THE GUIDE

My Epidaurian Tholos Dream

In my dream I am under Epidaurian Tholos in ancient Greece. The robed attendant has just told me that if I drink of the stream that runs through the underside of the deep building it will be a sleeping drought and I will be sent healing dreams. I thank her and she moves away. “Uh hu,” I think to myself. “Sleeping Drought. I’ll probably have to drink the poor little stream dry before it puts me to sleep. But! Here I am, so I might as well have a slup and lay down on this nice grass for awhile.” I find beside the water a crystal cup, which is very lucky since I’m lousy at the “cupping my hands” bit. I fill up the cup and take a small sip. Ummm. It tastes like . . . water. Well, it tastes a little bit like grass, but then water does taste a little bit like grass, at least in the summer when you drink it out of a hose . . . it tastes a little bit like fish, but then water does taste a little bit like fish, especially if you drink it out of the river, which you’re not supposed to any more . . . it tastes a little bit like . . . water and there is nothing in the world that tastes as good as water, especially when they won’t give you water . . .when you are going to the operating room and you are so thirsty and they won’t give you any water, you get an ice chip and they’ve already given you a pill which makes the corners of everything sort of strange, but you are still awake in the operating room and thirsty . . .

Doctors and nurses are coming and going in green scrubs with their masks on. They write things down on charts and talk to each other. I remember the time I asked for a Tylenol and they laughed at me. I remember the horrible pain in the ICU. I remember floating around the ceiling in the O.R.

I am on the operating table waiting. Tami comes in, wearing her black leather pants and white satin blouse. She has a big woven basket. In it she has her henna equipment and lamps and rugs and finger cymbals, small gongs and wooden labyrinths. She sets up the lamps and lays out the rugs and lights incense and gets to work. It seems that she needs to henna my veins and arteries on to the outside of my body so that the doctors will know where they are for the IV’s etc. during the operation.

So Tami paints away for awhile, but when she gets to my back she keeps painting and painting and painting and pretty soon all the doctors in the room are getting antsy and sort of murmuring to each other, but Tami just keeps painting. Finally she is finished and all the doctors are crowding around and looking at my back.

“Well,” says the surgeon, “THIS complicates things!”
“I can’t help it,” says Tami. “What’s there is there.”
“Well, that’s true,” he sighs running his hand through his hair distractedly.

I look at my back. I’m asleep, of course, or I wouldn’t be able to look at my back. As it is, I just look and there is my back. And on my back, painted in henna is a beautiful set of fantastic huge wings.

All of the doctors and nurses are looking at my back and consulting charts and going back and forth. Finally the surgeon says “I’m going to have to make a call, and I just can’t do this without assistance. It’s just beyond me. I’m going to have to call someone in.” Everyone murmurs in agreement and then for a long time they just sort of stand around. They start massaging their own necks and looking at their watches and sort of pacing. I’m just laying on the operating table staring at the ceiling wondering what the heck is going on.

Finally after a long, long time the door opens and these two incredibly beautiful beings come into the room. One is sort of all the colors of a sunset, the other all the colors of the sea. They’ve got long wispy, sort of cotton candy hair, pink and turquoise and wings which are folded against their backs. They come and look at my back and nod their heads and say things like, “uh hu” and “yes, this could cause some complications.” When they touch my back it feels like both sunshine and ice water at the same time. Then they say, “OK. We’ll scrub up.” and someone puts the mask on me to put me under. I want to ask what is going on, but . . . I wake lying on the thick grass underneath Epidaurian Tholos, staring at a strange glossy leafed tree wondering what a message of wings might have meant.

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