In the Mouth of the Bear

I used to have some pretty weird dreams - I'm not just talking "oh no, I'm falling and I'm naked" weird, I'm talking first rate weirdness that used to make me wonder if something was wrong with me. My dreams occasionally unfolded like interactive movies - the climaxes and resolutions were frequently surprising to me; I felt as if a few of my dreams were trying to teach me some moral. In high school, because of my fascination with lucid dreaming, I began keeping a dream journal - my dreams had always been very vivid, and I had no trouble remembering them. I'd wake up, and go to do the dishes, and while I stood at the sink, the tidbits would come back to me - then I'd write them all down before school. The point of recording one's dreams is supposed to be a signal to the subconscious that they're important - making them easy to remember. This is exactly what happened in my case - I'd have vivid dreams every night, and on the weekends, there'd be three or four a night. It actually got to the place where I was losing sleep, because I'd conditioned myself to wake up and write them down right away. That all sort of fell by the wayside during college - I tried to type out a few, but there was never anywhere near the same levels of the dreamstorm I'd had before.

I had a weird one last night, that recalls the previous levels of strangeness. I was hunting for something; I was at a little hunting camp. There were a few cabins, a main gathering house, etc. It was out in the wilderness, but where exactly I couldn't say; the weather was warm, perhaps in the 70s - I was wearing a light, button-up camo shirt, camo pants, and boots. Another family was there as well - a poor white family, whose children didn't seem too terribly interested in hunting. There was a girl of about 14, and two boys of about 10. Someone had to keep yelling at them to get ready, and to make sure to be on time. For some reason, I wasn't concerned about being on time, and I even had the feeling that I wanted to make the guides a little bit late. The inside of one of the cabins looked like something between a high-school hallway and the inside of a barn.

We went outside into the warm sun, and milled around for a bit. A small stream ran through the small patch of land, and off into the dark trees about 5o yards away, at the corner of the yard. I crossed the stream to the area in front of the main house, and there was the guide with one of his assistants. I'd figured that, since we were going a long way to hunt, we'd need a car, or horses - but there before me stood the most massive bears I'd ever seen. These creatures were larger by far then elephants; their heads were longer than I was tall. I figured we'd get a ride - no such luck. The guide looked at me and said "in you go" - and his meaning hit me. He tapped the enormous bear on its side, and it slowly, mechanically lowered its head, and opened its gaping maw. I thought to myself that I'd never seen a mouth so big on anything - that great white sharks didn't have mouths this large by half - and the guide gently pulled aside one of the bear's cheek flaps. I was seriously considering backing out -this frightened me immensely - but I figured it had to be alright; folks had done this before, hadn't they?So I placed my boot on the outside of an incisor the length of a butcher knife, and climbed up into the bear's cheek, trying to stay as far to the outside as possible. I shimmied my way up, and found a little nook in which I could lodge. Strangely, there was no terrible smell, and I kept on thinking to myself of all the food I'd kept in my cheek over the years - just because it was there didn't mean I had to eat it.

Then we were off, down a small dirt trail and on to a main street. I'd thought it a little odd that we were riding this way, when, if we were going to be on the road, we should have just hopped into a car - but those thoughts soon faded as I noticed things changing. A dim blue light seemed to emanate from the back of the bear's throat, but I wasn't going to sandwich myself between the tearing teeth to see what it was. Soon, though, the inside of the bear's mouth gradually turned into the back of an SUV, with blue tinted windows.

Then, we were making our way up some river that seemed to be running through an antique store.

Here, then, is the interpretation of my dream: the environs and the guide were very similar to the hunt my father and I enjoyed in Alaska after I graduated high school. The streets of Anchorage showed up, and it had a similar feel.

However, the deeper part, I believe is as follows: when I was on the island, my favorite pathology professor would respond to individual questions by sending his reply to the whole class - identifying information removed, of course. These questions would always multiply around exam time, and during that time, he would close his emails with the phrase that medical students in Rome - where he'd studied - would share with each other:

"In Bocca Al Lupo."

It means "In the mouth of the wolf " - how the students would wish each other well on their exams.

With the USMLE step 1 just ten days away, I feel like I'm in the mouth of a much more vicious beast than ever before. I mean...I must be if my own subconscious is wishing me luck.