Happy to have finished that long thread about my childhood, I think I will celebrate by writing some really crazy shit today. I’m going to go full Shirley MacLaine and tell the story of the three dreams I had when I was about fifteen years old. While I recognize the risk I am taking in revealing such embarrassing details — the risk that you’ll think I’m nuts — it’s probably good to do this from time to time so that my readers will know to take everything I say with a little grain of salt. I don’t know that these are past life memories. It’s just the best explanation I could come up with at the time. And I have yet to come up with a better one.

Most of my dreams are like acid trips: I feel disembodied, everything flows continuously, people morph into other people, scenes mix and change frequently, and it’s hard to form a coherent narrative. But these dreams stood out because they were solid. I could feel my body, including the clothes I was wearing. I knew things about myself and my surroundings, and the flow of time was contiguous, like a single scene clipped from a movie. Each time when I awoke I was still awash in the memory of it, since they were brief enough to remember every detail. And each left me shook.

First let me tell you about my bedroom. After my parents’ divorce, what used to be my dad’s study was taken over by my older sister Karen. It was in the front corner of the house with two windows facing the front yard and one looking into the side yard, which we called the jungle because it was so overgrown. Being on the opposite end of the house from the rooms of the other children, it was relatively quiet. I took Karen’s room after she moved out. I moved the piano and all my sheet music into it, but other than that it was neat and uncluttered. The ceilings in the older parts of the house were fourteen feet high and the windows were tall and narrow. The walls of the room were covered in long strips of brown burlap, which made it even quieter. There was a double bed, quite cozy, and I think for the first time in my life I was able to sleep really soundly. I felt safe in my solitude. Perhaps this is why I was open to having these dreams. Being in my mid teens I was past puberty, above five foot nine, skinny, and becoming aware of myself as a young adult. In each dream I was struck by the differences in my physical form.

In the first dream I was twenty years old and only about five two, but well-muscled. I was wearing some kind of leather helmet and breastplate, like a warrior. I could feel my feet were bound into leather sandals and I remember glancing down at them, seeing and feeling the leather straps binding them to my calves. I was wearing some kind of skirt, canvas maybe, no undergarments. I could feel my whole body, the dry breeze on my legs and butt. It was hot, there were no trees. A large group of us were milling about on the top of this rocky hill, checking our weapons and armor. I remember feeling for the hilt of my sword, giving it a little tug to make sure it was loose in the scabbard strapped tightly at my waist. I remember being pretty confused about exactly what was going on, but I sensed we were preparing for battle, and I knew it would be my first. Suddenly there was a loud shout and everyone started moving at once, heading down the hill. As the people in front of me were now below me, the view opened up as I ran and I could see to the bottom of the hill and up the next hill in front of us. My scrotum contracted in fear as I saw what we were facing: a large force of horsemen in black robes and turbans with long spears and other weapons, now charging down the opposite hill towards us. I pulled out my sword, which was short and wide, and remembered that I was supposed to get close enough to a horse to cut its hamstring as it ran by. I could hope to do little else in this scenario. My senses heightened as the horsemen drew near. There must have been a hundred of them. Suddenly we were in contact and all hell broke loose, total chaos and clouds of dust. I remember dodging and striking at my first horse, spinning. Slightly off balance I turned back to engage another one only to see, too late, that a tall dark-skinned horseman was leaning toward me swinging what looked like a long stick with something round on the end. He sneered and looked straight into my eyes as he struck me on the side of the head. I knew I died instantly in the dream and woke up. Thinking about it, I decided that I must have been Greek, it was sometime BC, and probably in Turkey or Persia. Maybe I was in Alexander’s army?

The second dream was very different. I was tall, at least six feet. It was cold and dark as I meandered through the narrow streets of a medieval city, either Portugal or Spain, from the looks of it. I remember the feeling of leather boots on my feet. The streets were wet from a recent rain. I was wearing long pants, no zipper or fly, a thick wool coat with buttons, and some kind of wool hat. It was late, the street was quiet. I came upon a narrow wooden doorway and went up the creaky staircase to another door. I had a big metal key in my pocket which I used to open the latch at the top door, then I pushed it open with my shoulder. The room was tiny, like a studio. There was a desk in the corner. I lit a lamp, adjusted it, probably oil fueled. It was the only light in the room, but it was on the desk. In the light of the lamp I could see the desk was strewn with papers, not the 8 1/2 x 11 papers we’re used to, but big thick parchment sheets. I took off my coat and boots, left them next to the door, sat down, spread a sheet of parchment, grabbed a quill, dipped it in the inkwell, and began writing in Latin. When I woke up I concluded that I must have been some kind of philosopher, maybe five hundred years ago.

The final dream, which occurred within two months of the first, took place in a mountainous region of Central America, which country I am not sure: probably southern Mexico or Guatemala, and within the past couple hundred years. There was no electricity. I was a woman, around fifty years old, maybe five three or four, and corpulent. I lived alone in a small house with clay walls, very comfortable, with lots of colorful rugs and wall hangings, wooden furniture, and piles of herbs strewn about the kitchen. I had just warmed the water in the wooden tub from a pot I had heated over the cast iron stove, so I disrobed and got in. I vividly remember looking down at my rich brown skin and ample curves as I soaped my body. I remember what it felt like. It was delicious. Next thing I remember I was dry and dressed again. I opened the front door to enjoy the sunset. As I stood on my little porch a group of campesinos came walking by in their brown hats. As the last man in the group was passing by me a few feet away he paused, turned toward me with a look of pure hate, and snarled, “Bruja!” I felt a self-satisfied laugh well up within me and woke up. It seemed like I must have been a curandera but had moved beyond traditional remedies to develop my own innovative practice. I was a very proud, arrogant woman.

I can still close my eyes and picture these dreams perfectly clearly. I remember how I felt at the time, a bit terrified and awestruck–sure that they represented something real, something personal about me. They were so random! Whatever the case, the net effect of the dreams was to give me a sense of life extending beyond the narrow scope of this one incarnation. The physical impression of possessing very distinct forms has affected my self-awareness. When I move I feel that this is just one possible form I could have, and I am not bound to it. Who and what we are is in great part random and accidental, and it’s best not to identify too strongly with any of our particulars.