Fashion Statement

I have never really been a risk-taker.  In fact, I have a funny (I think) anecdote about just how cautious I can be:

One night in my early 30s I was asleep in my bed, when suddenly I realized “Hey! I’m dreaming!”  The revelation had come when I noticed that one entire wall in my bedroom was solid brick instead of the floor-to-ceiling windows I knew it actually was.  “That wall shouldn’t be brick,” my sleeping brain thought.  “I must be having one of those lucid dreams I’ve heard people talk about!”  Those people had also said that when you realize you are in the middle of a lucid dream you should take control, do something you’ve always wanted to do but can’t because of the laws of physics, time, space, and reality in general.

I will interject here something else about my dreams up to that point.  You see, despite evidence that flying dreams are quite common, I had never had one.  Whenever the conversation turned to dreams, invariably someone would ask, rhetorically, “Oh, who hasn’t had a flying dream?” and my hand would go up.  The next comment would usually be along the lines of “Oh my God, flying dreams are the best!  I've never felt so free and alive!  You have no idea what you are missing."  That never failed to make me feel happy... for them.

Breathtaking... and scary -- Pt. 1

So back to my dream.

There I was, in the middle of a dream in which I was fully aware I now had the power to change my flightless ways.  And what did I do?  Did I spread my arms, will the brick-wall-that-wasn’t-brick-in-real-life to dissolve and ascend through the clouds toward aerial vistas unimaginable to those shackled by gravity?  Did I break the bonds of Earth and behold the mysteries of the universe up close and personal?  Did I do a third thing, I ask (sticking to the comedy law of three)?

No.  No I did not.  But what I did do was far worse and more telling than simply choosing not to fly.  When I had my big opportunity to soar, what I did instead was gingerly lift my feet off the floor, one at a time, and proceed to hover around my West LA apartment like a seahorse.  “Wheeeee!  Look how different everything looks from six inches higher!”

That is what a coward I can be.  Always playing it safe, even when I'm asleep.  And that’s why, too often, I chicken out of wearing my fringed jacket or my sequined scarf.

And you thought I wasn’t going to bring this around to being about fashion.

Breathtaking... and scary -- Pt. 2