Nuclear war did one nice thing--it brought down the Thorny Curtain at last! The biggest hedge in the world, around a farm near Gilroy that hasn't been seen for decades. Once feared and mysterious, but now locals hang ads on it; age plus recent fallout have worn it so thin you can squeeze through and explore. I try to figure out its structure. An outer square, an inner... then wood and wire fences around the outbuildings. Slowly I work in toward the farm all these defenses hid for years...

I feared the farm family would be wary of outsiders, but they seem curious, especially the two eldest girls, in their teens. One's pale blonde, one dark brunette, but both have the distinctive family chin, narrow delicate foxy, and small full lips; especially the brunette. Both stunningly sexy.

We play Frisbee. I feel excited playing with them. Accepted. I leap for one catch and try to hover, practicing my levitation skills...

I want to ask one sister for a date, but still feel shy.

A TV news crew says "The hedge has been condemned; half-fallen, useless as a fence, and a fire hazard. It's being pulled down." Hmm, no more hedging! Okay by me.

But in the background, low-grade nuclear war goes on. Little newsbreaks on tactical nuke-detonations. Simplified maps with tiny mushroom clouds, cutesifying war. It's how they keep the apocalypse acceptable.

The king of this postnuke farmland urges us to fight. A slick white man, photogenic in his elegant suit. Is that Dan Quayle? Whoever it is, he's smug and I don't trust him.

The farm family and I resist the king and his goons. We fight a long while in colorful, overgrown farm ruins. We turn into furry little animals and back to human, as we hide and attack and hide again.

At one point I meet the brunette daughter hiding in her true form up a wall, in a nook of the molding. Like a leopard in a tree. She's curled up naked. Her sister leans on her, in fox form. Feel a surge of desire for her. I still expect her to reject me... but she's warm toward me. I don't have to hide my desire, any more! No more hedging...

We still must stop this warmonger king... but now at least we're not fighting alone.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Thorn-hedge obsolete: from Sleeping Beauty! Does it mean my emotional reserve? After domestic abuse that nearly killed me ten years ago, I've stayed single and wary. But maybe my hedge is coming down at last.
• Dan Quayle: vice president under Bush senior. Notoriously dim--did he have one original thought in his life? In my dreams he means "Act stupid to fit in."
• The dream's encouraging but mysterious: I liked the sisters, I liked being open about my attraction to them, I liked transforming... but--
• Farm?
• Foxy-faced nude sisters??
• Shapeshifting???
• Mushroom clouds????

A friend takes me to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I'm stunned by a local artist, Susan Marie Dopp. She has Old Master skills, but not Old Master subjects. She paints dreams! But not, so far as I know, hers. Mine. One painting shows the two girls in my dream with Egyptian fox-faces, lounging nude on Rousseau's maroon sofa.

SELF-FLAGGING

I find it curious that my dream was set in the future, and the next day its imagery turns out to be predictive. I now call such dreams self-flagging--dreams saying they're literal not symbolic (or symbolic not literal); dreams mentioning lucidity that prompt you to go lucid; dreams mentioning ESP that turn out to contain apparent ESP. What the dream labels itself can be wild or quite mundane; you can reject ESP and accept self-flagging. The real challenge is that such dreams imply more awareness and intent in the dream-composer than most sleep specialists seem happy with. Yet... there they are.

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