Best Waking Dream of the Week
Every so often I read a description of a mundane event which suddenly transports the observer into a mythic moment. Having just received a particularly moving account from a friend, I’ve decided to highlight these “waking dreams” in a semi-regular series of posts. I doubt I will be posting one of these each week, but “dream of the week” has a certain ring to it.
Feel free to email me waking dreams you think might be deserving of the prize—the prize being, of course, getting mentioned here. Ah, the pretensions of bloggers! My sole criteria: great moment + well-written. Is that so much to ask?
The following is from my friend Paul, who recently discovered he has cancer. This moment came during his pre-radiation scan last week.
The PET scan was in a trailer with a technician and two assistants. The technician brought a metal cylinder out of a lead lined box and opened it behind a shield of leaded glass. The assistants very gingerly moved out of the room while this was happening. The technican, a man who was obviously from India, took a smaller cylinder of it. Inside of this smaller cylinder was the dye. This he carefully put in another cylinder with a syringe fitting inside this. With this extended beyond his body, he walked towards me with the needle sticking out and injected me with the radioactive material.
I felt somewhat better when, during this process, he told me his name was Krishna and that he had done his morning worship. For a moment I slipped out of time and wondered if we were repeating the great battle scene in the “Bhagavad Gita” where Arjuna asked the Lord Krishna the great questions, “Why is this happening? Who am I here in this moment? Why do I have to do this thing?” The assistant came in and brought me back from the battlefield—she instructed me that I could have no stimulation while waiting for the dye to work, about 30 minutes. So I couldn’t listen to my iPod. Damn! The results were as they (and I) I hoped: the cancer was limited to the tumor and two lymph nodes and had not spread.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:46 am
That is so beautiful.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Wow!
I am really looking forward to more in this series. Thank you so much for posting this!
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Spooky. I myself would rather not be precipitated into the Gita any time soon, but I suppose some Hindu mystics might say that we are in it all the time.
May 15th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I really like the concept of this blog and found the Krishna waking dream extremely inspiring and profound.