September 1999

I was in a basement supported by rough wooden beams. I was standing in clear blue water to my shins. The water was magical, its surface bulging upward in small discrete lens-like protrusions from a complex arrangement of currents underneath. Each lens quivered like gelatin, distorting the blue-green stones that covered the basement floor. I noticed a few other people not too far away who were walking on the surface of the water and I felt envy. How was it that they were able to manage that while I stood wet to mid shin? It occurred to me that I wasn't concentrating hard enough on thinking of the water as a surface on which I might stand. I put my hand against one of the wooden planks for support and concentrated on the water's strange burbling surface. As I watched, the wet lenses flattened somewhat, and a dark blue membrane wove itself between them, forming a kind of honeycomb of clear cells. The process seemed automatic, but also required a lot of concentration on my part. Finally I was standing on the surface of the water - and just in time. I looked down to see that the floor of the basement (beneath the new gelatinous floor) didn't actually meet the wooden beams, but ended a few feet away, and through this gap I could see a sub-basement below this one.