Tag: dreams

sand street beach

I SWAM OUT to the end of the bay, to where it connects with the sound, just off the point. The water was darker and deeper here and the current was just too strong. Turning back was hopeless, so I let the water carry me all the way around the point to Sand Street Beach. Remember Sand Street Beach? Wasn’t there even a little shelter there, at least in the old days? Maybe it’s still there, with the names of aspiring lovers carved into its sturdy wooden walls.

Joanie loves Chachi.

It was there there that I emerged, dripping salt water and sand. It wasn’t such a long walk home, but a storm was setting in, and the air was thick with thunder and that ominous grayblue feeling. The wind picked up and danced with the cedar branches and I began the hike. Sand Street connected to Christian Avenue. Christian Avenue intersected with Quaker Path. I had this feeling all along that a hundred eyeballs were watching me through the windows of white clapboard houses that had once belonged to dead whaling ship captains.

a bus full of books

I HAD TO GO TO PORTUGAL to pick up some books. The address was somewhere between Porto and Povoa de Varzim. It was a seaside street, ruled by proud white castles of houses. Matteo, of all people, answered the door and we shook hands. Then someone else, another Milanese writer, told me I should relocate to Portugal and that the beach here was “just full of people like us,” in other words other Italians. But I had to drive back to Estonia, I told them. Business demanded it.

On the other side of the street there was a canal, and some local yogis were filling it up with birthday cake. Channels of cake, cream, different kinds of colorful toppings, so that it almost resembled a floating chocolate garden. They were hanging decorations above the canal, too, in preparation for a major street festival. But I was expected back in Tallinn within days with a shipment of books, and so set out shortly after toward Madrid. When I got to Barcelona, I parked my car and went for a walk. On one back street, I passed an aerobics class in session. I could see Linnéa inside stretching. “You can stay and watch me,” she mouthed to me through the glass. “I don’t mind at all.” As she stretched, I caught sight of her undergarments. There was just something about the pattern of the lace on her skin, the way her golden braids dangled down her back. I decided to curl up right there, outside the window glass, and sit beside her as she stretched.

Later, a door opened and I watched Linnéa and the others file out of the class. A Catalan nurse had come to administer fresh COVID-19 booster shots. I remained at a distance, though I could see the tiny glass vials of the Pfizer vaccine piling up. I didn’t want anyone to know of my secret affection for Linnéa. An old colleague happened to turn up and we started to talk about people we had known from our days in New York. Good old Jankauskas! I told him about the bus full of books and the long ride in from Portugal. Jankauskas asked me the books and I told him all about them. You should have seen his eyes as I relayed their plot twists and turns, their heroes and villains. Jankauskas said it sounded like a lot of good reads.