At Least They're Committed

I walked all night and that’s a bit exhausting. Hard to say if it works. I do know that I’m not aware of astral projecting despite my best efforts to leave my body. When I was a little girl, I often unwittingly did it. I would float down the wooden stairs at 3369 Beaumont in Ann Arbor and see my mom, sometimes with her sister, sometimes with a neighbor, sometimes with my sister, sometimes alone in the living room or sitting at the kitchen table. I was in spirit form so she — or they — never saw me.

All but one time, that is. There was a stranger at the table, a third person I didn’t know, but as I lingered watching my mom play cards with my sister, this person stared at me until finally saying, “You’ve been down here too long. You must go back or you won’t be able to.” As if Mom and Cindy sensed, they both turned looking toward me, not sure what they were supposed to be seeing. I panicked at the thought of not being able to go back into my body and in a huge, dizzying whoosh I felt my soul be sucked from the kitchen, its occupants becoming a blur of colors in front of me, through the living room, around the corner, up the stairwell and then to the left, into my cold, rigid body curled beneath the yellow and pink sheets on my twin bed.

There’s no feeling when you’re walking. No hot, cold, wind;  just sight, sound and thought. It’s wonderful  And of course you’re not really ‘walking,’ you’re traveling. The last time I can remember the actual feeling of astral projecting was more than 20 years ago when I’d had too much to drink and was staying at a friends and was miserable and hung over in the dead of the night and somehow rose from the couch, out through the roof and into the night sky. No more discomfort. The traveling was peaceful and easy.

So I keep trying. And although I seem to only dream regular dreams of work, family, dating some tall, slender, dark-haired guy who’s about 10 years younger than me, I have on occasion heard back from people:

• “You were in my dream last night. You were terrifying, your eyes were burning red.”
• “I had a dream last night and you were in it. You were really scary, how weird is that?”
• “You were in my dream last night. Well, it was more like a nightmare, actually.”

Now, in truth, the people who have reported this back to me were random men I worked with. So, hey, better nightmares than having wet dreams about me, right?