At work, I gave notice. In two months, I'll quit and move to San Francisco to be an artist and writer. Blind leap!

Dream 1: SKIN, FEATHERS, MIND

I'm on a downtown sidewalk. Men in suits confer by stone steps up a little crag crowned with a pine tree. They point at buildings; seem to be debating the feasibility of unassisted flight! Just want a good spot to jump off. One says "I want enough of a drop for room to flap, but not a fatal drop in case I fail".

A small Asian boy listens in. Will he be the first to really try it?

I want to try, too. I notice I'm naked, not that anyone cares. I visualize a tail--a delta of feathers. Feel better immediately, even if it hasn't manifested as matter yet. Next I mentally slim down my legs (not just to lower my flightweight; they'll mess with my balance! Tilt my nose up and tail down). And lengthen my arms and sprout wingfeathers--but reserve three featherless fingers to use as hands. As I eavesdrop, and firm up my self-image as a bird-person, I climb the steps five feet up to the pine-foot. Good drop from here--the only problem is my wings still haven't manifested physically! Try to feel them, but when I flap, my arms beat too fast--no resistance.

And yet I recall... I've flown before in dream states from pure will and visualization. Material wings aren't really essential! So I switch tactics. Just will myself to rise.

Nope.

Desperate, I LEAP outward like a champion swimmer, prone--wait to slam the pave--no--feel one body in bed, flat, and, simultaneously, feel my other body float midair. Half-success!

Half adream, half awake, I force a bed-eye open. Blurry. See a text by my pillow. Huh? Force myself to read one line. In a tone as ironic and matter of fact as E. Nesbit, it warns of unexpected consequences of magic. But as I fall back asleep I lose the details of this shamanic advice...

Dream 2: HIPPIE MISSILES

A chain of hippie settlements along a canyon-creek; they don't maintain the road, to discourage tourists. They're wary of government and outsiders. I wonder if I could drive my VW bus up the creek instead; it's shallow and the bus has high clearance.

Then I hear a party nearing the river, with a prisoner: ME! I follow, an immaterial eye, observing my captors.

Evening. They camp here at the bridge and general store. They'll show their prize--me--to the village tomorrow. But now it's dark. They bed down a ring round me, too broad and numerous to leap over. No sentry. No need! They have me surrounded and they know it.

But they don't know I can fly. I visualize myself leaping straight up into the dark--and do. I level out and cruise, on wings, or pure thought--in the dark, who can say?

They have guns, and maybe even a missile or two. But missiles track the heat of a jet engine--can they see planeless flying me? I just hope, as flame-flowers bloom in the night behind me, betraying launch, that when their missiles detonate, they'll be far off--blind to feathers and will.

Am I too cool to track? In moments I'll find out.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Hippie canyon: an MTV video had a rocker on a mesa above a canyon like this. It also resembled Madrid, New Mexico, south of Santa Fe, a town full of hippies.
• Attack: echoes two dreams last month (1990/6/27): to silence me, first missiles were fired at a jet, then a truck sent to crush our home--but they hit the neighbors' place by mistake. In both cases the assassins didn't mind killing third parties.
• Hippie missiles:
  1. I found MTV loud, violent and crass. But was that ME disapproving, or my inner hippie? I should only like quiet gentle femme things. Ever.
  2. Guilt that I saved up my money so I could quit my job? I should stay poor and saintly! Even if that forces me to obey a boss?
• Too cool for heat-seeking missiles: a pun? Maybe it means that while I'm a shy child of the suburbs, not a big-city sophisticate, my dreamwork lets me fly without jet assistance (the psychedelics others take to go on trips much like those I take nightly for free). Such dreamwork may be cooler than I realize.

2020 NOTE

What lessons for dreamworkers? Well, the dreams illustrate the price of bold leaps. Your inner critics get active and try to shoot you down. And maybe not just inner.

And yet... my leap paid off. Essentially, I retired (at 36!) and dedicated my life to art. I was very stressed that first year--got sick a lot--but I held out, and never had a boss again. So were my hippie values violently condemning me for trying to live off investments? If so, they gradually shut up as they faced the fact that... it worked.

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