldn’t want me messing with his jerseys, just as he wouldn’t want anything to do with my high-heeled shoes, or my heart-shaped collar, or garter belt. Mutual respect and property rights are consistent with love. What’s not consistent with it is depriving someone of property rights, or not respecting them.

Anyway, if Master asked for a Magnum, would I give it to him? Sure. I’d give him anything he wants.

Is that a lie? Partly, yes. While I am willing to give Master whatever he wants, I’d prefer it if he did not want certain things. Also, willing does not mean able. For instance, I am not able to stop my cravings for a Magnum under certain conditions.

Is it a harmless sort of lie? Not really. I’d be really annoyed if I came home to find no Magnums—and annoyed lionesses are not fun to have around, even for a tiger.

It’s perfectly consistent to love coming home to Master and to a Magnum. I can be happy about one thing and mildly resentful about another—humans are capable of several emotions at once. I could love Master and still love my cat, because one is romantic love and the other is not. I could love Master and still want to get good grades for a future language exam—loving someone does not bar me from having dreams or goals.

So yes, I’d give Master a Magnum—but only begrudgingly, and even then, only one. Master is entitled to only one Lemon Cheese Magnum per box at any time—unless it is the last one, in which case he is entitled to none.

Please let it show in the records.

If I were Master, I’d say, I took it because you might get sick from eating a Magnum. No Magnum = not sick = love.

This post contains spoilers to the film: Dracula: A Love Tale

—spoilers—

Master, forgive me—my instincts have compelled me to write, not of a toxic love story, but of love in its unadulterated form.

—This is a love letter—

It has long been held that Dracula became immortal when he cursed God. When one has led a thousand of one’s best men into battle at the cost of their lives, livelihood, stability, comfort, and good health—as well as one’s own—in return for only one thing: that she will be safe—and even that one thing was not granted—that rage is understandable. For his affront, he was given the curse of near-immortality—the privilege of death being revoked. It is a curse because life is only suffering, which only death can end. It can only be suffering because life without desire is excruciatingly impossible, and desire itself is suffering; that is how love feels, whether one understands it well or not. He was near-immortal because he could still die—and it is with that understanding that we accept he was not god-like in his immortality; he was dying, but only ever so slowly—he was cursed with the most painful death imaginable.

Besson’s retelling of the classic shifted the wind from the more commonplace, hackneyed, and dull take of Dracula, which portrayed him as a bloodthirsty, animal-like creature ruled only by instinct, and as such, devoid of reason and empathy for another human being. On this view, Dracula was overcome by intoxication from, above all things, godly powers—to grant eternal youth or death as the ultimate salvation as it so pleased him. It was as if his frenzied and insouciant taking away of life stemmed from himself being almost untouchable by death, which can only diminish the value of mortal life significantly by comparison. This became the popular take in recent years because it appeals to the vanity of the superficial: eternal youth, undying and thus free from having to face the consequences of one’s actions, unaccountable and untouchable, forever preserved at the pinnacle without having to pay a price for it—or spend endless days worrying about losing it—because it is paid by someone else.

This take, I find, is incompatible with the view I hold—one that is so readily glossed over in preference for a life with no self-restraints: near-immortality is not a gift but a curse on multiple fronts, for he had to live for hundreds of years or more without love—if that isn’t clear, what he has always wanted.

Luc Besson’s retelling shifted Dracula’s arc fundamentally: his redemption through self-sacrifice. After all that time of searching, he finally could have all that he wanted—because she remembers, and she loves him back just as fiercely. He could turn her as he was, and they could live together until the world ends—or until death took either of them first. He had the means to remove anyone who stood in their way—so why did he choose sacrifice, and leave her behind?

As I see it, it had to do with what he accepted as true following a terse exchange with the priest: he could have her—but only at the cost of eternal damnation for them both. One could take the cynical route and argue that he did it only for himself—to save his own soul—but I disagree, as I shall explain here. There is little doubt that the ultimate choice was made in full knowledge, and with experience, of what it was like to live with the prospect of eternal damnation ever approaching—its eventuality and inevitability—that when it does come, it could be nothing like what was imagined, but infinitely worse. That would be a terrifying prospect even to a near-immortal.

Regardless, it is my assertion that he did not choose sacrifice as repentance to the Creator—hence redemption—merely because he was afraid for himself. In that regard, I am more inclined to take the romantic—and paradoxically, the more logical—view. Love is the only thing that could compel anyone to act against their own interests for the sake of the one they love; this makes redemption possible in the first place—and why he was granted it in the second. Accepting otherwise would be incompatible with the definition of redemption, which is: the action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment, or clearing a debt. Giving up his life for selfish reasons could not be taken as clearing a debt; he was neither giving up nor exchanging anything by rejecting the near-immortality that God had cursed him with simply because it was not within his power to reject it. Secondly, the sacrifice must come from something more than rejecting a state of affairs—like living with her on earth as he wished—once he had already obtained it. Arguably, it is human nature to always want more until we have it, then to want something else—such is the human condition—which is then not love, because love represents the ultimate; there is nothing beyond it, like infinity. If he did not love her in this sense, then “giving her up” adds nothing.

That leaves one last thing: he loved her in such a way as to make it possible for him to act against his self-interests for her well-being; that is the nature of his sacrifice, through which redemption is only attainable as it is only in this context that the definition is satisfied—love in its ultimate form. He loved her, there could be no doubt. He did not want that tragic fate for her. In order to free her from it, he must give up a life with her, for which he had waited 400 years. It is with this understanding that he accepted he must die. His ultimate end is proof that his bid for redemption was accepted, confirming incontrovertibly the true nature of his love.

People rave on social media about the way Dracula and Elisabeta looked at each other as he was armoured for battle by his men—that rapacious, desirous, crazed look at the precipice of animalistic instinct taking over, only duty to his country and his faith holding him steadfast—and love, one must not forget that. She looked at him the same way, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking, and wanted the same.

Much like how I would look at you as you dress and throw things into your carry-on on the way to the airport to fight yet another corporate battle—for our home (and country). As meticulously as you put every piece of clothing on you, I want to tear them off savagely—except that crisp, lightly-starched white button-down shirt—that must be treated with the utmost care and reverence, for it is in that very same, I knew that I had fallen in love with you.

“Fall” is an apt descriptor because it implies inadvertence, ineluctability, abruptness, rapidity—one has but one recourse: to put out both arms to cushion the fall, to offer them as sacrifice so as to protect the more vital parts. That, in itself, is allegorical of love, woven into the fabric of our being.

Taking a tumble once does not bar one from falling over again—not in one lifetime, nor within a short space therein. One may be careful, but care is neither a warranty nor an assurance. In that moment I saw you in that shirt and fell so utterly in love with you, again, I knew that I would fall again and again, endlessly, dizzyingly. It was not a matter as simple as offering myself up as mate—to do with me as you please, physically or otherwise. I had already known you were mine, because only soulmates can do that to each other. To that end, I beg you—please, remember who I am.

Her last words to Dracula before he leaves for battle were, “Promise me you will come home. I cannot live without you.”

That is what love does. When one has been living before quite efficiently, I might add—for otherwise one would be dead—suddenly one finds oneself unable to carry on living without the other.

Today’s post is going to be short because it’s part self-reflection and part ‘my fingers hurt from too much typing’.

Yesterday I travelled in the dream world to visit friends I had in primary school. We had lunch together, strolled through a park of hedges in unconventional shapes, ran away from creeps…notably, where one would normally feel nostalgic and long to reconnect, I didn’t feel that way at all with them. It’s not from a lack of love, but a realisation of how much we have changed since then, making it difficult and awkward for us to reconnect.

I know I’ve said the opposite about my relationship with my soulmate. They are the exception to the rule. In my case, I’d go so far as to say that my connection to him is existentially fundamental to my being. It’s not to say that I’m putting all my eggs in one basket. Soulmates can take several forms including friendships, family ties, or one-off interactions with strangers, but all have one thing in common: they are responsible for a cosmic shift in our lives that changes who we are or the direction we are heading. Sometimes they are only there to give support in times of great need or to transmit an invaluable lesson, then they leave once this is done—ad hoc soulmates, to be facetious.

While I don’t fall into the trappings of nostalgia, you could say I am a slave to the future—I don’t know which is worse. This is not a complaint though; I like the way I am, which is an improvement from simply being accepting of the way I am. I owe that to my soulmate. Acceptance of oneself is a privilege, a powerful gift and way of being. Loving an aspect of oneself, that’s like opening up a whole new dimension.

I’ll write about the toxic love story tomorrow once my fingers get enough rest.

Love to you all till then.