What comes from Waking Life

Originally posted Feb 2, 2004:

Last night as part of movie night we watched Waking Life. I wasn't as fond of it as I expected I would be--I felt all the esoteric psychobabble was a bit too, eh, tiring. But then it was late and I was tired.

What I liked best was the sections that focused on controlling your dreams, lucid dreaming. I knew a guy, Andy Walsh, who used to be able to control his dreams. At night he would decide what he wanted to dream about that night, and then he would go to sleep and he would dream it.

I've never been able to do that. But sometimes in the middle of a really terrible horrible nightmare I have forced myself to leave that place by telling myself, "this is a dream, you don't have to stay here." Usually when I do that I wake up, but sometimes I'm able to just take myself elsewhere and still stay in the dream state.

When the movie was over I went to bed and I thought, "I will dream of Love Under Will."

Instead I had a long and beautiful dream that I was at a party. Everyone was dancing and having a good time. I think that I got this straight out of the movie, when they were all dancing and the dreamer was looking on and walking through the dance floor. That was me, except I met this really cute guy with a puppy-dog grin and tangled straight black hair, and we started dancing. We had a real rapport and I was having a lot of fun and he seemed to really like me. I wanted it to head somewhere romantic, but instead he had to excuse himself for a moment and left me on the dance floor. He said he'd be right back and I believed him.

Only he didn't come back right away. And I was getting antsy on the dance floor by myself, so I began to dance with someone else. I began to dance with a beautiful young woman who was wearing something white and shimmery, and who had beautiful blonde hair. She was so sexy, and I felt about her something completely different than what I felt towards the guy I had been dancing with. The boy had been approachable and fun, and I had felt like maybe I could really like him. The girl was sensuous and mysterious and I wanted to make love to her. Badly.

I don't remember kissing her mouth but I remember touching her in wonderful erotic ways, and when we started to touch, suddenly we weren't dancing anymore--we started to float upwards, up to the sky, and suddenly instead of dancing we were horizontal, fully clothed, and groping. It was never very clear what exactly we were doing, but I distinctly remember not wanting to stop.

Except that when we were high up in the air and floating together, my dance partner returned, and began calling out for me. I turned around excitedly and said "look, there he is, I want to go back to him!" But the girl growled and impatiently told me not to stop--and of course I didn't want to stop.

I remember that there was this sense of great peace and safety as we were floating overhead, and this sort of sense of relief and gladness in knowing that I could return to earth as soon as we were done, the beautiful woman and I.

But there was also an equally intense feeling of relief that the girl and I could just float away and make love to one another, that even though the boy down below had gotten all the dancers and all my family together to look for me on the ground by this point, and even though they were fanning out calling my name and hunting around for me, we could just keep floating away, the two of us, and I could just keep touching