Cesàro Summability

This is a pretty spontaneous post, I don't usually do this first thing in the morning, but you could say I got the material for it before I woke up. Over the last few days I've had two pretty vivid and in-depth dreams about a girl called Sarah Love[1], who was in my class at the beginning of this college year but dropped out some time ago. In the first one, as far as I can recall, I asked her out at college and after agreeing to have coffee (what on earth is this, I would never ask that, I hate tea and coffee) she disappeared. There's a large blank in my memory here. Things culminated in me breaking into her place of work in the dead of night to steal a roster of all things, to find out what days she worked. Maybe more ridiculous things happened afterwards, I don't remember. In the second one, we're all sitting in painting class, when all of a sudden Sarah takes off her shirt[2]. No one seems to react to this in any way, so I curiously observe. She rummages in a bag and takes out an old red flannel shirt to wear - it's covered in paint. She starts walking around the room checking on people's paintings, and that's when I realise she is now our painting teacher. The dream ends here (having delivered its kick and fading) and I wake up.

What's odd about all this is that I haven't seen this girl for probably over a month now. When she was around, she was very introverted. She rarely talked to anyone during class time and as far as I know she never spent a single break with anyone; she'd retreat behind sunglasses and march out in the direction of the mall while most of us would still be washing our hands and so on.
   The conclusion I've come to is that it's because I don't know her that these fantasies have taken root. Somewhere drifting on the undercurrents of some slower, more deliberate wavelength in my mind, desire has been pieced together from the visual impression of Sarah[§] coupled with the idea of a girl I could fall for, in the absence of her actual personality (of which I know next to nothing.)
   It's been a year, a year and a half, I don't know, since I fell for Cathy[†], and probably another year before I met her since I stopped wanting to have a girlfriend for the sake of having one. I don't believe in soulmates and I'm not looking for the "perfect" girl, but it's still extremely rare to find someone I really want to be with. I don't know if this counts as having exact "standards", but if a girl's a drinker then that's pretty much it in most cases, my interest and respect for her even as friends will be as dust in the wind. These days, that one mantra limits me as much as if I was gay. Unfortunately waiting patiently to meet someone is not comfortable - I'm only human, and it's been what feels like a long time. I crave touch and affection. Mutuality. I want to go swimming in someone else's head and tap into their driving forces. The bloom of endorphins that sing the body electric at the meeting of lips, the burning sense memory left by your partner's trailing hands. There's a warm little nerve centre in me that has spent too much time unfed[¶]. 

[1]
    Nope, she's not a porn star.*




*Sorry, couldn't resist. 




[2]
    This rings of immature bullshit, I know. I would rather have omitted it, but that would have made the dream's theme a lot less pointed, as it was unnecessary and so reveals the motive of my subconscious.


[§]She's average height, with a slender figure still managing to betray some killer subtle curves. Petite breasts, flat stomach, pretty collarbone, pretty ankles. Big eyes, limpid, full of arctic ice and diamond dust. She does that smoky mascara thing. Slightly pouting lips. A long tumble of charcoal hair, not straight, more like tendrils, wisps of soot against pale skin. Tattoos - an unusual number of them for her age (between nineteen and twenty-one as far as I can tell (her age, not her tattoos.)) The centrepiece dips across her upper chest; I was never able to make out what it said. Ears pierced more than once.** 


**Is she really all of these things? Fuck knows. She was in my dreams. 


[†]Ghosts belong in another post, another time. 


[¶]This is not a confession of a crush on Sarah, if you're wondering. This is more so subconscious triggers leading to a lament to the archetypal frustration felt by those with a void to fill where a person should be. Read nothing into this that isn't in black & white.


All of my life I've tried to be like the man in the pictures with outstretched hands