Spinal Tap Dream

I'm on a circus-sized swing tethered to something unseen above---feeling a mighty belly-rush as I oscillate forward, my toes stretching at the pendulum crest to make physical contact with the stuccoed wall against which is projected the lasar-light Hubbell images of phosphorescent stars and shadowy planets.

There is an uncanniness about the perspectival changes. As I swing away from the projection, the heavens become much more than a convincing illusion---the sudden display of starry light sends a tremendous sparkling megawatt charge through my spine. When the swing reaches the hump at the back of the crest, all is startlingly Big Bang, with time-lapse shifts of slivered, quartered, halved and gibbous moons encircling other worlds in an astounding and never-ending multi-dimentional complexity.

As I once again swing into my downward arc I make the sudden decision to close my eyes and let go of the ropes just like I use to do at the beach. But this time I'm letting go with no sand in sight. I am certain that if I let go while holding on to that intergalactic vista, that I'll be able to land on one of those other worlds.

Nested in the vault of my lids I lose my gravitational center. With a sudden dread, I realize that wherever I land will now be my grave. I'm holding my breath and cringing, knowing it will all end in a split second. I am spinning down mental spiral that makes me dizzy.

But a billion split seconds pass---the g-force tug on my guts and the bloodrushing thrill of the fall goes on and on until the moment I realize "I'm far past the point where I should have hit the ground". When I finally open my eyes, I realize I'm tethered to a rubber chain "bungee cord" connected to a deep-sea bathyshere. Someone inside is waving at me. Is it a greeting or a valediction?

A solar wind roaring by like a desert train while I try to get a fix on whether I'm right side up or upside down. I wonder "Is this tether tightening or going slack?"

But I succumb to an amniotic, weightless limbo where worries don't worry. It's all as clear as those distant stars that I can travel forever in this fractal dream by orbiting myself---that this is a small taste of what the soul is capable of when it leaves the body for good.


Note: I woke up this morning after having battled a herniated disc. It had me coiled in its grip like a mean snake for nearly a month. I'd finally fallen asleep last night after endless, excruciating hours spent wondering if this were the rare sort of pain women felt while giving birth to octuplets.

When I (finally) awoke to the bird reveille, my bed was soaked in sweat.
I felt like a boneless chicken who'd just wrestled with a fox...and won.

Nota Bene: My chiropractor warned me that the fox is likely to return disguised as boa constrictor.