Two vivid dreams - living in a burning house AND coasting uphill through rocks!

The Pain Management Team at Cross Cancer continue to phone me once a week to see how things are going. On last Friday late afternoon October 4 I received my weekly update call. They asked about vivid dreams. Well ---let me tell you about two vivid dreams that occurred on the night of Wednesday October 2, which incidentally was my worst ever day of pain. Pain was everywhere - ribcage, hips, legs and thighs, severe headache like a migrain. Pain right now is almost gone, but then was 8-9 out of 10 in intensity. Ok here are the dreams.

Dream 1: In a burning house

I am sitting in the kitchen of the old house on the farm. Those of you who have my 2014 poetry book - Pine Cones and Small Stones - have seen that house in black and white. There is a forested area to the west.

There is a wildfire approaching from the west. It seems to stop just to the west of the house. There are two other people who don't look familiar in the room with me. All of a sudden someone outside the open back door, now closed only by the screendoor, cries out it's going to go!! Meaning that the house is burning, the roof is on fire.

The two others hurry out the door and watch the house burn. I continue to sit calmly in the kitchen. I can hear the roaring of the fire behind and above me in the attic. I can hear the crackling and smell the smoke. I know that the old house is insulated only with wood shavings in the walls, which means that the west side of the house is burning like a torch. But I still calmly sit there in the kitchen while everyone else has left. 

I see that the western side of the house must be disintegrating because the flames and ashes and smoke are starting to blow from the west past my only exit, the back door. Finally I finally admit my danger of being consumed by the fire and walk quickly out the kitchen door and down the steps with the smoke stinging my nose.

What a fun dream that was.


Vivid dream 2: biking accelerating uphill through rocks

I walk with others down some jagged brown sandstone rocks for about 20 steps or so and then we stop on a flat rock platform. I see a bicycle there so I hop on and think about trying to pedal through the football sized rocks. All of a sudden the bike begins to move, and to accelerate back uphill as if I had pointed it downhill! 

A very rough ride over the rocks until at the top I see that the final hurdle is a rock formation in the shape of a ramp. So, still just coasting, I accelerate up the ramp and into the air. I look down on the rocky landscape about 20 meters below and feel a thrill go through me. Then I fall gracefully until I am just standing there on the rocks, still as can be.

It would be nice in life to accelerate uphill through the laborious rocks that hold us back and be free. -- Free!!