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 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

• This dream is a public interest announcement. America, don't pinch yourself. It doesn't tell if you're dreaming, okay?
• Jeez. What a low-grade Icarus I am! He soared, and had a grand tragic fall, and they've gossiped about him for 3700 years. I hop, and get an owie.
• Did it happen because I explored dance/flight instead of doing what I really wanted--flirting with the dancers, seeking a girlfriend? Classic sublimation, Freud would say. Like Icarus all right...

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.