For the Love of Astronomy, Lucid Dreaming, and...Goats

 I.

Angela and I had just sat down with our drinks when I lapsed into some sort of hybrid fit of crying and laughing about everything and nothing at all. But I normally feel good, I vaguely remember saying through a bunch of incoherent rambling. It was my last night in Chiang Mai after all, and because this is my life, the night took a surreal turn. 

Strange melodic music erupted from Angela's phone drowning out the horrid rendition of Puff the Magic Dragon that had been drifting from the small stage throughout my mental collapse. 

"What's that sound?" I asked, now alert and present. 

"I am lucid dreaming," she said and peered at me over her drink.

"What?"

"My lucid dream alarm. You know, to remind myself."

I leaned back in my chair and look up at the tree above us. The lights strung through the branches were no longer lights--they were stars, fireflies, beams of magic caught in the space between, where all else falls away.

"You're in the portal," Angela then said to make the moment even more unreal. I focused on her, and she pointed over my shoulder. Behind me was a scene that I swear was not a part of our surroundings when we arrived. The entire backyard of the property looked something from another planet, a dream world--complete with a neon portal, a telescope, and abstract art installations. 

"Genius," I said. My life tends to hinge on a lucid dream like quality anyway so why not push it as far as I can. And because this is my dream, all of my Chiang Mai experiences simultaneously converged at the only moment that has ever existed. Now.  

II.

No tourists, no sky lanterns, no pending doom as failed, flaming lanterns fall and snag in trees and power lines. This year Loy Krathong collided with Halloween--a potential for insanity of epic proportions, but alas, no such insanity ensued. Not in this lucid dream anyway. 

Angela, Taan, and I put on our cat ears and devil horns and slipped into the café. The subdued lights and soft music and delightfully, fun costumed bodies a contrast to my unhinged morning--in which I lost my motorbike key and got locked out of my apartment. When the landlady's spare key refused to work, her husband simply took a hammer to the doorknob and latch until they fell off and the door swung open. 

My motorbike key was not in the room. I had been in Chiang Mai less than 24 hours. I hadn't taken the key anywhere without the bike. As I stood at the end of the drive waiting to cross the street and make my way to the rental shop, the parking lot attendant approached me and dangled a key in front of my face. My motorbike key. He didn't speak. He only smiled and placed it in my hand.

Angela, Taan, and I toasted our drinks and talked of manifestation and synchronicities, of voids and how to stay in them. This year I lit candles and made wishes. I did not release a krathong or lantern like all the years before. Instead, I released expectations and dreams. I created space for magic to flourish. 

III.

I stood in awe in front of the Thai National Radio Telescope in Doi Saket. The telescope towered above the trees, and to my left, a Billy goat chewed on the grass in the surrounding field. Not far from the site is a goat farm that sells fresh milk and yogurt so it wasn't too surprising. 

The telescope pet--it lives here, he paused to tell me in a breathless side note between his enthusiastic explanation of building the telescope and how it works. I wasn't entirely sure who was more excited about this excursion--me, the writer who needed some inside information on radio astronomy, or him, the guy on the research team who gets to tell me about it. 

When I started writing this novel 10 years ago, it was all character sketches and scenes with no plot at all. The evolution of this book and where it has led me has been like traveling through a lucid dream--one full of mystery and synchronicities. The process has been far more than working out a plot in my mind and telling a story. It has pushed me to follow the strangest of curious pulls, to travel and research, to make new friends and go beyond my comfort zone.

Writing this book has led me from exploring remote areas of New Mexico and Lake County, California to studying everything from radio astronomy to schizophrenia and multidimensionality, to sleep paralysis and astral travel. It led me to reaching out to a complete stranger (the one that Angela, master lucid dreamer, met in a tiny, obscure coffee shop) and asking him to read my novel--which led me here, standing in front of the Thai National Radio Telescope (site still under construction, closed to the public) and allowing him to help me clearly see and refine my main character and his story in ways I'd never be able to otherwise. 

Being a writer has given me purpose to explore beyond my everyday life, to jump down rabbit holes (or maybe black holes) that perhaps I wouldn't even consider. It satisfies my insatiable curiosity about the world and the people that fill it. 

To round out an already surreal day, we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon and evening in what appeared to be a hobbit house, drinking craft beer and sharing stories and pictures of all the radio telescope sites we've visited and hope to visit one day--also, vibrant sunsets and tangled wires. 

We shared memories of the Bay Area, Lake County, and Hat Creek (what are the odds we both spent time in these places only to meet on the other side of world because of a book spawned from my imagination). I asked a lot of questions and filled in missing details, breathing even more life into these characters and story. And somehow the conversation inevitably wrapped around to the fairy tale Three Billy Goats Gruff because lucid dreams involving astronomy inevitably will involve goats. 

IV.

The days between were not any less dream like. Dawn and I got lost walking around Huay Tueng Tao and stumbled upon a zoo of giant creatures made of straw. I went to an acupuncturist and had my stomach electrocuted for 30 minutes straight. It seemed to fix the issue in question so I'm not too concerned. One night, I went to visit an old friend and somehow ended up learning how to make fresh pesto, got an unwanted crash course in the latest ongoing conspiracy theories, reminisced on long forgotten memories and songs of another time, another life, and laughed until I couldn't breathe. 

One dreamlike scene gave way to the next. Gazing through the telescopes at NARIT to distant worlds too far to fathom. Everything was in Thai, but there are no language barriers when tuning into the stars. Playing pool for the first time since leaving the US. Pool is a skill you never lose, especially in dim dive bars where drinks are cheap and there is only one usable cue stick. Seeing angry and/or bored clowns in deserted lots is a thing that can and will happen more than once in a lifetime. Familiar smiling faces of market venders I haven't seen in a year wave and ask where I've been and what I am doing and will I stay, please. 

V.

To be in a lucid dream state is to become fully conscious while the body still sleeps. In my lucid dreams, I'm always taken by surprise at the portals I've walked through, where I am and what I see, always an observer, never an active player. Ever wonder if you are just a part of someone else's lucid dream? Angela had asked at one point. 

But here in the so called waking world, I am still lucid dreaming. And no matter the portal I step through, I can play and co-create and interact with the places and people around me. Like Angela, I just need an alarm to remind myself sometimes. 

Do you ever lucid dream? Maybe you're in one right now. Tell yourself: I am lucid dreaming. How does it change your perspective? I'll leave you with a mantra. Repeat it until you remember. It's that simple.

"Suddhossi buddhossi niranjanosi, Samsara maya parivar jitosi, Samsara svapanam, Traija mohan nidram, Na janma mrityor tat sat svarupe." 

"You are forever pure, you are forever true, and the dream of this world can never touch you. So give up your attachment, and give up your confusion, and fly to that space that's beyond all illusion." --English translation