It's funny how you think about the oddest things, unconnected stray thoughts bubbling up from your past when you are tired, sleep-deprived, dealing with stress caused by multiple things.
Like, I was wide awake, nursing, and I suddenly believed with absolute certainty that I was still in the Navy and I had to fly that day and I began thinking how I could get in the cockpit without anyone seeing my baby and how I was going to manage nursing her. I was really puzzling that out and turning over different methods in my mind for several minutes -- and no, I wasn't dreaming: I was fully awake, aware of a blue jay squawking at a cat outside the open window, looking at the apples on the apple tree down the yard. Yet I was feeling a fresh sea breeze in my face while smelling a funk blended of JP-5, jet exhaust, hydraulic fluid, laundry soap, greasy, oily, steamy fumes -- that good old carrier smell. At the same time, I was in the cockpit, airborne, feeling that constant, deep-seated rumble from the engines, aware of the rush of wind just inches away outside the canopy, my shoulders warm from the sun...all of it.
I guess there actually is a reason saints and mystics and seekers disappear into the desert or the mountain reaches, fast and flagellate until they begin having visions. American Indians went on vision quests to discover their spirit animal. Such a quest would involve something like running non-stop for three days without eating or drinking until you collapsed and began having visions, hallucinating on the verge of death, at which point your spirit animal would reveal itself to you. It seems that even I am susceptible to that, at least to some degree. Not a fan of it. Won't pursue it. The here and now is good enough for me. I have enough trouble trying to understand that.
