I used to have a recurring dream. A dream where I was on a boat out on the sea, off the coast of Africa. I didn’t know anyone else on the ship, except for one person, and she was a reason I was on that ship to begin with. The details of the dream would become sketchy each time…like a collage of events taken out of time, space and context. Did I see her smile at me or “the camera” did we swim in a pool with blue and green rocks on the bottom or was I remembering an aquarium I used to own?

I admit, I have forgotten. The dreams I have these days are still about her, and they still take place on a small island, but the dream is more like real life. The water lies still and murky and a small boat lies capsized next to a rocky atoll which I always find myself standing on, looking out at the decrepit scene before me. It’s so silent that I can hear my heart breaking as I step down from the atoll and into the water which is not too deep and then onto the beach.

The drab beach, the island appears dead--and it probably is--in my mind, as everything looks grey and heavy. Each time I recall this dream I find myself looking out into the ocean—not a bird in sky; everything’s hazy and then I usually wake up, but at times the dream changes...

I turned my hand back to the island and saw a figure in the distance, waving to me. I couldn’t make out who it was, but the silhouette kept waving to me, waving as in a “come here” wave, not one of goodbye. With a desire to figure out the mystery, I’d take a step away from the beach and with that one step, everything changed:

The small boat that was sunken into the water was once again floating on the waves. The water turned a translucent blue and I could see fish darting through the current of tide…which I could then hear. Sound, color, feeling, everything came as I stepped further away from the shore and closer to the person calling out to me. I didn’t feel like me, the lost twenty-three year-old, because at that point, I wasn’t, I was ten years younger, reliving the dreams I used to have.

And with every step I took, she would move further and further away..
 

I. Go West Young Man

We left Alabama on June 9th, 1990...it was not fun day for me. Sure, I could find a "bright side" to leaving the south: I'd never again have to see a cockroach...alive and crawling on me as I laid in front of the television watching "Star Trek". That being said, I concentrated more on the sepia tone of life: I was leaving my friend, school-everything I knew--in the past year...and I would be leaving her behind, quite possibly never getting to see her again. Kind of wished I had thought of writing to her and having the letter forwarded but while wallowing away in self-pity and wonton despair...I didn't try to. Although I knew where she lived and could have walked or rode a borrowed bicycle to her house to obtain the street number, write a letter and HOPE that it would bounce from Prattville to wherever in the world, maybe Belgium, that she ended up going to.