The Curse (?) of a Dream ...

A while back I wrote “The Gift … of a Dream” about a day with a perfectly normal, perfectly ordinary, perfectly perfect Jessie. While it was still so real in my head, I immediately started to write it down as it slowly dissolved from my conscience. It was a beautiful, wonderful gift for which I will be forever grateful.

But lately – I have been having a recurring dream – and it is equally fantastic, and equally disturbing to wake up and find out it is not true. But I have had it now at least five or six times, so I felt I should start taking notes and see if I could figure out what my subconscious was trying to tell me. I feel now that it is just a big tease – a big “Just kidding!” type event that somewhere in my subconscious it finds it funny to torment me.

It always begins the same way. I am walking down a dusty, dry non-descript road in Istanbul, Turkey. No matter that I have never been there – Gary took some photos and my brain fills it in. I am clearly out to take photos – probably of cool mosques but there are none in sight.

I am on a slight incline and I can see down to the ocean or a large river – I have no idea if Istanbul has anything like that, but I can always see the water – thus keeping myself oriented on the winding, dusty roads.

Suddenly, I come across a small shop and I spy a few tables and chairs through a grimy window. I am totally exhausted and thinking that soon I would need to be summoning a taxi to take me back to Gary’s apartment … where ever THAT might be.

I enter the shop and I ALWAYS notice two things in my dream – One – how much cooler it is in the small shop, and Two – the pungent odor of dried herbs. I realize that it is not a small café, but more a pharmacy of some sort.

There is a small woman at the counter – smiling and she politely nods her head.

“English?” I ask.

“Little” she says.

“May I sit down, I am very tired?” I ask.

She nods her head. And I sit, pulling off my backpack and putting my camera which I have been holding back in it case.

I hear her ask: “Visiting?”

“Yes” It seemed easier than to explain the double living arrangements – identical to when Gary lived in Australia.

“Do you sell drinks?” I ask.

She looks puzzled.

“Water?” I ask.

She smiles and nods her head. She leaves and comes back with a glass of tap water. I try to pay her for it but she will not take any money. (Sometimes I don’t get water here in the dream)

I drink half of it quickly and set the cup down while she is still standing there, expectant that I tell her how it was.

“Wonderful, Thank you.” I reply. She is beaming. I am starting to like this woman.

Then she says the strangest thing (always): “Let me help you … what do you need?” More words than our one word conversations and she seems to be transformed into someone else. Maybe she was just getting to know me and her English had always been better than she let on – I really don’t know.

I’m in one of my moods. I have tried to find a particular mosque and took a wrong turn, so no photos. I hurt, I ache, I feel ill and I know that I shouldn’t have gone out in the first place feeling as sick and weak as I was that morning. I mutter “You cannot help me … no one can help me.”

She is still smiling and expectantly waiting for an answer, apparently finding the one I gave her not worthy of a response. So I go all sarcastic on her:

“Got anything for pain? For chronic illness? For severe arthritis? For depression? Cause if there is a magic pill back there in one of your bottles of potions, lady – I am all for it.”

Still smiling she nods her head and returns back behind the counter. I sigh – she has understood nothing that I said and I was relieved since it was a little verbal pity party on my part. I sit there thinking it is time to call a taxi and finish my water, when I feel, more than see that she is again hovering near me.

She is actually holding two pills – filled with some sort of green and brown pureed mess. She is also holding another glass of water. (Sometimes this is the first glass)

“You take” she tells me and shoves the two gel capsules at me. Looking like a herbal shop, I shrug my shoulders and say OK. I take them and swallow them with a large gulp of water.

“Like, Do I turn into a pumpkin, now?” I ask. She smiles and nods. “Great” I mutter – and decide it was probably poisonous. Teach me to take ‘drugs’ from strangers.

I finish the second glass and decide that I need to get going on that phone call … when something amazing happens. I start to feel totally buzzed, totally energetic and I don’t feel ill at all. I feel like maybe someone on a really cool trippy high. She notes the change in my face and says: “You like?”

I start laughing uncontrollably and nod yes – “Wonderful!” And her shy smile gets even bigger than it has been before.

“What is this?” I ask her and she brings me the bottle – which has cool squiggly lines on it – looks Arabic, but since I am in Turkey – it should be Turkish – which I think originated during the Ottoman Empire era and Latin based – so not exactly ‘in sync’ with the area.

“English? Latin?” I ask. She pulls out a big book and finds the squiggle. She turns the book around and points to it. The Latin name for the plants is listed. I get my ever present notepad and pen out of my backpack and copy it down.

And then I ask her how many I can buy?

She tells me it must be fresh – she says “One Month”. I say OK and give her a ridiculously small sum of money.

I want to hug her. But instead I tell her thank you and I step out of the shop back into the baking sun and the dusty road. But this no longer bothers me and I practically skip back to the apartment.

I have a feeling that time passes at this point – longer than a month. A few months to many months – I am unsure. I have a feeling that I have visited her a few more times and that I am now fit and trim and healthy and I owe my life to this small, meek, soft spoken women. By now I have memories of hugging her while sobbing telling her that she has literally saved my life.

In some dreams I go off on a tangent arguing with her that she would make a killing if she sold this stuff in the US. She has no interest, and I realize that I am happy that I am cured or at least stabilized, who knows – maybe it won’t work for anybody else.

I also have feelings that during this time I fret that she will close up shop, or move and not tell me and I will be out of my supply – something that scares me more than anything. But normally I am just back in the shop – which feels like it is based on Ayurvedic Medicine, but since this form of medicine is really only practiced in India and Sri Lanka – I am off base – but Ayurvedic Medicine is based on herbs (without the heavy metals added as they sometimes do) and meditation. It is Hindu based whereas the majority of people in Turkey are Muslim – this seems to not bother me – and still feels as if it is an Ayurvedic Medical based pharmacy of some sort.

Later in the dream, I am in the store – I stop in often, the small woman says to me:

“Come”.

“Where?” I ask. She points in the back and I follow her into a small room that looks very much like a dance studio – with mirrors along one wall, but on the floor it is covered in 1 inch thick mats.

I look at her with a quizzical face and she just says – “I am yogi” I am still looking confused and she says “You practice – meditation”.

I will insert here that I have no idea where I came up with the term ‘yogi’ but I Wikied it and sure enough it is a practitioner of Yoga, and related meditative practices in Buddhism, Taoism – etc – so we are back to India again – but again, I don’t feel she is a displaced expat from India – she just … is.

I guess we fast forward here through my meditative and yoga training since the next thing I know I am doing a routine and feeling higher than a kite. I feel wonderful, transformed, high. I move through a routine that reminds me of gymnastics routines from my High School years. Not the back flips and cartwheels sort, but the stretching and other movements. The movements seem SO REAL!

I feel as if I am back on the gymnastic mat in High School trying to perfect a particular move. It is an odd, weird looking and complicated move that requires exact timing and speed. From a kneeling position you take your arms and quickly (and, of course, gracefully) fling them from the front of your body, downward to the back of your body and upward. While doing that and at the exact moment your momentum is moving backward you start pushing on the backs of your feet and slowly lift yourself up onto your curled toes. You are now standing erect as if on pointed toes, but in reality they are doubled up and you are standing on the tops of your bent toes (hurts like hell) your arms are now fully above your arms as if in a pirouette and it looks like you magically levitated yourself into a standing position – where in reality it is all in the arms and pushing off the backs of your feet. All in the timing and momentum.

I would always start the routine with this movement AND IT FELT SO FAMILIAR – right down to the aching, cracking toes! This is a move that I had perfected while a gymnast, but do not remember it being in any floor routine that I did (I also did the vault, beam and bars – but none of those lend themselves to this movement either). I am assuming I was just a sadist and it was fun to see the looks of people when you magically levitated into a standing position.

I would then bend at the waist and put my hands flat on the ground – balance and lift my legs off the floor – at a 45 degree angle, offset my balance enough to pull my legs above my head, and then adjusting so that I am in a full handstand. This is more a balance beam move, but who am I to get picky? Also something I did on the beam and the floor - and also FELT SO FAMILIAR.

I would then over extend my legs and slowly lower myself onto the flats of my forearms – so that my hands to my elbows were flat on the floor – then adjust my balance to stay that way. Then again – lower my legs at a 45 degree angle until they were on the floor. Another move that felt SO REAL, so good, so familiar.

There were many moves – but those three were always there and something that in an earlier life I did all the time. I could feel the burn from the stretches, my muscles bulge and work as I tried to maintain balance and posture and get it just right – and it all FELT SO GOOD!

There is no sound here and I believe she has told me that this is meditation, a few times she refers to it as Transcendental Meditation – but that involves a mantra – which I don’t seem to be doing – so again – just a titch off.

At the end of the routine, I end up sitting with my legs out fully at a 180 degree angle – what do you call it – not the splits – but your legs straight out to the side of you (also something I could do) and as I am bending over – pulling with my arms above my head, my legs stretching to their max and my back muscles stretching, stomach muscles pulled in tight and rock hard – as I touch my hands to the mat …


I always wake up. Lately my subconscious seems unwilling to touch the mat – as if it knows that it will end the dream and my healthy days will be over – weird, very, very weird.

And all of a sudden I open my eyes – always in the dark – this seems to be an early morning dream. I blink once or twice and then the pain hits and the most awful, discouraging feeling of being trapped in my body and feeling so helpless settles in.

As in my dream about Jessie – it is devastating to realize that it is not really so. I have not been running up and down the hills in Turkey taking photos of the mosques and all the other things that I flashed on in my dream. And my “Meditation by Pilates” or “Meditation by Gymnastics” routine sticks with me far longer than the magic herb pill that makes me feel better.

Last night, after blinking a few times I started getting philosophical about the whole thing. Sure – it is a dream – but a dream that at the time I am dreaming – FEELS SO REAL.

And I decided that I would take it. It has been years since I have done anything remotely resembling gymnastics, but in my dream, I work so hard – body and mind to make sure I move with one fluid motion, maintaining balance so that the movements will be flawless – and it is so real I can feel the burn when I wake up. So for a few minutes every night I get to be flawless in my moving and stretching – and although it has no reasonable or logical explanation – it makes me feel as if I am flying – like Wendy to Never Never Land. So, yes, I will take it.


I wonder how long I will continue to have this dream?






I am sure I will miss it when it goes ...


But for now - I am going to enjoy it for all it is worth!