Performance anxieties? Me?
I believe it was Freud, slippery fellow, who said that when we dream about flying we're really dreaming about having sex (a claim which caused Dream, of Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels, to muse "then what does it mean when you dream about having sex?")--so it must say something, then, that all my dreams have me stuck fast to the ground, immobile, as if slogging balls-deep through mud. My legs feel enormous and heavy; I can barely run--I certainly cannot fly.

But last night I dreamed I was sky diving--an activity which, if not quite flying, is at least falling (almost gliding) with grace; it still involves the sky. But that's not quite the truth: I never actually did it. Oh, I was going to: I had signed up to go sky diving, I was ready to go sky diving, I wore all the protective gear and everything (in this dream, sky diving seemed to require full-body protection: a giant balloon of a costume, all white billowy material, a friggin' HAZMAT suit--I was prepared!).

And yet--and yet!--I never got off the ground. Never. Because every time I went on or near the plane, or even thought about the plane, the sheer total nervous excitement of it all (I was going to fly!) made me unconsciously pull the release cord so that, every damn time, the parachute would pop open--say it with me!--prematurely. And I'd stand there, cord in hand, parachute spilling on the ground, embarrassed. And was that pity in my fellow sky divers' eyes, or laughter? Does this happen to everyone the first time they fly?

I spent three parachutes before I woke up. I never got to go sky diving.

As if I need anyone to interpret that.