Southern Gothic Dreams V

I loved SINBAD movies when I was a kid. I recall going to see THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD with my older sister at the movie theater when it came out, and us being greatly annoyed by a movie geek who talked through the entire picture, telling us everything that was going to happen in advance. He'd probably seen it a dozen times.

When SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER was being promoted prior to its release, my cousin and I were in such a frenzied state to see it that we could talk of nothing else. My dad took me out to see my cousin play ball at the local Dixie Youth field, and hollered at him, "Jethro! Get a hit, and I'll let you and Bud go see SINBAD!" -- My cousin got a hit, too, and we went to see it that weekend. Patrick Wayne was an awesome Sinbad, we thought, and I had no idea who Jane Seymour was at that time, or Tom Baker.

When I was in Israel for the first time, in January of 2009, I quickly became fixated on the foreign channels on Israeli Satellite, and I was particularly taken with ZEE TV from India. I really enjoyed the soap operas on ZEE TV, and after a few days of watching shows like MONICA MOGRE CASE FILES and DANCE, INDIA, DANCE, and PHOONK, and  ALADIN, they all began to seep into my psyche...

One night in Jerusalem, I had a dream - clearly inspired by my daily dosages of ZEE TV - that was so potent that I sat upright in my bed and tried to scratch out everything I could remember about it. It dealt with a Sinbad-like sailor, and a sea voyage, and a giant water demon that rose from the sea and struck a deal with the sailor of some sort.

This is what I scratched out on my notepad:

FABLE: THE SAILOR AND THE WATER DEMON

A water demon curses an entire ship after making the sailor choose...

And the rest of my scrawling is unintelligible.

For the life of me, I cannot remember what the choice was. I do, however, recall that the demon didn't actually curse the ship so much as threaten to curse it. But how the ship was to be cursed is now lost to me, as is the way in which the captain (the "sailor" I referred to in my scratch-pad description) is forced to choose, and what he does in his attempt to escape a dreadful fate.

As I try to plot out the dream's ultimate course, I find that I can't come up with an easy solution to the mystery of this dream, and I wonder to this day why I would dream such a thing.

Regardless, I wish someone would make a decent SINBAD movie. There hasn't been a decent one since Patrick Wayne wielded the sword of that ancient swashbuckler of the seven seas...

MORE TO COME!