Maldive On a Monday

Excerpt from last night's dreaming: Being plunged into the Lackadive Sea blue green below me to sky scraper depths and beyond With the quickness of burned off clouds, I think: there must be sharks, somewhere, in the planet beneath me and yet to the task at hand- I'm an actress about to shoot a scene. The ship I jumped from is both the staging area and a wooden extravaganza of a prop. My leading man already awaits me in the water and somehow, I am on cue to romantically kiss him while trying to make treading water look sensual. And the extras paddle around us with a meaning beyond me And the long metal bent arms of microphones shade my head with fuzzy fat caterpillar covers on their ends, waiting to hear the salt slip off my lips. Somewhere within this moment, I think to myself: "I've forgotten all my lines, I guess I'll have to wing it, This water sure is clear, I guess I'd see the sharks if there were any..." And - it's within this moment, before the monumental kiss of my career (did I mention that the leading man is faceless?) that I notice the wooden behemoth of a prop sailing away. Not just lackadaisically swishing it's boughs against the sea, but briskly cutting blue green water to speed. Cliffs surround us on both sides, connected with an ornate bridge. And we tread water 'till our chins break the sea's skin to rest. The extra's disappear (maybe drown into the clear, or get eaten by sharks or as I really like to believe, hop the ship with the foreknowledge that we are about to be left) and my leading man and I swim to one of the mammoth bridge supports. Ah, shade and the lapping of cool water against barnacles. It's then that I notice the support has lovely jeweled and fine metaled earrings displayed on it for sale, and I think, with discouragement, that I sure could use a new pair of earrings and it's too bad that I don't have any money in my bathing suit. We swim on and then realize that we are being chased. Aha! The reason the ship abandoned us in mid-scene! We find an arched doorway under the bridge and make our way through an Indian shop with trap doors in the floor that open to water beneath (escape routes? or just fishing holes?) and we pad through on the wool carpets pretending to look at the shop keeper's wares. I taste Shrilanka in the air, brinjals and curried pineapples, and wonder, in the lucid passing to another dream, if I'll live.