THE DREAM

I'm looking at pages of Cyrillic. Among them, a Chinese character stands out, drawn clumsily, but still clearly Ai, "love." Later, another, Zhong, "middle" or "Chinese". A third I can't remember. Together they seem to be the name of the author of this article, written in Chinese but translated into Russian. All very fuzzy.

THAT MORNING

After writing the dreams, I get breakfast and open the morning paper. The Chinese government is ignoring the treaty guaranteeing Hong Kong a free press and free enterprise for 50 years. An open letter from the government, warning the local authorities to give in and enforce the repression, was signed with a pseudonym: Ai Zhong, or "Loves China"!

MIDDAY

I read Kate Wilhelm's book Huysman's Pets. A tale of exploited psychic children who rebel and fight humanity. I think near the end we're supposed to go from rooting for the kids to feeling creepy about their growing powers. Certainly the main character is chilled, sees the kids as alien beings taking over. I feel disappointed--I'm a Huysman pet, after all. Just with not enough siblings to start my own culture.

AFTERNOON

In the afternoon, Denise, a friend of my landlord's, comes by to pick up a table and chairs she lent him. I help her load it all. She's cute, friendly, pleasant, appreciating the help... till the stuff's on her doorstep. And then she turns it all off like a light! Its job is done. A cool, businesslike goodbye.

I feel brushed off like a bug.

I wondered if my psychic dream last night was a sort of inoculation for me, so that when I read Huysman's Pets I'd reject Wilhelm's picture of psychics as creepy and alien. By making sure I'd just been psychic. It sure changed how I read it...

But maybe the dream was even broader reassurance--against Denise's put-down later in the day. She may think I'm only good for moving furniture. But she's wrong. I have other talents.

2001 NOTE

I could have left all that out of this story, and ended it with my shock as I read the name Ai Zhong.... but the emotional reasons for apparent ESP intrigue me. After all, if a dream's images come from the future, why not the events it wrestles with, or the feelings it's meant to deal with? It wasn't until the next day that I needed reassurance that (1) psychics like me aren't creepy just because a bunch of normals think so, and (2) that I'm valuable even if Denise treats me like a thing. The dream seemed to have emotional targets--but targets in the future.

It's been obvious since Freud that dreams don't just address the present but the past, often the very deep past. But if you accept the possibility of predictive dreams at all (a stretch for many readers, I know--until you have one this specific! Do enough dreamwork, and you will) then why can't their issues and motives lie in the future as well as the past?

If so, precognitive dreams shouldn't be interpreted promptly--not all the facts are in, and they won't be for some time! Procrastinators of the world, take heart! To delay recording a dream is to risk forgetting it, but to always interpret dreams on the spot--well, it's tempting to sew it all up and go off to your day-world humming and happy that you've done your inner work... but things aren't that simple. Dreamwork's not business. Sometimes it requires stillness.

Sometimes the only way to work on dreams is not to. Just hold off, and wait.

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