in red

You float downstream into the red channels, something sloshes near. You know you're not really there but it is more real than reality. In some sense you really are there, but you need to get out. At some point, along the maze of canals and tunnels criss-crossing in front of you, you saw a point of white light in the distance, surely daylight and the real world -you headed for that point of light but quickly lost your way again in the labyrinth of tunnels, the red pulsating light in them making the views dim and indistinct. There are distant noises, apart from the liquid noises and the pulse that envelopes you; there are whooshing and scraping noises that you can just about make out in the distance. Ah, there's the point of white light. There, it's lost again…

And at some point I'll have to wake up, without having found my way, which means I'll find myself in this maze again, or a similar one, when I next fall asleep and dream. It assumes many forms… there is the maze on Floor 10, where I have to find my uncle's apartment but the lifts and stairs don't take you there, you have to find your way through a series of lifts that take you part of the way, then find the horizontal lift, whatever that means, then the stairs that take you there, to that apartment in shade, full of long-leaved plants in pots, ancient portraits on the wall which I can never quite make out in the semi-darkness, the series of bathrooms, one of which is assigned to me but I can never find so I have to use the other ones but they're almost all of them broken, the radio that will bring me news from outside, an ancient radio from the '30s with names of cities on the dial, 'London', 'Paris', 'Moscow…' but it is mostly static and suddenly a crackled, broken voice in a foreign language I cannot make out…

And then I'm again in the red tunnels, on a craft of some sort, being taken down the canals at speed, trying to steer towards where I think there is that white point of light...