I was outside working on something with the kids, and there was this buzzing, some insect bothering my right ear. I’m particularly nervous when I hear buzzing and cannot see what is causing it, because I don’t wish to be stung, and I’m not certain how to resolve the situation without taking that risk. However, efforts to brush the bug away had been unsuccessful. Finally I swatted the thing.
My swat bug skill check was less than fully successful; I now had somehow pinned a bee between the fingers of my hand and my face, injuring but not killing it, and it was wriggling about, undoubtedly trying to get its stinger into a position to do some damage. Yet an incongruity caught my attention at this moment. I had pinned the bee with my left hand against the left side of my head. Now I was trying to get my right hand into position to finish the job–but the buzzing was still bothering my left ear, and my right arm was not doing what I wanted it to do.
It was from this incongruity that I realized that I was in that state of consciousness which was somewhere below that which I was trying to achieve, the one known to the ancient monks of Tibet as “awake”. It was all a dream–except for the buzzing and the hand. The buzzing was the sound of the ceiling fan over the bed; the hand was the pressure of my pillow.
It had been a few years since I’d had one of those dreams mixing reality that I made such a fun part of the Multiverser play experience; here’s hoping that the reminder will help me with the next such scenario in play.
I don’t think I’ve anything else to report.
–M. J. Young
