Here is last night dreaming which is in two related parts.

The first part opens on the shores of an alpine lake high up in the Japanese mountains. The lake is shaped like a glacial corrie or cwm and is of a pristine light turquoise blue colour. The water is hyper transparent and crystal cold. The air is crisp. To the rear of the lake is a snow covered peak. The scenery is magnificent with Japanese acers and maples. The water from the lake leaves by a small stream over a waterfall cascade which drops twenty-thirty metres over rock to a small plunge pool. The sound of the small waterfall is melody. The ambience of the environment is close to perfection. The view down from the mountains is far reaching out to the sea.

It is ago something like a thousand years ago. I am on the shore dressed as a Buddhist priest. It is definitely me and I am Japanese. In the dream I know this to be my prior life. The smell is also characteristic of Japan. With me on the shore is a spirit warlord and a small retinue of spirit warriors. There is a Japanese woman who is of high noble family and she has her retinue of ladies in waiting and an armed guard. They are dressed in great finery. The Japanese woman is part water spirit, the nature spirit of the high lake and part woman. Because of this and her relationship with the Imperial family in Shintō she is considered the goddess of the pure waters and an embodiment of misogi or purification. The water is already pure but must also always be blessed. The spirit warlord is angry and the woman must choose to either join him back in the spirit world entirely or relinquish her spirit part and remain human. In a sense I am adjudicating.

The woman does not take kindly to the angry demands of the spirit warlord. She walks over to me and places my hand firmly on her genitals on top of her clothes. She then slips it though her clothes and I can feel her flesh. Forcefully holding my hand there she rubs herself against it until she orgasms. At which point she shudders and relinquishes her water spirit aspect. She has become human.

The warlord watching says, “so you have chosen!!” He heads off into the pristine forest with his retinue of warriors. I reclaim my hand and the woman is surrounded by her ladies in waiting who comfort her. After she recovers she asks me to do a ritual of purification, of misogi, using the waters of the lake. Although it is Shintō I know the ritual well. I have a bamboo bucket and a small bamboo ladle. Which I prepare for the ritual with water from the stream.

I wake up for a visit and a 3 AM ibuprofen.

I am now in a busy city {London} office building. It is just East of The Strand and I am due to meet some financiers / venture capitalists. They have been funding a high end water business. The idea is to create ultra niche very expensive bottled water which is ritually purified and attracts a premium price. I have been asked to look into their investment. I am with a woman in a business suit who is in a rush. She is a bit “doff your cap” to the investors and anxious. She ushers me into a room in which there a number of “suits” sat around a boardroom style expensive table. They tell me that there is a prototype purification set up and pilot line that they want me to inspect. It takes impure near sewage water and makes it top end. They know I am a chemist-scientist-technologist with an entrepreneurial background.

The scene changes and I am in a laboratory. There is a huge blown glass apparatus with many coils of glass tubing. There are two sand-clay filtration stages and a long flow tube with an ultraviolet laser photolyzing chemicals and killing residual bacteria. The throughput is small and this is what is worrying the finance people. I look at the rig and it seems fine to me. It is obvious however that if they start with such impure water the throughput must be very slow. Purification is a process that takes time and effort. If they want top-end water they must start with a source which is already very good, premium and which only needs a bacteriological cleanse.

I am due to present my findings to the committee. As I walk through the building I am told that it is shutting up for the weekend. That I need to close off the lab and give my keys to the people on the third floor. The financiers have pretty much decided that they are going to pull the plug on the investment. I know that they have totally missed the point. All they can see is high throughput. They cannot see the value of purified water blessed by the likes of me. That brand which we might call misogi can attract premium price.

I go through the emptying building and I cannot find the office where I am supposed to deposit the keys. The occupants have rushed off for their hedonistic weekend jollies of excess. I walk past the front security desk and leave the keys with the uniformed man on the desk. I exit via the revolving door onto a busy central London street.

The dreaming ends.