Distributing flyers

Flying dreams are the best. There's almost nothing better than the
sensation of your fingers trailing in the water as you glide low over a lake
or the ocean; or the rush as you dive, screaming, out of the clouds, hurtle
toward the earth, then bank just as you're about to hit the ground and
rocket skyward again, laughing; or the thrill of swooping upward just in the
nick of time as the woman of your dreams -- literally -- falls from some
high place and lands in your arms.

Until Monday night, however, it had never occurred to me to spend any
of the precious time allotted to me in these dreams teaching someone else to
fly. I'm always walking -- or flying -- a fine line during my dreams: to be
able to fly at all, I have to realize on some level that I'm dreaming, and
yet if I'm completely aware of this fact, I'll snap myself awake. Besides,
I've often used flight during my dreams to escape or avoid other people, to
keep them away from my world. Being able to fly has made me feel different,
but in a good way; it hasn?t been something I?ve wanted to share with anyone else.

And yet there I was, Monday night, soaring with one of my students
over the athletic fields near the high school where I teach.

"I don't think I can do it," she said.

"Yes you can," I said, taking her up to about 300 feet (not that I
had any way of knowing; I have a hard enough time gauging distances on the
ground). "It's easy, as long as you can do this," I said, and then sent us
hurtling toward the ground.

"Is this flying, or falling?" she screamed. "I don't see the
difference..."

"Stop," I said, and we did, so close to the ground that the smell of
wet grass was almost overpowering. We hung like that, in the air, long
enough for the crickets to begin chirping again and the blood to rush to our
faces, before a breeze blew up and we began drifting toward the sky.

"That's the difference," I said. "When you've taken control, when
you've caught yourself, when you've decided that you just don't want to fall
any more -- that's when you're flying."

I've felt like I was falling a few times this week. Between the late
nights at work, the demands it seems everyone's been making on my time, the
waiting and wondering about certain aspects of my life, it's gotten to the
point where I've felt I needed to either prepare myself for the crash, find
someone or something to hold on to, or learn to fly.

And that's what I did this weekend: said "stop" to the growing piles
of paperwork that seem to spring up from the ground everywhere I go, to the
phone calls, e-mails, and letters asking when I plan to do this or that, to
the worrying about anything other than what I'm doing right now. It would
be self indulgent to do this all the time, I suppose, but for the last three
days, it's been exactly what I needed.

There's a dream I remember as if it happened yesterday from a time
when I was about ten or eleven years old. My mother had been chasing me
through the house, and I had barricaded myself within a large upstairs room
at the end of the house that has since become my brother's bedroom. My
mother's fists were pounding against the door, the wood heaving as though it
were breathing, and my eyes fixed on the open window at the other end of
the room. If I jumped out the window, I thought, one of three things would
happen: 1). If this was reality, I'd fall, probably hurt myself pretty
badly, and possibly die. 2). If this were an ordinary dream, I'd fall and
wake up halfway to the ground. 3). If this were another, very special, kind
of dream, I'd fly away, to a place where neither my mother nor anyone else
would be able to do anything to me.

"Open this door right now!" she screamed, and I made my decision: I
plunged through the window and rushed up into the sky, sailing above the
trees at the end of our driveway. I looked back only once, to see my mother,
growing smaller and smaller, shaking her tiny fist through the open window,
as I rose into the clouds.