The Blue Lagoon
She goes there in dreams. In that world, dream-world, she knows the place as Thailand. And yet she’s been to Thailand, many times, and this dream place is nothing like the Thailand of spicy curries, and dirty cities, and gorgeous smiles. This place is blue, mysterious, a flower ever unfolding.
They glide through the water in a small rowboat. The sky is dark overhead, and it is more like a low, velvet dome that protects them than the distant earth sky, filled with stars. Are they in another world, an iridescent sphere, a different planet? They row on, their destination not far ahead of them.
The water is deep blue, and it parts before them so easily. Their paddles dip through the water and return, glinting, in the moonlight. Ahead lies the heart-stirring goal they so desire… but cannot name. From here, it looks like many things at once. A tiny island, draped in vines and perfumed night-flowers. Layers upon layers of curtains, indigo and green, the colors of the night. A heartbeat, beckoning from within. What is it that drives them to this place? What desire connects them to this tiny island, this veiled mystery, so familiar and yet so unreachable? They paddle on and on, and it is right before their eyes, yet they never reach it.
In another dream, she is in Thailand again. She swirls through a maze of roads, guesthouses, dark-skinned Thai women bargaining with her from their front doors. Twenty baht, they call out after her. I give you room for twenty baht! But she doesn’t want a room. She wants to find her island. She knows it is near. Suddenly a familiar face appears amidst a cloud of dust. She knows this man. He offers her a seat on the back of his motorcycle and tells her to get on. He knows where it is. He’s found the island.
They go down and down and down, cutting back and forth across a treacherous cliff face that offers them the most stunning view of the sea. The sea, vast, stretching away to the East. The crescent beach below them is white, the sand glowing under a noon-day sun. But this sun isn’t yellow, it’s white, like the moon. She clings to the back of the man on the motorcycle, and watches the beach come closer, and yet… this isn’t the beach she seeks. This is another beach, deep down in the recesses of her mind, and perhaps it will lead the way to that tiny, draped island. But they have been traversing this cliff face for a long time now, and they aren’t getting any closer. She has the feeling that there is a secret passageway here that will lead her to the lagoon, and her island. Perhaps the way lies through the jungle over there, or just beyond the hills. Her eyes scan the horizon, and the blinding light makes her squint. They drive on and on, but the cliff always drops away below them. They can see the white sand beach, but they never reach it.
Later, she thinks of this beach, and of the lagoon and the island, and she associates these images with a figment of her imagination, a being she met long ago in another world. That person has deep, dark eyes, and is a part of her soul, vibrating under her skin and living in her dreams. If that nameless figure had an essence, it would be mysterious, pulsating, blue. The light in her life now is yellow, like the sun, but that blue essence will ripple within her forever, deep, dark, cool like the waters of a lagoon. Together, the sunlight and the endless waters will form a lush land in the form of a slender, black-eyed woman. She is watered by streams, and loved by light. She is a rainbow, the light of a million crystals dancing on a plain white wall.
One day, sitting with her legs folded like a lotus, she remembers the island, the lagoon. She sees the curtains of indigo and green, unfolding at a touch, but never revealing what lies at their depths. They go on and on, ever present, ever alluring, but infinitely deep. They will part willingly forever, but she will never reach their core. She will always want to go deeper. She wonders then if the dream was really about that figure in her imagination. Maybe it was about her. Maybe those folds are evolution, the search for the soul. You can go deeper and deeper searching for truth, but your search is infinite, it never ends. And the allure of the search never fades, is never tarnished. It is always breath-taking, stirring, a silent invitation spoken in the language of the heart.
