Dreams

I haven’t been feeling great lately. I’m often tired, I feel like I have a cold, but am still feeling well enough to carry on.

I never have troubles falling asleep, but then after a little while, I begin tossing and turning all night long. Pretty much every night, I awake several times in a state of paranoia. In a pool of sweat, I look around my austere room that is dimly-lit by moonlight and my mind begins racing. It goes like this: where the hell am I? What town am I in? Where did I fall asleep? Where is my cello and all my stuff? Am I locked in a prison somewhere? It’s shocking and often this fear is so real to me that I find myself quite agitated for a while afterwards. But then I go back to sleep– at least for a little while. And that’s when really intense dreams begin streaming through my brain.

I don’t often dream, but since I’ve been in Nepal my dreams have been really poweful. Maybe it’s the result of missing my beloved people back home that inspires these dreams. In each of them I experience dear friends or family members really intimately. So intimate it’s like an actual physical encounter. As I emerge from dreaming I find myself in a curious state of euphoria– like a trance, in which I am just a spirit without a physical body enjoying the presence of this person in this moment. I lay in my bed savoring the last traces of dream state, aware that soon I will awake and it’ll all be gone.

This must just be one more step along the personal journey that solo travelers experience.