A super vivid dream: the lagoon and the sea

In this dream, I am with a man that does not look familiar to me. We are standing on the edge of a lagoon. Looking into the distance, there are different shades of turqouise and green that indicate the varying depths of the lagoon. Mountains surround us on all sides and we cannot see the edge of the lagoon.

We wade into the lagoon, laughing and chatting. He tells me that if we keep going across the lagoon, the sea is on the other side. This seems improbable to me because of how far it looks, but we wade in deeper until the water is up to our chests.

He reaches out to me and tells me gently we must swim now. He says we don’t have to swim very fast, and that we will get there in good time. We continue to chat as we paddle leisurely into the distance. I cannot see any end to the lagoon, and at several moments feel slightly panicky that I will not be able to last the distance.

My arms and legs start to burn and I feel like I’m running out of energy. I look down and the lagoon seems impossibly deep at that point – no bottom is visible and there is no chance of stopping. The man is somewhat ahead of me now, calling out encouragements for me to keep going.

Just when I feel like I cannot swim anymore, I see the green lighten up and a sandy bottom comes into view. I step down and feel the soft firmness of the ground with much relief. When I look up, it is indeed as he promised – the ocean is not far, the waves lapping at a sandy beach.

Along the beach is a small and quiet road, on which there are no vehicles. He leads me into a shack, which serves as a restaurant. A few tables and chairs are scattered around, but there is no one else there except us.

A lady comes out from the kitchen and greets the man warmly. He seems to have been here before. We sit dripping on the chairs, watching the waves crash onto the beach right in front of us. Soon the lady brings a platter of fried fish and two big schooners of beer. I bite into the fish and the batter is extremely thin and crisp. With the shattering of batter in my mouth, I taste the freshest fish I have ever tasted. It is something utterly indescribable. The white flesh simply melts onto my tongue and I am filled with an overwhelming sensation of bliss.

We finish our platter, gobbling down the fillets hungrily and drinking the extra refreshing beer. The lady comes out again and smiles at us. Without a word, we stand up and walk across the road to the beach. Standing on the sand, the man tells me that we must swim across the ocean to the next lagoon.

Trust me, he says, the ocean ends in a lagoon.

I ask him if it is the same lagoon we came from, and he says no. At that moment I realise that the man has aged, perhaps by about a decade from his 40s into his 50s.

I ask him if there is another option, whether we could stay on this beach for a while. He looks extremely solemn for a moment, then says gently that there is no option but to continue.

People are following us now, he says.

We step into the ocean and it feels totally different to the lagoon. Where the water had been still and warm, the waves of the ocean are cold and moving. The water laps at us constantly, almost violent in its saltiness.

We are no longer chatting as we swim against the current. I feel my lungs burn as I struggle. I cannot keep up with the man as he swims further ahead. When I look back briefly, the shore is no longer in view – how could we have swum so far already?

I almost lose sight of the man, but somehow always manage to keep track of his back, bobbing up and down in the waves.

Don’t waves get more gentle as you get away from the sand? I think to myself, but I am struggling too much to even contemplate the answer to this question.

Then, as suddenly as the ocean had come into view, the water changes all around us and we are in a lagoon again. The waves vanish abruptly and the world is completely silent. Even the sound of our arms and legs moving in water disappears. All is still.

I am absolutely exhausted, but again just as I feel like I am taking my last stroke, the water lightens and I recognise it as the edge of the lagoon approaching. I stand up in the shallow water, barely able to walk.

I stumble across the last few dozen metres till I am standing on land again. The man is waiting, facing me as I take those steps. As I get closer I realise he is older again, perhaps in his 60s now.

If he has aged like this across the water, what age am I now? I think to myself.

He takes my hand and lets me lean on him a little as we walk down a dirt path, till we come to an identical shack to the one on the beach. Is it actually the same shack? I wonder to myself.

We sit down again, the tables and chairs arranged in a different fashion in this shack. The same lady comes out and serves us fish and beer. This fish tastes different to the phenomenal fish we ate at the beach though. The wonders of the crisp batter and the soft flesh fail to strike me as strongly as the previous time. 

It is as if, the glitz has been lost.

The man is silent now, and all that fills the shack is the sound of our eating. I suddenly see something out of the corner of my eye, and it is a musical phrase written on the placemat.

It goes something like, 2 quavers (slurred), 2 quavers, minim, 2 quavers (slurred). I realise that this is a significant motif, but I cannot figure it out. The minim must be where we are now, I decide.

Then I wake up.