Cold turkey flying high

I cut down on my steroids a couple of days ago: 10mg to 7.5. No great pain or stiffness in arms or legs yet, but tingling hands and feet, raw nerves and funny dreams.
Last night we – who else? - were travelling in what might have been the Massif Central. We came out of a scrubby wood into the sun and found ourselves on a rocky headland, looking down, far down, into a deep ravine. Then we seemed to take off, not just us, but a thick wad of turf and soil from under us. We lay on our fronts and clung to this magic carpet or mattress s best we could, soaring and dipping. Far below were forests and fields, bare crags and lakes. I couldn’t tell how high we were, or what was the scale of the landscape below (looking close-up through long grass you can imagine yourself in a forest; look down into a clear pond and the forest is there below you in the weed.) So it was as we planed and dipped, though we seemed to be getting closer to the ground. Suddenly, quite gently, we were there, come to rest on the edge of a lake, our bed of turf half in and half out of the water, like a boat hastily drawn up on a sunny beach. I lay on my front, a foot in the water, face close to the gritty ground, and wept. With relief, and joy and gratitude, not just to be back on earth but for the gift of flight.
This freedom of the sky is one of the freedoms Nina Simone longs for in her song ‘I wish I knew how it would feel to be free.’ It’s a dangerous freedom, the tempting ambition of Neitzch’s superman and the plunging Icarus. Perhaps what I wept for was my luck.
This dream came in my sleep, but I feel the freedom it points to is not just the escape prescribed by Piaf in ‘Je sais comment.’ Dreams can be also be markers of a waking consciousness, or confidence. Freedom for, or freedom from… Another dream I had, perhaps 30 years ago, seemed important at the time and still does. It had less to do with ambition, more with Janis Joplin’s nothing left to lose – a freedom from fear. Before that memorable dream, I had often awoken with a start, as if to save myself. I would be falling, drowning, running away; the blow or the bullet would be aimed at my head. But always, at the point of impact – or death – I had woken up, as if to spare myself the worst. This time I fell, like Icarus, from a great height into a deep sea. As I sank I knew I wouldn’t make it to the surface. I held my breath as long as I could, then breathed in. Instead of waking, I dreamed on. The water that filled my lungs wasn’t deadly cold, but warm and light. Everything, including me, was light, weightless, bright as in dazzling sun. I surface, no longer a mortal lump but in a blaze of light. The dazzling sunlight tht was also me danced across the water, bounced off cliffs and echoed from headland to headland. The light that included me found its way into a great domed sea-cave, reflecting off the waves and dappling the dark walls and roof. And in the light was a sound, essential as the highest and clearest soprano voice. I couldn't have been happier.
A long-before-death experience.