Well, it’s not a rare event. I often dream quite vividly and in color. A movie plays out in my brain, fully formed with music and everything. Now that I’m awake remnants of the dream are already fading. I have to grab a pen and write as fast as I can or the story it told me will completely disappear.

I’m on a veranda, high up and overlooking a mountainous terrain. I’m on a mini vacation, visiting my sister. This is her perch that I’m privileged to share. I’ve been here before but I’d forgotten how stunningly beautiful the raw, untouched nature is here. The crisp, clean air is drenched with oxygen and lush, dense forests lay below us, backed by layers of high mountains silhouetted in the late afternoon sun.

There is a man-made feature on the far left of the panorama. A boxy low-rise structure with a metal roof that’s reflecting the sun. It’s grotesque in its ability to stain the otherwise pristine view. By ducking down slightly I can make it disappear from view. Except for that atrocity, which can be blotted out at will, all that’s before me is wild beauty in amazing, abundant variety. It’s enough to make me want to cry happy tears.

Time is short and that lends the moment a bittersweet note until a friend who has joined us for tea asks if we can hop in the car and explore the red mountains in the distance. Yes! We decided we not only could but must. And as we focused on the marvel of that faraway place on the horizon it drew nearer- like racking focus on a camera.

Then we were in a small white car driving the winding canyon road, now completely surrounded by steep irregular red rock faces that rose up majestically against a pale blue sky. The rock surfaces had smudges of gray and mossy green and veins of grooves carved vertically into them from millennia of erosion. A sense of Deja’vu came over me like a drug.

We rounded a sharp corner and found ourselves at a water’s edge. An enormous body of deep water stretched out before us. The road simply stopped there. It was a remote and utterly deserted canyon lake. We climbed out of the car drawn by the mysterious allure of the water lapping gently on the shore.

The screech of a bird pierced the still air. That’s when I noticed that the rocks we were climbing on were carved in the shape of enormous bird feet. Their heads were gone, perhaps broken off over time. Their size told of a prehistoric age, millions of years ago when pterodactyls flew. It was eerily contrived, or so I imagined. Had someone carved these specimens or were they actual artifacts?

And then suddenly I was transported to another place. A scientist’s office tucked away in an urban sprawl of tall buildings knitted together by a network of paved roads and parking lots. We were in mid-conversation when I found myself there. He was describing an experimental new type of brain surgery that could give a patient the ability to smash through the topmost barriers of his perceived limitations and free him to experience himself on a whole new level.

The good doctor had a vision of contributing to the betterment of civilization. By making this procedure available to the most highly evolved minds, their elevated states would transform the people around them. The operations would have a domino effect and spread around the globe.

After all, he said, we are destined as a species to live consciously in the multi-verse.

Once again, the focus on what had captured my interest became the vehicle of transition to witness the very procedure the scientist described. We observed a patient in the form of a middle-aged man lying on a round table, safely behind a glass wall. A large instrument hovered over him and slowly descended. It looked as if it might squeeze him to death.

This was not the Frankenstein of Mary Shelley’s imagination. Not a dark, monstrous act but it had the violent quality of a transformation, which must necessarily pinpoint the blind spot and zap it out of existence with excruciating accuracy. A split second of pain and it would be finished.

I looked away and heard him scream. My friend, a spirited African American woman, was grooving to the sound of an upbeat song. It was as if she had completely disengaged herself from the procedure. She started to dance in the half-light as if something that had been pent up inside was suddenly set free. I started to sing and dance too.

When I looked back at the subject behind the glass, he was already recovering from what had been done to him. He was ecstatic! The doctor rinsed him off (even though it was a bloodless operation) and pronounced the procedure complete. It was a great success.

I woke up with the music still playing. It was a Burt Bacharach song made famous by Dionne Warwick.

What do you get when you fall in love? A guy with a pin to burst your bubble. That’s what you get for all your trouble. I’ll never fall in love again. Oh no I’ll never fall in love again.