I'm in a team seeking a magical treasure. One step involves searching a store-room in my old high school, near the cafeteria. But it's already been ransacked--someone's ahead of us. Still, they didn't find the clue. I can't see it either, but we have a guide, a Scottish ghost, who can: keeps guiding me move by move till I pick up a small lens, lost on the rug. The clue.

But the ghost also insists I pick up a dropped penny. Then a nickel, some dimes... the others are urging me to flee before we're caught and blamed for trashing the room. Despite my worries the ghost is just being Scottish again, I obey our guide and pick up dimes and quarters... a half dollar... a silver dollar... Several bucks in change by the time the ghost says "Now you can go." I point out to the others "I was making about $60 an hour picking up small change--worth humbling myself for, isn't it?"

NOTES

• Seeking treasure = in The Ness Man, I dreamed a little dragon girl prescribes treasure-hunting as a tonic for a drifting dreaming man, to focus and energize him.
• Grim little windowless room = my 11th-grade math classroom! No question about it!
• Scottish = stingy? No, frugal! It advises me to pick up "small changes"--they add up!
• Small changes = small jobs or sources of income, but also small social encounters, for practice.
• Ghostly advisor = dreams!
• Small lens the ghost wants = Keravision, a company I bought stock in. My dreams still value it.
• ACTION: hold on to that stock till the moment my dreams say to sell.

2007 UPDATE

Well, I certainly tried. I held on and watched the prices climb. My dreams finally said to sell when Keravision hit 45. I put a sell-at-45 order on it, but the order was canceled by the brokerage. I'd failed to read the fine print; Charles Schwab, my online broker at the time, quietly deleted all such orders after 60 days. The stock crept up, topped 45, I trusted my sell-order to cash in my holdings, ignored the whole business... but my order had expired a few days earlier! By the time I found out, the stock had crashed. I lost $50,000 by neglecting the dream's warning: "Watch finance closely and pick up changes."

On the other hand, my dreams also encouraged me to join my friend Lily's crazy scheme to assemble a group of low-income bohemians and artists and buy a big shared house in San Francisco. This time I poured the rest of my savings into it but payed close attention--became the liaison between banker, realtor and our group. Against all odds, we did it. I still live there. Without it, in San Francisco's crazy housing market, I'd be broke and homeless now. Or banished to one of those low-rent towns--Lubbock, or Houston, or Hell.

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