Of Buddhas, Bones, and Skulls

It first happened after his body was invaded—Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA. The dream that followed was unlike anything he had ever known.

Some people place a high priority on what happens each night when they enter the dream world. He was one of those. Some report nightmares, or dream of falling, always waking just before they hit the ground. He was not one of those.

His dreams were usually scenarios that included a few other characters—archetypes of the situational life. This dream was like no other. It did not take place in three-dimensional space. It was immersive, taking place somewhere deep in the bone tissues of an ancient order.

How to describe a place like no other, where thousands of tiny figures—Buddhas, bones, and skulls—are carved into delicate traces of ivory, like grains of sand scattered across an infinite desert?

Being each of the grains trapped within the image, he tumbled out—naked but for a scrap of torn red cloth, over which he fought the wind as it tried to tear his only garment free. The force of a hurricane could not stop him from leaping for the bars, screaming from his prison:

“I want to be free!”

The hollow eyes, the scraggly white hair and beard, the open mouth, the teeth, the scream.

Then he woke up—only to realize that the somewhere else he left behind was just a dream.

What happens when a dream becomes as real as life?

In lucid dreams, the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming and may even gain some control over the dream narrative. But what happens when the dreamer loses all control and fears entrapment?

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This wasn't just a dream in the abstract. It seems now like your psyche staged a kind of ritual theatre in response to your fear, pain, and vulnerability. The body’s crisis—a bacterial invasion, an infected wound—triggered a mythic dream, where your subconscious attempted to process the gravity of the diagnosis through stark, visceral imagery.

You dreamt of being inside bone, ivory, and surrounded by skulls and Buddhas. MRSA is a deep tissue infection—sometimes literally involving bone (osteomyelitis). It's as though your subconscious visualized the interior of your own body, not in clinical terms, but in sacred, symbolic language.

In this sense, your dream was not just a reaction—it was an expression of your will to survive, your rage, your sacred protest.