On the outside of her shirt, there was a girl, walking down the street--wearing a bra.

Pink with tassels over stark white sheet--strutting--Shinjuku; brown curls falling up and down, propelled by pink shoes stepping... stepping...

And on the train, a peach-haired orange-shirted tan-skinned extra-hypenated boy stood next to his college comrades enjoying how cool they were. Hyphens on a train full of periods.

The peach-shirted boy.

His baggy pants'd jerseyed-out tilted-capped friend.

Then there was tilted-cap's friend: Pierced-up-and-down. There were about ten of them in all. Upside down smiles. So unique.

A bright light on a train that was riding through a tunnel.

Trains are the center, really, they are.

The hyphens and the periods ride them together.

After the clubs, the clubbers ride them, too. Messy hair and makeup horrid. Sparkly shoes sparkling in the Sunday sun, rising slowly for the morning trek to Saitama.

...and then I'm sitting on a bunch of rocks around a grill that has some eggplant on it.

My friends are around me, and they feel like my friends.

And I can speak Japanese.

And what the hell is actually happening here?

I'm looking at this girl, the one with the freckles and I'm saying "My god she looks just like..." and it's unbelievable.

Because Kato looks just like... too.

And Megumi laughs.

And I'm really on a riverbed somewhere in the country and I really just got off a raft and I'm really grilling eggplant and drinking a beer brewed from rice at 2 p.m. on a Sunday.

And somewhere the green-toenailed clubber I saw on the train is sleeping off her hangover, toenails still green, of course, just like I used to paint mine on marathon day.

But after ... all ... I ... live ... here ... and I'm going to say good bye to it all in one month, exactly, from today.

Say good by to my peach-haired train-riders and my perfectly-jet-black-haired students as well. I'm going to cry a little tear for the salarymen and the OL's alike, and I'll tuck my head into my cap again just like I did last time, and drift into oblivion, 30,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean.

... and then life begins again in Nebraska.

Was the world just on PAUSE for the last year or was the world moving in FAST FORWARD? What is now, what was then, and what will become?

The future is terrifying, I'm not afraid to admit... alas there is nothing we can do but head bravely forward... or plunge forward with our eyes closed...

Because though our dreams come true, always in the way we least expect, dreams end, as the must, and when we try and describe them to others, well, the words just never come do they?

"I had this crazy dream last night, it was like.. well..."

And then you are fifty-years-old and then you are sixty-years-old and then you look back and say, "I had this crazy dream last night, and it went something like this..."

And the words just don't come.

And you remember all the things you should have done in that dream that you didn't do... all the chances you didn't take. The chances you should have taken.

And then you see that peach-shirted hyphen-boy again in your head.

And you wonder where he is.

And where are you?

And what are you going to do?

And what really matters anyway?

We are what we are, and we are born this way, and clocks will tick until they are broken and there's nothing we can do but listen to that sound... that tick, tock. And we can be annoyed, or we can not be annoyed.

We just have to live our lives, simply because they are our lives, and there is nothing we can do but live them.

Thinking about them is pointless.

They are not on PAUSE or FAST FORWARD or any VCR SETTING.

They are simply drifting toward midnight.

Like a boat sinking to the bottom of the ocean I sleep, slowly and surely; and I dream horrifying dreams and beautiful nightmares, and when I wake up I say to someone...

"I had this crazy dream last night..."

Where I met a girl in a strange place called Nebraska, at a house with no address, a beautifully calm, dark night it was... we slept there, just like that, in that darkness, the sounds of the house surrounding us... and isn't that always the perfect time?

The time when the night isn't ready to give way to morning yet, and you still feel like infinity is in front of you because really, truly, it's the beginning of SOMETHING...

And the stars shine in the sky

It must seem normal to you, the dream.

And though I can't describe it that well; and though you'll get bored listening to it (because well, no one likes to hear other people's dreams); and though even I know it's pointless to describe...

And though...

And though...

And though...

I still have the feeling, and it's my feeling, because it was my dream.

And you have your dream, too.

And do we ever sleep?

And do we ever wake up?

A dream isn't a dream without a beginning and an end. Otherwise it would just be, well...

Now hear this.