Another night, I had a full-blown waking fugue. I imagined that I was a “reindeer person”--somewhat like the “cat people” of the movie--and members of my brood would, on some 100-odd year cycle, break out with “reindeer fever.” My consciousness was transferred to the herd-mind of a stampeding herd of reindeer, thundering down from the snowy, Scandinavian north in a mad mating frenzy, tangling horns and hoofs together in an orgy of wild reindeer lust. The problem was, reindeer fever was fatal; in my extended awareness, I had a vision/memory of an ancestor dying in the primitive rural American south, in the last century, of “reindeer fever.” I became very agitated, and began thrusting my hips up and down in bed (despite the sexual overtone or the reindeer stampede I wasn’t sexually aroused per se myself, just super agitated.) I was vaguely aware of being in the hospital, and thought, the doctors should really come and study this, I know they won’t be able to help me, but maybe they’ll learn something. Meanwhile I was being sucked deeper into the wild reindeer group soul. As I was thrashing around, I began to come into a kind of rhythm and I felt I was suddenly getting in touch with my “inner reindeer shaman’ and that I would be able to recover. I raised my left arm, crippled and shaking from the stretched nerve injury acquired in surgery, up continuing to thrash around. I was reaching for something…
