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ICARIAN PAIN

Dreamed 1982/10/19 by Chris Wayan

Swirling energy-currents around the silhouettes of two dancers talking and flirting.


I'm walking down a busy street--El Camino Real, near Stanford University. Ahead, a class of beautiful dancers in leotards and sweats are chatting and snacking on the lawn in front of a building I never noticed before--a Russian dance school! They spill out on the sidewalk, stretching and trying steps and little leaps.

Sexy energy swirls around them! Not just their bodies--high spirits and focused intelligence, too.

I'm attracted to several of them, but rather than talk to anyone, I imitate their stretches and leaps, mutely hinting I'm a dancer too.

I remember reading that Nijinsky, when filmed jumping, stayed in the air slightly longer than he should have. Not much, but measurably. How he did it, no one could figure out. But I decide "Hey, if he could tweak the laws of gravity, I can too." It's like the four-minute mile--impossible until one guy does it, and then everyone's doing it. I hang onto that feeling and leap...

...right over a parked car! Wow! Triumphantly, I jump straight up... and rise ten feet or more! Nijinsky's attitude really works!

Next I use my willpower to summon a strong wind, and jump really high, and let it blow me over the empty lanes of El Camino. Whee! It becomes 19th Avenue in San Francisco where it cuts through Golden Gate Park. I sweep around the forested curves...

I leap in dance-class sweats, flying over houses and pine trees. LEAP scrawled in gold on the sky. Dream sketch by Wayan, based on a dancer in a zine--maybe the Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco? Sorry for not giving proper credit, I lost the zine.
Uh oh. The wind I summoned suddenly shifts to a downdraft. I know what's going to happen and I will it not to, but I can't prevent it: I'm blown down to scrape along the pavement at high speed... OW!

I bounce back into midair, but my hands are scratched and raw and stinging. I'm startled, I go lucid a second and say "I didn't even know dreams COULD hurt!" But this proves it. Pinching yourself to see if you're dreaming is pointless--you CAN feel pain in a dream! Quite a sharp pain for a while, though it ebbs...

NOTES IN THE MORNING

To rise above it all,
Leadeth to a fall.

The spectre of high school geekitude still stalks my mind, and steps on my foot in dance classes. But feeling clumsy and wrong is not being clumsy and wrong. I'm not the green ghost of my past. If I ever even was that dread nerd specter. I wonder.

multiple me's dance together chanting '666 ballet classes won't banish Nerd, but even a nerd horde clompin' thru my heart can't stop me dancing.'
  • But I think my painful solo flight isn't just sublimation. It has a second meaning. Recently I've been have a flood of apparent predictive dreams. Exciting, but they're also: I think this dream warns that tackling ESP is like ballet--real leaps, but real pain. A stretch, and very draining! I need to acknowledge it's hard on many levels. Shamanic tradition is full of warnings it's difficult and painful. You can accomplish miracles--but expect crashes too!

    And just as with ballet, overdoing it can hurt.



    LISTS AND LINKS: dreams of dance - willpower - flying - pain - oops! - lucid dreams - flirting - shyness - opportunities lost - Icarian overachievers - The warning "go easy with this new flying" repeats with a twist in the even weirder dream Glass Eater - Roswila turns a similar dream to haiku in A Dreamku Primer - pure digital art

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