I have been dreaming again. It's like I have found a new, yet familiar world. A bit like a lost limb, reattached. One of the dreams seems essential. I am somewhere public, like outside of a subway station in Cambridge. There is music playing, and the weather is pleasant. I feel the music start to fill me, and automatically my fingers are drumming and feet tapping. But there is more, my body wants more as it always does. I begin to make little, tiny dancing movements, the kind no one really notices. Even that is not enough, so I begin to bust it out a little. So what, it's something I have done before, danced in public. But soon, the motions intensify beyond even what I have danced before. And the thoughts in my head? "I AM FREE." "THIS IS WHO I REALLY AM." While I might have experienced "freedom" while dancing before, this blows those experiences clear out of the water. When I leap, I really leave the ground. I embody less gravity. I can spin and leap and twirl and twist. And in a completely innocent, ecstatic way, I don't care at all who sees me. "I don't care," I am thinking. "Now I know who I really am." I am not sure I have ever felt so right in myself.

While it's sort of a big bummer to wake up from such a dream, and realize that yes, gravity does have a pull on me after all, and I still have the 43 year old out-of-shape and inflexible body that I did the day before I dreamed, it has changed my life in little inexplicable ways. For one thing, I have been dancing more in the hallways at work, in the hospital. When no one else is around. Like going down to another unit to get some antibiotics, and I'm walking past the empty wheelchairs lined up in a row for the next busy day tomorrow, and then suddenly I'm stretching it out, doing some loopy arm motions and a big old ballet leap. And the crazy thing is how good it feels. Because even without the strength and grace of my dream, it rekindles the same feelings: "This is me. This is who I really am."