I'm a hobbit in Silicon Valley.

One night, my tall human friend Aragorn and I drive up to a green wooden building on the west side of El Camino. It's a lair of the Enemy, but probably empty this late at night. Aragorn says "Let's break in and get the Evidence." I ignore the ethics of breaking and entering, and follow him. Scared, though. Aragorn picks the lock easily, and looks around. Then a sports car parks outside. Slow heavy bootsteps up to the door. A Nazgul! We hide behind a table.

A feeling comes over me.... that Aragorn has a mass of chicken liver over his own liver, weighing it down. I get out my knife and cut away, to remove it! A strange faint sound from Aragorn.

Suddenly I faint.

In the morning I find myself... where? A Nazgul is looking into my eyes! It says "You have done well. We'll use you and your kind more often." It walks off.

I'm uneasy. Where's Aragorn? What happened? Slowly I piece it together. The Nazgul clouded my mind till I stuck my knife into Aragorn's own liver. I've certainly hurt him and may have killed him.

But I don't go look to see... I don't want to know.

NEXT MORNING

• I know exactly what this nightmare's about. I swore last night to draw only an hour, then get some sleep. I didn't! Stayed up until early morning, obsessing. So...
• Aragorn = my own body. Betrayed by my art addiction.
• Irrational urge: in The Lord of the Rings, the Nazgul seeking the One Ring radiate the command "put on the Ring"--since that'll reveal it to them. I know the Riders broadcast destructive urges, so in the dream I should have questioned my urge!
• Liver:
  1. I just read a Native Californian tale (in the excellent collection Down From the Lonely Mountain) on covering the sun with a thin slice of liver as a lampshade, so it won't burn the land. (Drought, fires, the ozone layer, global warming! We primitive Californians have such silly superstitions.)
  2. Literal. This chronic neglect of my body is stressing my liver.
• Why chicken liver? = I think of myself as timid--'chicken'--and want to overcome my cowardice. But in that California tale about the liver-slice filtering the sun, AND in the dream, removing this liver isn't brave--it's disastrous!
• ACTION: Heed my body's protest, faint though it is in my altered state--art addiction. I face liver damage or worse if I obey that Dark Rider! He's just as deadly and seductive as alcohol. The dream's a serious warning--heed it or die.

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