A mystical dream; a practical realization
It was a vivid dream.
I can only remember the part where the woman topples off a boat and there’s some glass shattering. At the same time, there’s a shark in the water but it looked more like a whale, it was huge, massive. But the woman, it was like I could see and feel from her eyes. The imagery was so bloody vivid. I could feel the shark sending waves of water on me. I could feel the weight of the shattered glass floating all around me and yet on top of me. I could feel the cool water enveloping me in its embrace. And I could feel the peace as she said goodbye to the world above and settled on the sea bed. For some reason, throughout this dream, she was naked, stark naked. Even though I could feel the entire dream, I knew that it was not my body drowning in that cool dark blue water. No, that woman had pale skin with a lush and soft body. I’m sure my subconscious was envisioning Kate Winslet from Titanic.
After she drowns, somebody explains to me that the spot where she drowned is the area where she flows. Apparently, she turned into a strait or a river after she died in her human form. I think the reason I had this dream was because of the story I read about Alpheus and Arethusa. According to Greek mythology, Alpheus, the God of river, saw her bathing in a river and fell in love with her. But Arethusa did not want him and prayed to Artemis or Diana (Goddess of the hunt and the wild) to get her out of the situation. Artemis changed her into a spring of water and Arethusa plunged into a tunnel made by Artemis from Greece to Sicily and emerged in the island of Ortygia. Alpheus followed her by changing into a river and moving through the tunnel. It is believed that his water mingles with hers in the fountain.
I think the reason this story got personified in my head because of the lines written by the Alexandrian poet Moschus;
‘Teacher of strange ways is Love, that knavish boy, maker of mischief.
With his magical spell, he taught a river to dive.’
I’m not sure if this classifies as a love story of sorts. Alpheus claimed to have fallen in love at the first sight and Arethusa was just not interested in falling in love. She just wanted to run in nature with wild abandon. She had no desire to be with a man. The only thing which made me remember this one is the poetry, “a magical spell that taught a river to dive”. Wow. Naturally, I think rivers can’t dive. I love that Moschus and so many other poets use mythology to explain natural phenomena. It’s as if all this adds meaning to everything around us. Everything becomes sacred, even if rivers and trees are not personified as Gods and Goddesses, the knowledge that they might have been just humans, living, breathing humans who now live among us in nature, providing us with the beauty and bounty of life, is surreal.
