by Heidi King
You walk again. Walk and walk. Now you see something after the trees. It is reflection of the sun. It is a pond. Look into the water. What do you see? How is the water? It is a warm day. What do you do? Swim? Sit? Tell me.
Walk again. There are less trees, and you see something ahead. It is a house. Tell me, how is the house? Do you see inside? Is the house old or new? What you going to do?
After you see, something comes to you. It is an animal. What animal it is for you?
After the house you continue. Then you see something. You cannot see around it. You cannot go under. It is a wall. Tell me about the wall.
Stop reading. I do not want you to read if you not do the dream.
Finished? True? Can you learn what about you? Then now it is possible for you to read what Dr. Mike Anderson, a psychologist, says are keys to understand your dream. He wrote in my email…
THE PATH is the course of your life. Is it winding or straight? The less it winds, the further ahead you feel you can see. Is it paved? Rocky? How hard is your life right now?
THE FOREST represents your friends. Are there a lot of them packed tightly? Is the forest deep and mysterious, or light and airy? How sturdy are the trees? In other words, how much can/do you depend upon your friends?
THE POND is your sexuality. What you see reflects your desires and what you do reflects your curiosity.
THE HOUSE is you. The amount of interior you can see is how open you are with others. Its sturdiness is a measure of security. A house is a common dream symbol for the self.
THE ANIMAL is your ideal life partner.
THE KEY is your father. What you do with it is your relationship.
THE WALL is death. How the wall looks and what you do when you reach it describes your attitude about death.
The man that wrote that above here is a psychologist, Mike, and he is my boyfriend. But when I meet him he was not my boyfriend and I smoked a lot of cigarettes. When he tries to hypnotize me for to quit smoking I only sleep. But I wake up and have this dream. It was my first lucid dream. Together we have a group of friends and we try to lucid dream more and more so I was happy to lucid dream.
But I don’t remember my dream when I woke up. I don’t remember until two weeks later I went to Isla Iguana.
Do you know sometimes you can remember your dream when something you see or smell helps you? I didn’t remembered my dream but then I went with my friends to Isla Iguana.
Isla Iguana is a protection park in Panama. I was there with my new friends I met when I was their tour guide, and now I travel all of Panama with them. So when the boat goes near the island right away I knew I see this before in my dream. This is a déjà vu. Everything was the same as my dream…. The way I feel and what I smell is the same, and it was at that time I remembered my lucid dream. In my dream the trees were palm trees… okay I am Kuna so I always see the coconut palm tree… but everything was the same. It was amazing when I go to the island and I thought this is not new for me. In my dream there are not too many trees but not only one or two. And there I was on the island with 5 friends, Mike, (was not my boyfriend at that moment) María, Matt, Steve and Estrella.
The path in my dream was like the path in the Isla Iguana. It was direct, but the mangrove trees made darkness, so I didn’t know where the path goes.
My house was small with not many of the things inside. Maybe it says that I am young.
The wall is not on Isla Iguana because really the wall is death. But the wall did not scare me. Over the wall there is night but I see the stars.
The animal I see are the animals that are too many on Isla Iguana… iguanas! There are too many iguanas there really. When you walk they go away quickly but we went to snorkel in the water to see turtles and when you swim close to the beach you do not scare them and you can count too many… 10, 15, 20. In my dream there was one iguana… this means my partner… maybe is older than me and wise.
I don’t remembered all the dream at one time. But we walked and I saw where the North Americans hit with the bomb. The hole now has water. In my dream I looked into this water and I saw Mike and I remembered this when I saw this. The bomb hole now has water and this is the pond. In my dream I looked into the pond and I saw Mike. The water was warm and perfect and I went swimming in the water in my dream. The water is sexuality.
That night when Mike explain to me all the significance I understand a lot and Mike and I decide to be a boyfriend and a girlfriend.
There was a part of the dream that was not happy. The key. It was old and broken. When Mike help me to know all this… to know what the key is I really understood. I take the key but when I look very close I see something and I want to vomit. It was a symbol that I not understand and Mike was very surprised when I said I saw this symbol in my dream. It was the same I saw over a door at a museum in Panama City. I am sick but I put the key in my pocket.
The United States America’s Navy made holes in Panama.
I found one on Isla Iguana.
But when you can find the hole and understand you can put something else in the hole and then it isn’t a hole.
The First Apparition
By María Concepción
I return to the church of gold. I light a candle in front of a woman cradling a tiny church of people, and I can’t help thinking that whoever made this got the priestess right. Exhausted from the heat of Casco Viejo, I sit down in and rest in the pew in front of the shrine of women. Above the shrine is the Last Supper, with the Magdalene sitting to the right of the Christ… the Isis and Osiris of their time. I feel safe here with Santa Rita, with her head bloodied like me. The church is cool and empty. I stretch out in the pew and I look over at The Christ on the cross. He stares at me. I want to touch him. I decide to try to lucid dream.
I look at the sphere on my hand. I slip seamlessly now into my dreams…
Ahhhhhh . . .
… I no longer need to find my hands. It’s like shooting up. The eyes of stained glass saints light up to acknowledge my presence. I walk up to them and then stand on the gold altar in front of a full but silent congregation. I remove my white shoes, my blue summer dress, my brassiere and my panties with the pink flowers. I kick them onto the dusty Church floor. I do not feel out of control or in control… I am an automaton.
I move my hands over my body and begin to fiddle around between my legs. Eventually I find what I think I am looking for, something wet, cold and metallic. Very slowly I begin to unzip my body, working a straight line up my stomach between my breasts, up my neck, taking it right on through the center of my face to my forehead. It is a freakish release, like ripping a long dry strip of flesh from the base of my thumb nail.
My fingers probe up and down, the resulting slit finally coming to rest on either side of my navel. I pause for a moment, before meticulously working the flesh apart. Slipping my right hand into the open gash, I push up through my throat, latching on to something buried solid at the top of my spine. With tremendous effort, I loosen it and pull out a hard, blood-slick chain. I yank on the chain and it pulls on the back of my skull. Something lights up. I release my grip and my crumbled body, neatly sliced, slithers around the liquid surface of the chain to the floor.
Splat!
Now I watch from the eyes of a new stained glass saint. The golden orb hovers with the dangling chain and the congregation rises.
Then the gold, the colors of the stained glass, turn black.
I could smell him. His mustache. His cracked yellow teeth and his fucking fedora. He walks from the back of the church to the front row with his stupid fuckin’ grin. Now I try to wake up. I look at the palm of my hand. I am lucid dreaming but I can’t make him go away.
Then the congregation stands up and shouts.
Shekinah! Shekinah!
She appears instead of the orb. He walks toward her, stroking his cock. She lets out a whimper but will not cry. And then I fall… tumbling down the stairs. I try to stop, try to hold onto something and make my way bac
k but I know I lost control and will not wake until I hit the bottom.
Volcano Nightmare
By Mathew Hope
My first attempt at lucid dreaming was really surreal. I did fall asleep finding the symbol on the palm of my hand, like Dr. Mike suggested. I guess because he had just told us the story of Isis and Osiris, the first thing I saw was a huge Egyptian obelisk. But unlike any obelisk I’ve ever seen, this one had a small door at the base. I crawled inside and found a narrow winding staircase. I climbed slowly, and at the top it opened up and I found myself at the top of Volcán Barú. There were children singing gospel songs in a circle --
“… we will walk with each other, we will walk side by side…”
They were expecting the big floods to come. The clouds rolled in quickly. The children were chanting now, with growing excitement. When it began to rain they became ecstatic. God sends the great floods to wipe out evil and save the children who believe. God will save only them, the righteous.
They smiled when I walked over to them. A little girl took my hand, inviting me in.
“No,” I shouted. I tried to take control of my dream. It was a lucid dream, but I couldn’t seem to stop the children. I needed to stop them but I didn’t really know why.
They were soaking wet in the rain. They formed a connected circle of joyous singing and then FLASH, I was blinded and I heard a BOOM so loud it knocked me down. When I stood I saw their wet bodies with smoke rising from their heads. Their joined hands provided a circuit for the electricity. They were lying there with their hands still tightly clasped. They were not the chosen ones. That day God destroyed the righteous.
I walked over to the bodies. But I saw that they were no longer children. It was Dr. Mike with smoke rising from his head, with Estrella and Steve. And then I looked into another face and suddenly became breathless when I discovered that it was me.
I opened my mouth but no words came out. I looked at my hand to gain control, but I couldn’t find the lucid dream symbol I drew there. Something hit me on the back of the head. I swung around, but I couldn’t see anything. The fog rolled in and all I saw was a white screen. I was stricken again and fell to one knee. A third blow exploded against my head, and everything went black. Then I heard that I can only imagine were the children singing and a bus engine. Their blue school bus and I felt like there was a seat at the back for me.
I awoke in a cold sweat, gasping for air. I searched my hand for my lucid dream symbol and with a sigh of relief I saw that the crown I had drawn on my palm was still there.
Sucking up Life in Bocas Del Toro
By Mathew Hope
The tourist is busy telling you where he is from, where he has been, and only listens when planning where to go.
“What about deer?” the American residential tourist (retiree) at the table behind us asked the young Israeli backpacker. “You ever eat deer?”
I pointed to the school of fish attracted by the lights illuminating the sunken ship beneath our dangling, feet trying to steer María from the generic banter.
“No, no, that’s not kosher either.”
“Water looks nice,” I said downing the rest of my rum and coke.
“Dude, I can’t for the life of me remember what the theme song for Family Ties is,” said the nerd to his girlfriend.
What was the song from Family Ties? I usually do O.K. at useless trivia and I knew the answer was sitting in the back of my constipated mind.
“You paid what to go get to Dolphin Bay?” the bearded hippy said to the dread-lock hippy sitting along the dock to my left.
I shook my head. “María, are you ready for another Vaca Loca?” I asked. (Distilled sugar cane juice and milk.)
“You haven’t been to The Lost and Found yet?” The granola hipster asked the overdressed hipster.
Remembering that stupid song distracted me from getting María’s attention. “There’s a full moon party tonight,” I said, tapping her leg.
“Why do you wear shoes, man?” the older tattooed surfer dude said to the young blond surfer dude next to María.
Or was María distracting me from remembering that Family Ties song. “The party is at a new bar on Bastimentos,” I said, looking for her eyes while seeing Michael J. Fox flying across my mind on a rolling chair.
“Oh, and I like to hunt moose. You can make great jerky from moose. You ever had moose jerky?”
“Mmmm, no. Again, I think moose have cloven hooves. So again, I don’t eat moose, deer, pig, goats or beef,” the polite Israeli replied, waiting patiently for the next entrée suggestion.
I was at The Lost and Found before it was in the guide books. So what about elk meat? I saw more dolphins on Polo Beach. Me too – every time I try to think of the theme song I get the song for Cheers in my head. No man, not even with sandals -- you are not grounded, you know man, in tune with the earth.
“Don’t you ever step on glass?” María asked.
Damn, I lost her to the surfer dudes on her right while I was trying to think of the theme song to Family Ties. The surfers were sitting on the dock with their feet in the water, just like us. They had classic six pack surfer dude bodies, both of them.
“You build callouses. We weren’t born with shoes.”
I had suggested wine and lobster, my treat. I wanted to get to know her better – what we were to each other. Instead we got quick mystery street meat in front of our bar for the night, The Wreck Deck -- a rancho covered dance bar with docks built over the sunken ship. Tonight it was filled with rum infused tourists and horny, aggressive locals.
After telling travel stories that made them feel superior to their fellow backpackers and exchanging compliments on their tats, they started to ask María questions. Since they are used to comparing notes on how cheap their tickets to Panama City were, they were captivated to hear how she crossed overland from Colombia, through the Darien jungle.
“There was this one day I had to take a shit,” María said. The hipster and nerd pricked up their ears too now. “The Embera Indians pointed to this wooden structure at the far end of the village, near forest. It was a high wooden platform, something like a water tower except there was no water tank – just a hole in the floor. I hate heights, they freak me out but I had to go real bad so climbed this creaky old tower and I just squatted over the hole. Looking down between my legs, I am confused. Nobody else’s pooh is on the ground below. Then there is a rustling in the trees behind me. Before my pooh hits the ground, a group of crazy black pigs run from the forest, and then they just suck it right up. Before I even pull up my panties they have disappeared again. I wonder if I dreamed the whole thing.”
I can’t help but look at the open mouthed surfer dudes and think they are like the wild boars eating up her shit. I am jealous, I know. I have always wanted a six pack. María is beautiful even when she stands and mimics taking a shit.
I have learned a few more things about María since the day she took the valium on the bus and ended up covered in urine. María never learned shame. She is not afraid to be the center of attention and is not afraid to cross dangerous jungle alone. (But the fear of falling will bring her to tears.) She unapologetically sucks up life. She pees by the side of the road in full view of traffic. She steals restaurant tablecloths and sleeps on dangerous beaches. If you believe her stories, she fights back when she’s being robbed to the point that either she or the mugger ends up battered and bruised. She accepts foot rubs from horny strangers with fetishes. She jumps off of cruise ships she’s worked on because the water looked nice. Her motto is, strangers have the best candy. She smokes weed in front of Panamanian cops. She hops the kiosk counter to demonstrate how to make real fried plantains. She searches deserted beaches for quiet locations to masturbate. She adopts strays. She learned English at a posh boarding school but never speaks about her parents. She is a stray that accepts adoption.
I realize that I am only one fifth of a family that has adopted María. It is because of this that I stole her aw
ay with me to Bocas Del Toro. Travel is life on speed.
I dragged María onto a boat taking partiers across to the next island for the full moon party. We were early – the moon hadn’t yet risen. Low tide stretched the beach out more than 50 meters so we walked to a normally submerged sandpit in water only a few inches deep. We lay together in the wet sand looking up at the stars. Except for heavy bass thumping from a bar far in the distance, everything was silent.
While waiting for falling stars, something dark flashed in my peripheral vision. Then we notice dark things flying over us. At first I thought they were bats. Bats often come out in Panama at night and flash by so quickly that your eyes never quite catch them. But these were not bats- they were fish. And they were jumping over us from the small pools on either side of us that the tide had left. We just laid there together counting flying fish. I drifted, trying to remember the theme song to Family Ties but getting the Cheers song instead. I don’t even remember that time of my life. Suddenly, like magic, it became brighter. The full moon was rising.
We didn’t speak. She reached up with her hand and she held it until the moon rose over the water.
“How many times have you seen the full moon rise?” Maria whispered to me.
“I don’t know.”
“Right now there are people working jobs they hate. When they die, even if they are old, they will realize that they have not spent enough time watching the moon rise like this.”
Sometimes I thought Maria was immature and I lamented our age difference. But when she says things like this I think she is wise and all other conversations inane. I mean I can’t even remember the theme song for Family Ties. How many actual important moments in my childhood, moments so important they shaped who I am, that I will only remember a few more times in my life. How many more times will I lie on the ocean floor and see the full moon rise?
I knew this was one of those travel moments… life moments… a moment that tourists miss because their itineraries are filled with sightseeing.