June 3, 2017

We had been living in a small house on the beach for a few days and I had gotten myself settled into a comfortable daily routine. I was already back from a nice walk through the forest on the island and it was now getting dark. Someone was playing a trivia game on their phone while the wind outside continued to rage on. After a brief moment of hesitation, I decided to step out to sea in the storm. I thought that the salt water would help reduce a bit of the bloat I was feeling in my body.

I walked towards the receding waters on the shallow beach and laid flat on my belly on the wet sand. I couldn’t see the ocean anymore so I stood up to see that everyone else was out of the house as well. The beach now consisted of alternating bands of sand and water, and soon new waterways had carved themselves out to sea. We decided to walk towards the island together.

On our brief excursion, we came across a piece of grilled salmon on the ground. I picked it up and gave it a lick before throwing it into the gutter by the rice paddies. “Why don’t you eat it?” someone asked. I told them that it’s been on the ground. “So?” they said.

When we got back to the house, I wanted to record everything that just happened in my notebook of dreams. I picked one off the shelf and found that it was one of my old dream diaries. Unfortunately, it was already full and my memories were quickly fading. I was also irked that I had loaded my pen with the wrong tip, which I had taken out of a small box that came with sets of tens.

My actual notebook, I later figured out, was in my backpack. I flipped through the pages, debating whether or not to start on the bottom half of a page of a particularly short entry - until I remembered: I always started on a new page, no matter what.

The next page was an advertisement. “Where do you want to be?” It wrote on top of an image of a sunny beach with my family in the frame. I accidentally made two strokes on the page with my pen before flipping to the next page which prompted the interactive ad to continue. “There?” was the suggested interpretation of my ‘response’. I turned the page again to exit the advertisement.

I only managed to write “Lab X. On the beach.” before I couldn’t concentrate anymore and the dream fell apart.