I'm on the shore of a holy lake. Clean simple lines and colors so pure I doubt the lake's real at first: think it's a Disney film. Understandable--it's the place that Disney modeled the Greek section of Fantasia on, and also Bambi's forest.

How's the lake magic? Not only can you walk on the water, you can skate, barefoot, at incredible speeds. The local animals, especially deer, play all over the lake... they discovered its medicine long ago and have turned a bit magical themselves. The deer are lean, swift, small, and elegant--almost unicorns. I find them very sexy. They zoom around the lake faster than speedboats, their forelegs stretched out before them, but their hind legs crouched, tails high in the air like they're being mounted, making love. But their mate is of air: the sensual joy of speed, of flight.

Now and then, coyotes and even a few wolves try chasing after them--but they're few, scrawny, and inept. The deer rule! They have so much more experience with the sheer speed of it. One hot doe deliberately aims right at a line of predators who'd have her if they were on land--but she revs up like an espresso-crazed ski bunny on her first snowmobile and roars right through them at about 80 KPH.

I try it myself. I skate around pretty fast, but when it's time to turn or stop, I'm clumsy as Bambi's first try. This is the deer's power place, no doubt about it.

From below, my little cascade is not too visible, just a tiny side stream. I worry I won't find it again. Memorize the gap in the reeds so I can find it when coming upstream. The material world lies downstream, so I'll be coming upriver the next time I seek this place, as I fall asleep and climb into the dream plane...

The stone lip above the cascade is wide enough for a terrace in spots. I sit and watch the deer water-ski. Some locals walk up and paddle their feet over the falls. We get to talking about the lake. One says "The lake was built by magic, too." But I'm skeptical--it feels more like only the skating required a spell. This low shelf of stone we're sitting on dammed the stream here. Now, maybe this dam was spelled or sung into being, but you could just as easily build it with a bulldozer--or patience and a wheelbarrow.

So I could find or create such a lake, such a cascade, ready for the magic spell. And maybe even handle that! What magic I have couldn't move mountains, so I thought such a lake was far beyond my powers; but if the only magic needed is the walk-on-water thing, I might just manage it. Magic is mostly working with the grain of the rock and the water; you just add a dash like salt, and if you did it right, natural forces will refresh the magic and keep it running. I may just try it.

If beavers can, why can't I?

MORNING NOTES

• Cascade = I hosed down the walkway in our garden. Stone steps formed little cascades.
• Lake = at the top of the garden walk, the bricks were carelessly laid a bit concave, so rain always leaves a puddle.
• Walking on water, skating on water = today I painted a picture called CRAWL showing me crawling naked on a river's surface. Not Jesus, not walking on water, but crawling at least. A boastful picture I guess, but I was celebrating all the psychic dreams I've been having. Small miracles--INFANTILE miracles--but miracles! In the dream, the deer are correcting me--showing me I can be more ambitious now. Tottery, but I've learned to walk...
• Sheer speed can protect you from predators = I can deal with social interaction much better than I think. I'm shy and timid as a deer, and I lack those sharp American teeth, but I'm fast, fast, fast.
• Deer = the book "American Women Artists" had a painted forest with stylized deer remarkably like these deer-skaters, by Four Corners artist Pop Chalee.
• The deer are sexy = this week I our figure-study class had a really cute model. I didn't want to draw her. I wanted to date her. Never mind art, I want a girlfriend to hold "dear"!
• Waterskiing animals = a month after this dream, I learn from the book "When Elephants Weep" that caribou and wood buffalo will toboggan down snowy slopes and slide across lake-ice for fun. That scene in "Bambi" wasn't just Disney cuteness. We assume adult animals lack a sense of play. Wrong! We just rarely see them playing--because they can't often relax around killers like us.
• In some of my dreams, lake = "lack"--a pun warning that I need something. This lake seems full--a need filled? With hard work and good design I can fill my lack...
• Make a lake by magic = the book "Lucid Dreaming" had a great quote from Blake: once in a vision he asked the prophet Isaiah "Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?" And Isaiah said

  "... firm persuasion removed mountains;
  but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of any thing."

  Apparently I am, now--I can work wonders--but I have to be persuaded of that fact!

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