A Postcard from my Astral Travels 06-05-05

Last night/early this morning I dreamt I was taken on a tour (tourism) of a certain area of Trinidad that I never knew about. It was actually an easily accessible area, just off the Eastern Main Road in Laventille, but somehow in the dream there were aspects of it that no-one had ever seen. Now that I'm awake I can't exactly remember what these "aspects" were, who was giving the tour or who were the other people with me, but we were being taken on foot through some old shells of buildings. Despite their seeming 'nothingness', whatever it was about these buildings was fascinating ... perhaps even uplifting, because I remember thinking that this would be a great place to bring people. Towards the end of the tour we were taken to something like a bus shelter where a submarine took us on a ride along the bus route. The bus route was a long, wide waterway with large ten foot waves, etc. Not scary, because the water was clean - blue with white wave crests - not brown like flood water. The 'submarine' didn't go down, but rode on the water for a while, easily moving with the huge waves. It moved so effortlessly and professionally that I wondered if a human was driving it so well or if it was automated. It was a comfortable ride - a joy ride - and I remember observing how things had changed: the bus route being a waterway and the sea being visible right next to it. It was as though the sea had consumed the land in the area by Food Giant, the highway, Beetham, etc. and the water was now almost up to the bus route. It was only at the end of the ride that the submarine went underwater and returned to the shelter where it was kept. This shelter was like the terminals at City Gate where the buses park. When we (the people on the tour) got out, a strange little Indian man like a gnome came up to us and gave us postcards with multiple choice questions and photographs to fill out (some kind of tourism quiz). The questions were 'strange' - not about the country, but rather using the country to illustrate things about ourselves/people. For example one question I remember was a series of about 6 photos - some were of waterfalls, beaches, etc. in T'dad and some were of smiling people of different races (the typical Trini 'we are a rainbow country' slant). One of the faces was of a man who looked like he was deformed. The 'question' said "Tick off the beauty spots". I remember looking at the image of the deformed man and ticking it and thinking that 'beauty spot' is also inner ... then realising that it was the man who was driving the submarine.

(... Realising as I write this that in the dream the submarine was like a bus on the bus route ... and the first syllable of submarine backwards is bus = busmarine)

- Happy Hippy -