I had the most beautiful dreams about beaches last night. There were other things involved, of course---an aspiring journalist, learning to make fried rice, a small, curious town, secret love---but what's stayed with me most clearly are the beaches.

I'm not even sure I can describe them. The sand, champagne pale, was so soft, pillowed in gentle dunes and easing flat to meet the water. The water was warm and welcoming, vast, almost still in places, roaring in high and playful waves at others. The sky was a cap of silken cloud, the sunlight diffuse, occasionally slanting through in flashes at the horizon. And everything seemed shaded through a perpetual sunset---opalescent with the softest peaches and pinks, shadowed in faint brushes of violet and blue.

I know that if all beaches were truly this way, I'd come to miss their unpredictability, the sharpness of noon sun and the play of cloud and color on the water, but just once I'd like to walk as my waking self on one of these dream beaches.

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