Sunday Morning

7:30 a.m. and I'm in my winter tracksuit (the fleecy one), sitting on a cushion on the living room rug, eating porrige and watching re-runs of Northern Exposure -- in Italian!

Monitor Lizards and a Vintage Dress

Giulia and I walked across the road which shone in the rainy night, and dove into the crammed second-hand clothing store. The racks were overstuffed with moth-eaten fake fur and scrunched up cocktail dresses, and the place reeked of leather and dust mites.

Immediately Giulia snatched a red nylon dress with a large golden paisly pattern off the rack and disappeared behind the curtain of the dressing cubicle. A moment later she reappeared. The plunging neckline looked good on her -- I admitted with a hint of jealousy that betrayed the cheerfulness in my voice. (I'd tried the very same dress on that morning, but it pulled at the waist.)

This was a strange dream.

Next I found myself on a beach that was filled with tiny sand dunes. Each sand dune was no higher that my knee and was conical in shape. It looked like the skin of a giant albino crocodile.

As I was trying to get from one end of the beach to the other, I followed a narrow path along the brush that skirted the beach, about two metres above the sand. From this narrow path I had a great vantage point over the people sunbathing and the waves breaking against the shore.

Suddenly I started hallucinateing that the miniature sand dunes on the beach were huge mountains, which I was observing from a great height. Immediately, I was overcome by fear. I found myself struggling against vertigo slowly spreading through me, making my bones feel hollow and compromising my sense of balance.

Simultaneously, a herd of enormous monitor lizards invaded the beach. The beasts looked menacing enough; they hissed and raised themselves up onto their hind legs. The lizards began charging me, emitting their dragon barks and rocking their heads from side to side.

Just as I was wondering how to get myself out of this cliffhanger, I awoke.