The dream

Searing light, the kind that gets into your head and pounds rhythmically on the back of your skull. The day is hot and bright and the fatigue of overexposure is rapidly becoming a formidable threat. Details are lost in the patches of highlights and shadows and you’re too tired to focus or care. Hordes of people flock to the light when it burns this brightly and shouts of energetic laughter come from the mouths of the young, families scattered on family blankets in the sandy expanse. Far away in the distance you make out a blurry shadow, darker than the others surrounding it. 

Somewhere deep down, far beneath the incessant poundings in your head, a wave of nostalgia washes over you, confusing you and gaining speed. In one moment, you smell onions sizzling, taste the salty air, bleeps bouncing in electro-land, a winking eye, Stan Getz's recorded inhalations, a scolding finger shake, an up-tilted nose burrowing itself into the nape of your neck. The blurry shadow is getting bigger and moving into your field of vision, but it does not approach you. It maintains a careful distance, so you cannot be absolutely certain. You grab a handful of sand and clench it tightly until your hand morphs itself into a fist. 

    Restaurant, dinner, overwhelming claustrophobia, must get out. Gasping, you lurch onto the beach and it is night time, a full moon floating in the sky. The sand is still so bright and has retained the blurry characteristics of the day despite the nocturnal backdrop. Still no details in front, just a blinding mass of lights and darks, blurs, flashes of detail. You stumble forward and a train suddenly appears where there was nothing and you are knocked backwards by a gust of wind from a phantom train.

      The sand is goo, you are stuck to it like a fly caught in a spider's web, or an antelope entrenched in a muddy bank, or whatever metaphor you think best represents the physical manifestation of a helpless victim. You cannot untangle yourself. A blurry shadow comes out from the building and walks into your field of vision and becomes clear. Finally, his features are clear enough to discern and you are able to see his face and that it is him, actually him, and not some mimicking specter. He reaches out his hand to lift you out of the mess you’ve got yourself in and at the exact moment that your weight leaves the sand and transfers to the muscles in his right arm as potential energy, you breathe a sigh of relief, your hand relaxing, the sand escaping, each grain falling away from you at rapidly accelerating speeds, scattering frantically, helplessly, and then they are gone.