Innocence Blog

Our daily lives have crystallized into routines, patterns, and rituals. I want to hold onto these patterns because they reinforce the sense of a singular life—my life, which has to do with my goals, and my supreme sense of individuality.

But when I scan the content of my dreams, I see that these routines, patterns, and rituals are like man-made barriers built to stop the flow of contradictory desires.

Dreams will dismantle the notions you’ve carried along about yourself. Dreams will deconstruct that seemingly indestructible idea of “me”.

And here I’m not talking about the flying dream. My flying dream has done little to deconstruct me. Why? Because over the years I’ve integrated it into my personality. The flying dream serves a purpose now; it has become a symbol of my destiny. Before I told you that I wouldn't interpret my dream, but flight is also a universal signifier.

Flight connotes the essence of superhuman power. Flight connotes another realm, a realm nearer to the heavens. Flight connotes the privileged position of the sky, the wide-embracing “bird’s eye-view”, the highest point to look down upon the vegetable planet. Flight connotes elegance, quickness, and lightness.

It seems to me that this dream wants to inflate my ego. Could flight be my symbolic compensation? If I can fly over everyone and everything then maybe I'm not the anxious, worried person I feel I am.

Unlike my flying dream, which inflates my ego, I had a particularly disturbing dream this morning which seemed to create a reverse effect.

The dream involved a sexual experience—that I remember—the rest I recall only vaguely. If I told you some of these loose fragments, these vivid though rootless images, it would be like offering a meal with the food on various plates.

I was disturbed by the dream in the same way that I am shocked to overhear some of my darkest thoughts. I thought to myself, “How could I have ever dreamt that?”

The night embraces inconceivable elements, frightening aspects of our personalities, and lepers of the mind.

If real-life is assigned to day-time hours, then real-life is a cover up. During the day, I struggle to maintain so much damn control. Every hour is anticipated. As if a future moment, which is really just another present moment, will differ vastly from this present moment I am having now.

At night, I’m not thinking about what will come next. After whatever I'm doing, I'm going to bed. The clock drops out of my mind. I'm not governed by time and its mathematical tables. I'm not goaded by self-consciousness.

There are no passing moments, only eternal ones preparing me for flight.

When I dive from the cliff, nobody catches me . . .

I can barely conceal the smile on my face as I glide--

The joy of being able to launch myself at once into a separate sphere, gives me a supreme satisfaction, an indescribable feeling.

Levitation is a consummate thrill. Floating is even wilder and more insane to imagine. And flight is beyond comprehension.

While I’m flying over giant clusters of people just as if they were pixels on a vast screen, I realize that my secret ability to fly has come to me in the time of an emergency.

Flying is not a part of my daily routine, you see.

I realize that something was threatening me on the ground, and that’s why I suddenly took flight. An impression of the primal scene still haunts me, vague pictures floating restlessly in the back of my mind, distant as memories.

The crowds on the ground are trying to keep up with me. They’re running after me as if they too might bolt into the air. They don’t look like pixels anymore. More like gazelles, running in loose herds; the undulant rhythm of their hind-legs beats like a drum on the African plain.

The beasts of the savanna are chasing me with delight.

For the rest of the dream, I soar over the majestic sweeping continent. Thorny acacias and palm trees spread throughout the vast swathes of grassland and marshes. I look down at the elephants which appear pensive and sad. They are monuments of sadness. Grey lugubrious figures with heavy-thick skin, brooding eternally over the land.

Then: long-necked giraffes carrying messages to the tall trees, whispering all sorts of secrets to the leafy vegetation; they chew in serene self-possession. White rhinos are transfigured into kingly creatures who command respect from the tribes.

The striking zebras graze indolently on the pastures. From my birds-eye, their vivid stripes evoke a mesmerizing contrast to the dry, parched lands.

Flying seems to be the simplest thing in the world.