Floating in Dreams

Watching that movie of me in Second Life flying around reminded me: I "float" in my dreams.

It happened a couple nights ago. I remembered it for a few minutes after waking, then forgot. I hate that about dreams. They evaporate from memory like clouds from sunny skies.  The dews of our sleepworlds, they're gone by mid-morning.





I've flown a couple or three times in dreams in my 44 years. A few other times, I've simply fallen from very high buildings, cliffs, etc--no flying at all. Terrifying.

But usually--at least until lately, and this is weird to realize--I don't walk or fly, but do something in between. Something like "moon-walking." (And I don't mean the Michael Jackson dance step, for those of you who might know that move.)

You've seen the films of astronauts on the moon, haven't you?  The way they can sort of skip or leap longer distances than on earth, because the moon's gravity is weaker?  That's how I get around in my dream worlds--or at least did, from about age 30 to age 40.  I could leap across a soccer field in two or three steps, like it was a big trampoline.

But I just realized that, over the last four years or so, my mode of travel in my dreamworlds has changed.  

I've graduated from leaping to...floating.

It takes far less energy, and I love it.  I move through crowded rooms, hallways, and public buildings by lightly springing off of my toes into the air, and then, very slow-motion, totally horizontally over everybody else, just <i>float</i> ever so gently past or through them.  It's like the air is water, and I'm lazily swimming around in it, up near the ceiling.  

When I need to turn, sometimes I just kick off the wall a little bit, like the side wall of a swimming pool, to change direction.  

Other times I just paddle a bit with my arms to turn.

The people in my dream a couple nights ago laughed as they saw me floating around (and it seemed like a mean laugh, not a fun one).  I don't know <i>why</i> they laughed--they were all walking, stuck in gravity.

I'm happy about this pattern I've discovered from moon-leaping to floating.  I choose to interpret it this way:  I'm getting lighter of heart, mind, and spirit as I age.

I always feared aging would make me feel less and less light.

Best of all, if the pattern continues, can you see what should eventually happen next?  Someday, I should begin flying.