Yes, levitation is fun. Though the first time it happened to me, I was definitely er-uh-gulp disconcerted.

    I had been asleep on a mattress on the floor of a cabin in Ripton, Vermont, the village where Robert Frost lived late in his life. I was alone in the cabin. It was a summer afternoon about 37 years ago. I was sprawled on my stomach in a tee-shirt and shorts, barefoot. I heard a man’s voice as if deep in my head say, “Don’t worry,” as the whole darn mattress and I began to rise off the floor.

    ‘Don’t worry’! Yeah, well.

    When I was an 8-yr-old budding epistemologist – one who studies how things work in all realms of experience -- I had made this (now beastly) solemn vow with myself to honestly experience whatever happened in my life and simply observe it as clearly as I could without judgment or panic.

   Fine, but this was a bit much.

   Every time I began to tense with frantic fear of falling, I’d hear this helpful voice, “It’s OK.” The mattress and I rose slowly until we were about halfway between the floor and the ceiling. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I wasn’t terrified, but I was bloody wary. The first time you have a prolonged episode of the suspension of the staid and codified, putatively immutable laws of physics in broad daylight, you’ll be a tad alarmed yourself, I promise.

    Me and my mattress kind of hovered there for a spell while my mind raced pinballedly for an explanation. I was neither drunk nor stoned. I could hear the expected sounds. I felt my left cheek on the pillow. I felt my weight on the mattress. Was I dreaming the most electric, immediate dream ever? Hallucinating? Crazy? Or was this simply a new experience like floating in water had been when I first learned to do that?

   I lay there in midair doing a checklist of reality cues. Then the mattress and I began to slowly spin clockwise. Drat, this is too much I thought. The kind voice says again, “Don’t worry. It’s OK.” The mattress and I are turned one full revolution. Then the mattress and I are gently and very slowly tipped up just until I feel my bare feet, which happen to be over the bottom edge of the mattress, touch the cool wooden floor. I felt my feet take some weight and my ankles bend as they would if you were stood up. It was that feeling my ankles bend and take weight that flooded me with certainty. I knew where I was for sure now. In my bedroom levitating.

   The mattress and I were slowly lowered back to the floor. Of course there was no one to talk to about this stuff back then. Nice people didn’t levitate on perfectly ordinary New England summer afternoons. Even now in somewhat openminded California where I dwell, you could talk about trips to Paris or Peru in idle cocktail party chatter, but not about traveling to the ceiling, a much greater journey.

   Levitation in dayreal is different from flying or floating in other dreams, in remreal, though they share the unclenching of the fist of any degree of panic.   

    Another interesting levitation happened to me right from the different mattress on the floor right here in my room in California. I felt myself (not the mattress this time!) begin to rise towards the ceiling like a Macy’s Parade balloon. “C’mon. This isn’t funny,” think I, but ever the Faithful Observer, a kind of Sancha Panza to the dear, tho daffy, Quixote Universe, I go along. I rise until I bounce slightly against the ceiling which is rough and textured. Of course you’re afraid of falling in the first few levitations.

    Another time, also in my own room, I rose until I bumped against the ceiling and then realized that I could allow myself to rise through the ceiling, and I felt the nails and joists go through me and they tickled.

   I probably wouldn’t trust less rigorous an observer than me to report on episodes like this. I’m sure many of you dear readers will be incredulous, but levitating and some other strangest experiences we’ll come to along the way only made me even more amazed by and devoted to our darling masterpiece of reality engineering, Earth Vuravura Jeegoo, dayreal.

    When you feel yourself start to rise, unclench your fear, and remind yourself to keep breathing gently --  though I have to say I don’t think I’ve ever been quite calm enough to do deep belly breathing while levitating. I’ll remember to notice next time.

   Levitating is part of the carnival of existence. If you lived through your first Ferris wheel ride, you’ll live through your first levitation. I’ve found that, like unicorns, levitations appear when you’re least expecting them.

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Note: putatively = 'supposedly,' with a wryer twist;

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