Fly Straight Up

Every time I tried to fly straight up in the air, as high as I could, I'd hit an electric barrier of pleasure. It prevented me from going any higher. My plan was to fly off planet earth into outer space. I've never managed to do it. So far.

(This is in my dreams. I can't really fly.)

Hitting this barrier isn't unpleasant, but annoying. It feels like being zapped with tickling electricity, and the dream always ends shortly after that.

Were other dreamers experiencing this, I wondered? Were they flying straight up and getting zapped? Are dreamers trapped on planet earth? I put the question to lucid dreamers on the Internet. None of them had experienced anything like this. It seemed the problem was unique to me.

This was disappointing. I want the dream world to have rules consistent for everyone. Dream should be a place. Lately I feel dream is just another way of thinking about things, where thoughts and ideas become concrete objects and events.

One night, a few months ago, without really thinking about it, I tried flying straight up again. I hadn't planned on it. Just one of those things.

Only this time, It was different. There was a hole in the sky. It looked very much like a heating duct opening. I flew up it, and grabbed the edges. A young woman I know from work was standing there. She leaned over so I could see her breasts. She was also offering me the hem of her low-cut blouse. I grabbed it; she stood up, and in so doing so, pulled me up into the room.

She said, "How many times do I have to tell you there's nothing up here?"

But looking around, I could see she was wrong. There was a lot up here. It looked like a luxurious condo apartment, full of amazing furniture. On one wall, I saw a huge portrait of a young boy's face. Instinctively, I knew that I'd painted this portrait. The boy's face was partially covered with branches.

I woke up.

Why would that woman lie to me? There are things up there worth seeing. Was she the one keeping me from flying into space? Was she the barrier, now in the form of a person?

Clearly something had changed. Now there was a hole in the barrier and a new world to explore.

* * *

While working out on my elliptical trainer and thinking about all of this, I closed my eyes and I listened to music on my iPod. Recently I've discovered this odd and fun way of listening to music: pretend that the music is depicting actual events, much like the music of a Bugs Bunny cartoon reflecting the actions of Bugs and friends. Bugs Bunny tip toes, and the music tip toes. He slams Yosemite Sam in the face with a shovel and the music crashes.

So I closed my eyes and imagined actions for the music, letting the mind movie unfold in front of me. I pictured flying up that hole in the sky and entering that apartment again.

This time, the woman is not my coworker. She's a woman with an octopus for a head. And she's vomiting continuously. The vomit is a thick, slimy green. It comes out of her in a constant flow. We fight in time to the music. But it's a tie. I try cutting off her tentacles with a knife. They keep growing back.

Weird. Interesting. Maybe I should paint a portrait of a woman with an octopus for a head. Later, I surfed the Internet looking at photos of octopi and pondered all of this.

Clearly I had to get up through that hole again, up into that apartment. There's a lot going on up there. I decided that, if I had a lucid dream any time soon, I would try flying up through the hole in the sky, and see where it takes me this time. Maybe I would encounter this octopus-headed-woman-monster, but it was worth the risk.

* * *

Last night:

I'm in some kind of warehouse and I decide to fly straight up. Above me, I can see the same vent hole in the sky/ceiling. Great! The only problem is flying up there. When I jump, straight off the ground, I end up struggling in the air, dog paddling. And slowly drift back to earth. I can't achieve the height necessary.

A warehouse worker sees me struggling. He's an older man with a scruffy black beard. He bends down, puts his hands together, and holds them out.

"Step on my hands, and I'll give you a boost!" he says.

We try this, but it doesn't work. I still can't get the height I need.

I see a flight of stairs nearby, and realize I can climb up the steps and jump off the landing.

"I can fly better if I jump off higher ground," I explain to him.

I know this from years of flying in lucid dreams. Diving off a chair or a balcony or a cliff ledge always works much better than simply jumping up. I soar instead of dog-paddling.

The warehouse worker seems startled by this stairs suggestion. And I get that weird feeling I get when a dream character behaves in a way I don't understand or expect. Who are these people in my dreams? Why would a dream character be startled by something I say?

I get to the top of the stairs and I'm ready to jump. Wait. What if I'm not dreaming? But I quickly shake the idea. I was just swimming in the air two seconds ago.

I jump off the steps and soar through the air. Soon enough, I'm at the vent. But this vent doesn't lead to a luxurious apartment. Instead, it's just a vent -- a narrow metal tunnel. I try to climb inside, but it's too small. When I get my head in, I feel my body lengthen and distort, pulling into a spaghetti like strand. I'm slurped up into the vent. It's a very weird feeling.

The next thing I know, I'm in a shopping mall. It sort of looks like the Sears at Carlingwood. There are two employees there, two women. I'm walking along, wondering what's going on. The female employees walk with me. A woman's voice comes over a loud speaker system. She lists off a number, and then an effect.

"One, disco lights. Two, purple light. Three..."

After she lists off some more, I tell her to stop, and she does. I realize that all I need to do, to make an effect happen, is say the number.

"One!" I say, and the lights go into disco mode. A disco ball appears and spins, casting light reflections on all the walls.

"Two!" and the lights go purple.

Then I try random numbers. "Nineteen!" I say, and there's this loud bang, like a gunshot. I laugh in surprise.

I've walked down a hall, the two employees going with me. They seem both baffled and bemused by the goings on. There's a door at the end of the hall.

"I want a beautiful naked woman to come walking through that door," I say.

The door opens, and in walks a fat, plumber-like man in a shirt too small for him. I laugh at the sight.

I go through the door, and I'm outside some kind of apartment complex. There are stairs and multiple apartment doors nearby. Still lucid, I wonder what I should do. Maybe if I found something interesting to look at, I think to myself.

Often in lucid dreams, the simplest patterns can be complicated and hypnotic. I once spent most of a dream staring at cracks in a sidewalk.

While pondering this, I find a plastic toy on the steps. It's an action figure best described as "rock man" -- a cartoon like "mountain", that has arms and legs sticking out of it, and a face on the rock. The arms and legs are muscular, and the toy looks somewhat macho. Looking it over, I see a little latch on the head. Flicking it, I realize the latch can is a spring-based catapult for pebbles. You flick the latch and you can shoot pebbles at targets.

Then I woke up.

I could tell you what some of this means. But where's the fun in that?

* * *

Lately I get this feeling that watching a movie or a TV show is like having a dream that someone else wrote for you. This might explain a recent study that discovered people who grew up watching black and white television sometimes have black and white dreams. They've learned to dream in a certain way.

If dreams are a way of organizing and compiling thoughts and experiences, we should be careful what kind of films and TV we watch. Maybe your brain is being structured by bad sitcoms. That would certainly explain the numerous dreams I've had involving Star Trek The Next Generation.

What about writing? If you read about someone else's dreams, have you experienced their dream? Has reading this changed your brain in some indefinable way?