I am walking on the beach. The colors are the wonderfully vivid hues of poster paints. The sea is French blue, with fluffy little whitecaps. The sand is oriole-yellow. There is a distinctly French Impressionist quality to the whole scene, so much so that I feel that if I turn around quickly, I might catch a glimpse of the artist who has just painted it - and maybe the scene will end at the edge of his canvas. Yet the scene is entirely alive.
I walk with a male companion, studying the scene. He is wearing a frock coat and a top hat, has a neatly trimmed black beard, and is swinging a walking stick. I notice that everyone on the beach, like my companion, is dressed in the clothes of another era. The women wear full bathing costumes, and the men wear sleeveless tops with their bathing trunks. There is something more remarkable. Nearly everyone has a cycle. More sedate couples ride bicycles - including at least one tandem bike, built of two - along the esplanade. Others are riding on the sand, or through the shallows of the water. More daring cyclists are riding in mid-air, ten feet off the ground. While many of the bicycles are intact, some are just the vestiges. One lady sits on a padded seat, gripping handlebars and pedaling away, but below her the bike has vanished - no frame and no wheels, A beaming boy is riding high into the air, riding a bike that is invisible except for the handlebars. A dashing young man with hair like a raven's wing and an artist's silk scarf billowing from his neck is showing off, doing aerial acrobatics, on a bike that has completely vanished, while he has his fists clenched as if gripping the handlebars and his legs are cycling away.
My companion explains to me that this is a school for dream travelers. "All the bicycles you see are training bikes. As dreamers become conscious that they are dreaming and grow their understanding of what is possible here, the machines become less and less necessary. The bicycles fade and finally disappear." I follow his upward glance and see some high-flyers among cotton-wool clouds who move through the air like swimmers, or rocket-men.
I walk with a male companion, studying the scene. He is wearing a frock coat and a top hat, has a neatly trimmed black beard, and is swinging a walking stick. I notice that everyone on the beach, like my companion, is dressed in the clothes of another era. The women wear full bathing costumes, and the men wear sleeveless tops with their bathing trunks. There is something more remarkable. Nearly everyone has a cycle. More sedate couples ride bicycles - including at least one tandem bike, built of two - along the esplanade. Others are riding on the sand, or through the shallows of the water. More daring cyclists are riding in mid-air, ten feet off the ground. While many of the bicycles are intact, some are just the vestiges. One lady sits on a padded seat, gripping handlebars and pedaling away, but below her the bike has vanished - no frame and no wheels, A beaming boy is riding high into the air, riding a bike that is invisible except for the handlebars. A dashing young man with hair like a raven's wing and an artist's silk scarf billowing from his neck is showing off, doing aerial acrobatics, on a bike that has completely vanished, while he has his fists clenched as if gripping the handlebars and his legs are cycling away.
My companion explains to me that this is a school for dream travelers. "All the bicycles you see are training bikes. As dreamers become conscious that they are dreaming and grow their understanding of what is possible here, the machines become less and less necessary. The bicycles fade and finally disappear." I follow his upward glance and see some high-flyers among cotton-wool clouds who move through the air like swimmers, or rocket-men.
7 comments:
I often have dreams of riding bicycles -preparing for what I hope will be a less car-centric future. Sometimes in those dreams, after cresting the top of a hill, find that my bike is flying, and I get a nice aerial view of the landscape below, along with a feeling of great exhiliration.
Hi Justin - Sounds like wonderful fun, and a very promising preview of a less auto-centric future. You are making me think about transportation in Dreamland, my dreaming society of the future (first introduced in "Doctors in Dreamland"). Flying bicycles are surely already technically possible, with less cumbersome technology than depicted in the old French print I used for a graphic.
I am in the process of revising a book called "The Dreamland Report". The subject matter differs from yours, but life does rhyme!
Robert,
This topic reminds me very much of the kids riding the flying bicycles in the ET movie, with the extra-terrestrial's help. So to follow your theme, the children are already dreaming & airborne, while the adults who are chasing them don't even HAVE cycles!
Adults who want to learn how to dream have only to listen, really listen, to a child.
Nancy
In my conscious dreams I seem to have skipped the training vehicle stage and gone straight to free-flight. At least that's true in a literal way, but it did take me a while to calm down and think about what I wanted to do when I woke up in dreams, since the euphoria would all but intoxicate me: so maybe some kind of training/restraining vehicle would have helped initially . . . I'm wondering whether the dream body is also a training vehicle of sorts, since some people report not needing one in their travels? Finally, if it were my dream I would surmise that maybe there's a symbolic import to the idea of cycles/cycling that my dream bikes are pointing to, something to do with the value of staying grounded even while flying. Hmm.
wow...for some reason I was moved to check out your blog, today and now I know why. Recently, I had this dream (the exact write-up, no changes):
last night, 2/12 or 2/13:
"DREAM: couldn't believe this ferris wheel/aerial bicycle could support my weight...once I released fear, I hung upside down, holding on to the seat, with my legs. It's time to do aerial tricks, dream while airborne! Have fun and let go!"
Wow-o-wow. Last night, I found a lovely word, courtesy of Deepak Chopra: "synchodestiny." Thanks to your work, Mr. Moss, I am awake to the signs and having a blast. Blessings!
LaVon: I love your dream of swinging on an aerial bicycle. Very much the feeling that my dream cyclists were probably experiencing.
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