Two nights ago, I dreamed of flying.
Flying dreams are by far my favourite dreams, I’ve had them ever since I can remember, and they only get better with time. When I was younger I wasn’t really sure about about the mechanics of flying, so in my dreams I’d often have false starts where I’d be running down a street, jump into the air, then fall right to the ground again.
This reminds me of when I was about nine years old and my best friend Mike and I would race down hills leaping into the air trying to get enough lift from the hills to fly.
Later, my flying dreams often had an antagonist chasing me, and the method of flying evolved into something similar to swimming; as if the air were made of water and I was pushing my way upwards to resurface from the bottom of the pool. I would still had occasional problems with false starts where I would come crashing back to the ground if I became distracted or didn’t have the right rhythm to keep in the air.
Eventually, I began to master the art of flying, and now I tend to move by focusing on an object and zooming towards it. I think I have retained at least minor swimming motions during the process, but flying doesn’t take much effort now, and is much more enjoyable. Often in these dreams, I’m aware that flying is a special ability, and I think I used to worry about being noticed while flying, but now I tend to associate flying with a sense of skill and pride and like to show off a bit.
In the dream the other night, I was in a very large building that was full of antique wood furniture, it reminded me of a gentlemen’s club or one of the college buildings here in Oxford, although there was also a lot of glass and stainless steel, so it definitely had some modern touches to the interior. I was very aware that there was an expectation of high creativity for everyone that was in the building, as if it were the Apple headquarters and Steve Jobs was coming to inspect what we had been working on. There were strange, pocket-sized carved figures, like large chess pieces, that were used like keys to open the doors between rooms, and then once used, were tossed to the side of the door in piles. I decided, (and I’m not sure why but it must have been some sense of intimidation), to express my creativity by flying about the room. So I started to lift off and flit about, bouncing from case to case and somersaulting as I went higher and higher underneath a large domed ceiling. When I reached the top I was able to see that there were people lounging on the tops of the bookcases, hidden from below but revealed from the air above, and I descended down and joined them, reclining on the bookcases and enjoying interesting conversations.
Then I woke up.
It felt great, having enjoyed the rush of flying, and such a marvellous time. I even tried to go back to sleep to pick the dream up again, but had no luck.
I was thinking tonight about my favourite image in the Ashmolean Museum, a detail of an image of St Nicholas flying to help sailors on a sinking ship.
And I realised that I have a fascination with images of people flying and levitating, such as these of St Joseph of Cupertino:
If you dream about flying, I’d love to hear about.
