OK this is totally unrelated to Sundragyn's post, but I'm posting here anyway because her post reminded me of this. (Sorry, I don't recognize either of the were-fish!)

I have one sort of recurring dream, but it recurrs (is that a word?) in terms of theme rather than events. I have been having this series of dreams since I was in elementary school, at least, but I couldn't be more specific than that.

In these dreams, I can fly, and sometimes pass through solid objects. It's not like a normal flying dream, though; it seems more realistic to me, because in these dreams, my ability to fly is not just a given, it is something I have to WORK at.

The earliest one of these dreams that I can recall has me on the playground at my old elementary school. Does everyone know those big orange plastic tube slides? Well, I was trying to fly, and I ended up passing right through this tube slide. I had to concentrate VERY hard to maintain a distance of about a foot off the ground, and when I passed through the tube slide, I had to concentrate even harder to share its physical space. At one point, near the end of the dream, my concentration started to slip, and I was forcefully pushed out of the space occupied by the tube slide as my concentration slipped. The shock of being pushed like that was enough to break my remaining concentration, and I stopped flying.

I don't remember too many of the intervening dreams, but I do remember how the theme has developed. I have focused less and less on the passing through objects ability when having these dreams, and more and more on the flying. The really interesting part is, I have gradually gotten better at the flying with practice (although it is still hard). With time, I learned to control the feeling in my head which gives me the initial lift, and have learned to more effectively navigate while flying. I have learned that while airborne, I can "push" against air almost as though it were water, and while I cannot swim the front crawl or anything, I can move along very slowly by "sculling" (a process learned in my swimming lessons where one floats and uses one's hands only to provide motion.) Larger movements do not seem to create faster movement, but when I scull while flying, I move about as quickly as I used to when sculling in water.

I think what gets me about this series of dreams is that they mimick real life, and have the same time frame as real life. In the dreams, I discovered a certain skill in my youth, and have spent years developing that skill, and gradually got better and better at it. Through experimentation along the way, I have learned better ways of using this skill. I think the weirdest thing, though, is that I have had this dream often enough that I almost believe that if I could concentrate in the same way (with the pressured feeling in the same part of my brain) when awake, I could fly when awake, too, and I could even use the things I have learned while sleeping (like the sculling). If anyone is curious, the part of the brain that feels the pressure in the dream is near the back, a little high, and slightly to the right of center.

Does anyone else have any similar experiences they could share with me?

Don "The Monkey'Can anyone teach me how to do it awake? ;-)'man" Jackson